X, formerly Twitter, announced on Thursday that India’s government has instructed the platform to block over 8,000 accounts or else face dire legal repercussions for its regional workers. The company’s global government affairs team said they have started to block access to the flagged accounts in India even though they did not agree with the demands, dismissing them as “censorship”.
According to X, the Indian government’s orders include blocking:
- International news organizations
- High-profile users
- Accounts with no specified violations of local laws
The crackdown apparently comes in backlash to heightened India-Pakistan confrontations after a deadly bomb in Kashmir claimed the lives of 26 foreign tourists last month. At the same time, India has muzzled variously many Pakistani YouTube channels, while Meta has muted a popular Muslim news page on Instagram.
“For a considerable number of accounts, we did not obtain any evidence or rationale,” X‘s team commented, but the company is complying in order to avoid “significant fines and sending the Seniors to jail,” it added, according to The Financial Times.
This issue may also complicate Elon Musk’s expanding business interests in India such as planned Tesla showrooms, among other ones, in Delhi and Mumbai and Starlink’s pending approval to open satellite Internet business in India. The Indian government hasn’t yet gotten back to requests for comment regarding the widespread takedown orders.
