In an interview with a YouTube channel, ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the Indian government made several requests to take down tweets supporting the 2020 farmers’ protest and gag journalists critical of the ruling dispensation.
This, Dorsey said, was followed up with threats to shut down the Twitter office in India if the microblogging website did not follow suit. He also admitted to a “raid” on Twitter employees and the office in India. Dorsey, who quit his position as Twitter CEO before SpaceX founder Elon Musk took over, was responding to a question on foreign government pressure he faced when he was Twitter head.
Dorsey also referred to pressure from the Nigerian and Turkish governments as well.
Though the Indian government said Dorsey’s claims were “outright lies”, a reply to an RTI filed by BOOM on the number of social media accounts—particularly those on Twitter—blocked, says otherwise.
BOOM on April 12 had filed an RTI with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) seeking the number of Twitter accounts blocked between 2018-2023 and the reasons for the same. BOOM also asked which ministry sent the most blocking orders. The nature of requests was not given, though MEITY said the accounts were withheld under Section 69A of the IT Act and the IT Rules.
RTI reply indicates a sharp increase in online censorship
According to the RTI reply received on May 11, the Indian government under Section 69A of the Information and Technology (IT) Act blocked 6,775 URLs in 2022 which include webpages, websites, accounts, channels, pages on social media platforms etc. as compared to 2,799 URLs in 2018.
The reply, which came by email as opposed to the online forum where the request was filed, gave a year-wise breakup of the number of social media accounts and specifically Twitter blocked between 2018-2023 (till February).
“Number of URLs blocked under Section 69A through the committee constituted under the rules therein are 2,799, 3,635, 9,849, 6,096, 6,775 and 730 during the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and till February 2023 respectively. These include all types of URLs, i.e. webpages, websites, accounts, channels, pages on social media platforms etc.,” the reply read.
The numbers indicate a 142 per cent increase in 2022 as compared to 2018. However, in 2020—which coincided with farmers’ protests and communal riots in Delhi—the number is significantly higher as the government blocked 9,849 accounts.
If one specifically looks at Twitter accounts, RTI reply reveals that in 2018 (224), 2019 (1,041), 2020 (2,731), 2021 (2,851), 2022 (3417), and 2023* till February (315) Twitter URLs were blocked during the year under the provisions of Section 69A through the committee constituted under the IT Rules.
Here, the numbers indicate a sharp increase—1,425 per cent—of Twitter accounts blocked in 2022 as compared to the year 2018.
The figures mentioned above match the data Meity submitted before the Parliament in response to Questions asked.
RTI reply not only back Dorsey’s claims of government censorship but also underscores Twitter’s submission of takedown orders before Indian courts.
In July 2022, Twitter—before the Elon Musk takeover—moved Karnataka High Court against the Centre’s takedown orders. In its plea, Twitter alleged that between February 2021 – February 2022, the Centre wanted to block 256 URLs, 1 hashtag, 1,474 accounts and 175 tweets.
Twitter told the high court that it had complied with the government's orders under protest. In April 2023, Karnataka High Court reserved its verdict after hearing detailed arguments from all stakeholders.
Data suggests that the Indian government is cracking down on social media posts with a concentrated focus on Twitter, even though the number of Twitter users is not as high as that compared to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram among others. According to Statista, as of January 2023, “there are nearly 315 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size.”
Comparatively, according to Statista, as of January 2022, only 23.6 million users in India have Twitter. However, according to DataPortal, “Numbers published in Twitter’s advertising resources indicate that Twitter had 27.25 million users in India in early 2023.”
Takedown orders and compliance
According to Twitter’s compliance report, in the first half of 2022 or H1 2022, the microblogging site “received approximately 53,000 legal requests to remove content from governments” globally.
“Twitter’s compliance rate for these requests varied by requester country. The top requesting countries were Japan, South Korea, Turkey and India,” the report stated. Furthermore, the social media website received “over 16,000 government information requests for user data from over 85 countries.” Here too, India is among the top five countries requesting information.
Between July-December 2021, Twitter received 47,572 global takedown requests specifying 1,98,931 accounts – the largest number of requests it got till date. Twitter complied with 51.2 per cent of the claims.
According to the transparency report, “97% of the total global volume of legal demands originated from only five countries (in decreasing order): Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and India. These five countries have remained Twitter’s top requesting countries for legal demands over the past three years.”
During this period, Twitter also received requests to gag “349 accounts of verified journalists and news outlets located around the world were subject to 326 legal demands, a 103% increase”. 114 of these requests came from India.
Twitter v/s India and the right to free speech
The flashpoint between Twitter under Dorsey’s leadership and the Indian government was triggered when award-winning pop star Rihanna in 2021 like a tweet pertaining to the now-withdrawn farmers’ protest. Dorsey, too, liked the tweet. By now, Twitter had also started pulling up BJP leaders and labelling their tweets as “manipulated content” giving them limited reach.
In May 2021, days after labelling BJP leader Sambit Patra’s tweet as “manipulated media”, Delhi Police Special Cell raided Twitter's India office only to find it locked. The #BanTwitterInIndia hashtag started trending soon after.
Interestingly, Twitter and the Indian government have not been at odds with one another ever since SpaceX founder Elon Musk took over in October 2022. In an April 2023 interview with BBC, Musk said the social media rules in India are extremely strict making it impossible to offer Indian users the same version of free speech as compared to users in the United States and other Western countries.
“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can't go beyond the laws of a country... if we have a choice of either our people go to prison, or we comply with the laws, we'll comply with the law,” Musk was reported as saying.
Last month in May, responding to a tweet on an unrelated subject on free speech, Musk said his “preference is to hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates”.
“If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed,” he had tweeted.
