Police action against agitated farmers at Shambhu border between Punjab and Haryana on February 21, 2024 near Ambala, India.
Hindustan Times | Hindustan Times | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s social media platform X said Thursday it will block some accounts and posts from India in response to government executive orders.
X said it disagreed with the order, but that failure to comply would subject the company to “potential sanctions, including significant fines and imprisonment.”
“We will retain these accounts and posts only in India; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts,” the platform’s Global Government Affairs office said without naming those accounts.
The announcement gave no reason, but several local media outlets linked the government’s executive order to ongoing farmers’ protests.
CNBC has reached out to the country’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for further comment.
Tens of thousands of Indian farmers – mostly from the northern state of Punjab – have been protesting since mid-February to renew demands for better crop prices they were promised in 2021.
They have been marching towards the capital New Delhi for more than a week now, but the protests stopped on Wednesday after a young protester and others were injured in clashes with police who fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse thousands of people who they were heading towards Delhi, Reuters reported. .
The Indian government and X have been at loggerheads for years.
In June, Jack Dorsey – co-founder of Twitter, renamed X under Musk – said the Indian government had threatened to shut down the platform unless it complied with orders to block accounts that criticized the way the government had handled previous farmers’ protests.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has refuted the allegations as a “lie.”
In October, the Modi government warned Musk that X would have to comply with the country’s new and upcoming IT regulations.
During the pandemic, X was ordered to remove posts criticizing the government for its handling of Covid-19.
According to Our World in Data, India’s freedom of expression was ranked at 0.52 in 2022, lower than Pakistan (0.66) and Sri Lanka (0.67).
X said in a post that he was unable to publish the executive orders “due to legal restrictions.” However, he has written an appeal challenging the Indian government with the accounts waiting to be frozen, the company said.
“We have also provided affected users with notice of these actions in accordance with our policies,” it said in a post.
“We believe making them public is essential for transparency,” the post adds. “This lack of disclosure can lead to a lack of accountability and arbitrary decision-making.”
Indian residents took to the social media platform to express their frustration with the decision, posting angry sentiments such as “Shame on you, dictator Modi” AND “Freedom of expression cannot mean spreading anarchy in the country.”
— CNBC’s Naman Tandon contributed to this story.