Twitter is challenging Indian government orders to block content on its social network in court, local media reported Wednesday, citing court documents.
In the case filed in a court in Bangalore, Twitter argued that the basis on which multiple accounts and content were flagged by India was either “excessively broad and arbitrary” or “disproportionate”, the report reported. Indian Express newspaper.
For the social media giant, the ministry had failed to prove that some of the content it wanted removed violated the rules, according to sources cited by the newspaper.
Last week, Twitter claimed that India had ordered it to censor accounts and dozens of messages, some of which spoke of the decline in freedom of expression on the Internet.
Others were accounts run by the Pakistani government, angering Islamabad.
Twitter and the Indian government declined to comment on the court case.
In recent years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has sought to exert greater control over social media content in India, where Twitter has more than 20 million users.
Last year, amid massive anti-government farmer-led protests in India, Twitter was ordered to remove dozens of accounts that supported the protests.
But the American company reinstated them soon after, angering the government.
New Delhi has accused Twitter of deliberately ignoring its new digital rules – which critics fear could be used to silence dissent – which came into force in May 2021.
Shortly before, the government had ordered Twitter and Facebook to remove dozens of posts criticizing Narendra Modi’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
