Musk Fulfilled Hundreds of Content Removal Orders from X Outside Brazil without Accusing Censorship [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

By blocking links to a BBC documentary at the request of the Indian government, the billionaire said he couldn't "violate the country's laws"

Apr.12.2024 2:16PM

Patrícia Campos Mello

OXFORD
Despite billionaire Elon Musk defining himself as an "absolutist of freedom of speech" and protesting what he called "so much censorship" by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), the businessman has been complying, without complaining, with hundreds of content removal orders from the governments of India and Turkey.

In India, X (formerly Twitter) removed links to the BBC documentary "India: Modi's Dilemma" after a determination by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government last year. The documentary portrays Modi's role in a massacre of nearly a thousand Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002.

Modi governed the state and is accused of omission. "Videos sharing hostile propaganda from BBC World and anti-India trash, disguised as a 'documentary' on YouTube, and tweets sharing links to the BBC documentary were blocked under India's sovereign laws and rules," said Kanchan Gupta, an advisor to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of India. He added that both YouTube and Twitter, already under Musk's command, had complied with the order.

In recent months, X has systematically removed posts critical of the government and banned accounts of critical journalists in India. In October, for example, it blocked the accounts of two US-based human rights defense groups - Hindus for Human Rights and the Indian American Muslim Council, both critical of Modi.

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2024/04/musk-fulfilled-hundreds-of-content-removal-orders-from-x-outside-brazil-without-accusing-censorship.shtml