Twitter given three weeks to comply with Indian content code

Twitter has been given three weeks to comply with India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 – which came into effect last week. Twitter has protested the new rules on grounds that they inhibit free speech. India’s government has labelled Twitter’s reaction as anti- …

[DryBones]

Ah yes, the glorious problem of doing business globally, all the angles in which law and morality differ from that where the business was originally chartered.

[Falmari]

Dorothy you are not in Kansas anymore

Twitter “inhibit free speech”. I love how these social media companies play the free speech card when ever countries bring out laws they disagree (impact their bottom line) with. The free speech card may work in the USA but elsewhere, I am afraid Dorothy you are not in Kansas anymore.

If you want to operate your business in a country, you must follow their laws. If you don’t like it, don’t have an office to do business there. You can’t be prosecuted but they will still block you.

I don’t agree with the India’s new law not that that matters I don’t live there, so I'm just an opinionated outsider. But it is a bit rich India’s government throwing anti-democratic meddling at Twitter with a law intended to stifle democratic opinion and probably violates the Indian Constitution.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Dorothy you are not in Kansas anymore

>If you want to operate your business in a country, you must follow their laws

Or just hire a couple of the Prime Minister/President/Grand Vizier's children as advisors

Then remember to have a big unveiling of the new HQ dedicated to the wise beneficence of the current great leader.

ps. If you are a major European organisation and the great leader in question wears a uniform with too many medals and has penchant for throwing opposition leaders out of helicopters you may have to plant some ivy in front of the the plaque commemorating this event.

[Falmari]

Re: Dorothy you are not in Kansas anymore

@Yet Another Anonymous coward

Or maybe throw money at the Prime Minister/President/Grand Vizier and their friends and family and buy the laws they want, just like it is done back home, in the land of the free but the laws are not. ;)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Dorothy you are not in Kansas anymore

Yes the techniques that work equally well in most former colonies

[Potemkine!]

deleting content as ordered by the government

This should be a judiciary prerogative.

When separation of powers is broken, can we still consider such a country as a democracy?

[Falmari]

@ Potemkine! "When separation of powers is broken, can we still consider such a country as a democracy?" No we can't.

Only problem is now I said that I can't see many democracies. ;)

[Velv]

And which of the three remaining democracies will be next to erode the separation... (/s)

[EnviableOne]

there are still three?

I can't name one

[ForthIsNotDead]

Irony overload...

"Twitter has protested the new rules on grounds that they inhibit free speech."

[Teejay]

Ah, poor little Twitter

Well, Twittter, elsewhere in this publication recently lauded as basically the pinnacle of free speech and goodness, that now in Florida is even forced by evil right-wing US politicians *not* to moderate certain content, must now actually comply with local laws and offer more than an automated reply system that leads you in circles ad infinitum. And it, can you believe it, shouldn't spread pictures of obviously demeaning abuse, which up till now it has apparently done without batting an eyelid.

My sympathies with Twitter are zero. This is a no-profit, no-tax, money making machine, and, when it suits the agenda of its billionaire owners, meddles in politics, ideology and censorship. That's the wonderful thing of being either a publisher *or* just a platform, whatever Twitter chooses in the moment.

[Tron]

Censorship in the new default.

India/Modi is the new China/Xi, so cross it off the list of countries your app will be operating in and leave them to do their own, censored nationalist thing.

Free speech is being progressively criminalised globally as 'f@ke news' and disinformation. Eventually, the comments sections of websites like this one, that offer a platform to diverse and dissenting views, will all vanish. One day you will scroll to the bottom of an El Reg article and there will be no comment button to click. No warning. No explanation. News, globally, will be one way, with the local version of a D notice censoring everything you read. Governments will then operate a quid pro quo, censoring dissenting news from other nations, in return for their own dissenters being blocked by other governments.

[Sandstone]

Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

"India’s national and state governments have often implemented blocks on social networks when it is felt the content they carry could incite violence by merely informing users of the time and location of protests."

This is why Trump's account was taken down. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy if Twitter didn't extend this to all accounts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh the Twitter cesspool

Who actually cares anyway?

[EricB123]

Remember the Promises of the Early Days?

When the rollout of social media for the masses (the IRC was too complex for most) happened, the promise of spreading democracy everywhere was frequently heard. For a while, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin wall seemed to bear this promise out. What the hell happened since?!?