The social media company has had a tough time in India since last year, spending months in a high-stakes standoff with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over freedom of speech. At one point, the company was even the subject of several police investigations. Twitter ( TWTR ) called them “scare tactics” and said it was “concerned” about the safety of its employees in the country. But, to the dismay of free speech campaigners, she chose not to take legal action against the government.
So far.
The San Francisco-based company filed the petition with the Supreme Court of Karnataka, a state in southwestern India, on Tuesday, according to a list reviewed online by CNN Business.
Twitter declined to comment on the case.
But a source familiar with the filing said the company has decided to challenge some of the government’s orders because they “demonstrate excessive use of powers and are disproportionate.”
In the past, authorities have asked Twitter to remove posts critical of the Modi government, including its handling of the country’s brutal second wave of the coronavirus pandemic last spring.
“Authorities target people for content posted online and regularly intimidate web platforms and social media services into complying with their censorship,” said Raman Jeet Singh Cheema, senior international advisor and policy director for the Asia-Pacific region at digital rights group Access Now.
Cheema and other free speech advocates have accused the government of trying to censor journalists, protest groups and opposition lawmakers with its blocking orders, which are rarely made public.
“Today, Twitter is standing up for the public and doing what government should be doing: protecting our rights,” he added
India’s technology ministry threatened Twitter last month with “severe consequences,” including criminal proceedings against its executives, if the company did not comply with the agency’s orders to remove some tweets and block accounts, the source said.
Although the company has blocked access to the content in India for now, it is seeking a judicial review of some of the orders. The company believes they violate the country’s technology laws and threaten free speech, according to the source.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did not respond to a request for comment. But India’s junior information technology minister Rajiv Chandrasekhar said in a tweet on Tuesday that foreign internet platforms “have [a] right to court and judicial review,” in India, without mentioning Twitter.
He added that all platforms operating in the country “have [an] an unequivocal obligation to comply with our laws and regulations.”
High-stakes conflict
Twitter’s lawsuit is the latest battle in a growing dispute between Silicon Valley tech companies and one of their biggest markets. India’s ruling party has stepped up its crackdown on social media and messaging apps since last year.
US technology firms repeatedly raised concerns last year that the country’s technology rules could erode privacy, lead to mass surveillance and harm business in the world’s fastest-growing digital market. India claims it is trying to maintain national security.
The rules, which were issued in February 2021, include requirements for tech companies to set up dedicated compliance officers in India. There are also requirements for services to remove some content, including posts that show “full or partial nudity.” In addition, tech platforms will have to track down the “first author” of messages if requested by authorities. That requirement forced WhatsApp — owned, like Facebook ( FB ), by Meta — to file a legal complaint against the government in May last year. WhatsApp said the search would break the platform’s “end-to-end encryption” and fundamentally undermine people’s right to privacy.
The case is pending, a company spokesperson told CNN Business on Wednesday.
Twitter previously fell out with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology early last year over accounts the agency wanted removed during a series of farmers’ protests. Twitter complied with some of the requests, but declined to take action against the accounts of journalists, activists or politicians.
Twitter also raised concerns about IT rules last year and said it planned to “advocate for changes to elements of these regulations that impede free, open public conversation.”
In its lawsuit this week, Twitter did not challenge India’s technology law, but said the government’s blocking orders were “disproportionate in several cases,” according to the source.
Indian freedom of speech activists welcomed the move on Tuesday. Many of them said last year that they felt frustrated by Twitter’s inability to take a hard line against the government.
Still, some believe the company could have gone further.
“They strongly challenged the orders of the Indian government in these particular cases, instead of challenging the lack of accountability of the Indian government that the IT Act allows,” said Nikhil Pahwa, the Delhi-based founder of technology website MediaNama.
“Twitter had the opportunity to do a lot more and they failed to try to make a meaningful, substantive change,” he added.
— Swati Gupta and Esha Mitra contributed to this report.
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