India’s Karnataka High Court on Friday denied a petition filed by Twitter to overturn the federal government’s content-blocking orders and fined the U.S.-based company 5 million rupees (around $61,000).
In its ruling, the court deemed the blocking orders against Twitter to be “reasoned decisions,” citing the “anti-national” element and the potential of the content to incite “cognizable offenses relating to the sovereignty and integrity of India.”
“Many of them have outrageous content; many are treacherous and anti-national; many have abundant propensity to incite commission of cognizable offenses relating to sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State and public order,” the court said.
“No reasonable person in the trade would agree with the contention of the petitioner that reasons for the impugned orders are lacking,” it added.
“State need not await the arrival of an avalanche of mishaps; it can take all preventive measures in anticipation of danger, more particularly when undoing of the damage is difficult, regard being had to its enormity.”
The court said that Twitter was levied for failing to comply with the government’s blocking orders on time.
“For more than a year, the blocking orders were not implemented by the petitioner, and there is no plausible explanation offered therefor,” it said. “There is a willful non-compliance of the blocking orders.”
Twitter, which has nearly 24 million users in India, had previously complied with the content blocking orders so as not to lose liability exemptions available as a host of content. But it claimed that some blocking orders fell short of the procedural standards of India’s information technology laws.
Jack Dorsey’s Allegations
The court’s decision came after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s interview with the American Youtube show Breaking Points on June 13, in which he alleged that the government had threatened to shut down Twitter if the company refused to comply with its orders.
“It manifested in ways such as: ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’—which is a very large market for us; ‘we will raid the homes of your employees,’ which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit.’ And this is India, a democratic country,” he added.
Deputy Minister for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar refuted his claims as “an outright lie,” saying that Twitter had repeatedly violated India’s law under Dorsey’s leadership.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired and took over the micro-blogging site in October 2022.
“No one went to jail, nor was Twitter‘ shut down.’ Dorsey’s Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law. It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it,” he added. “To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail.”
The company has also been subject to police investigations in India, and in 2021 many government ministers switched from Twitter to Koo, an Indian social media platform, accusing Twitter of non-compliance with local laws.
Industry transparency reports show India has among the highest number of government requests for content removal on social media platforms.
Meanwhile, Twitter has been going through a transformative phase since Musk acquired the platform last year, with advertisers slowing spending and the company losing nearly 80 percent of its staff.
