Rest of World reports that one of the blocked journalists told them that they received no notification or warning from Twitter that this was happening: “Earlier, it does seem that Twitter did at least push back against some requests ,” he said, adding that there’s no clarity on how many such requests Twitter complied with versus the number it rejected. Twitter is the only social media platform to have ever pushed back against similar demands in the past, Waghre noted. “ Musk has been quite categorical ‘free speech’ but laws of the land apply, there is a clear contradiction in the statement,” Prateek Waghre, policy director at digital rights advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation, told Rest of World. A number of these accounts, which include prominent Sikh voices in the diaspora, were putting out credible information amid the current turmoil in Punjab.Īnd, yes, people are noticing that Musk is full of shit and old Twitter supported free speech: The blocked Twitter accounts include those belonging to journalists Pieter Friedrich, Sandeep Singh, Kamaldeep Singh Brar, and Gagandeep Singh Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh and poet Rupi Kaur and pro-Khalistan member of parliament Simranjit Singh Mann. So, it should be little surprise that now that Musk is in control, when Modi came calling, asking him to ban various journalists and critics, the new “free speech supporting” Twitter gladly blocked the accounts in question, as seen in this report from the always excellent Rest of World site. Instead, in court documents, he complained about Twitter taking this action, worrying that it would hurt revenue in India. A true “free speech absolutist” might have cheered on this legal action by Twitter, fighting for free speech. This was during the period of time where Elon had signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter, but was having extremely cold feet about it. Finally, last year, Twitter filed a lawsuit to try to stop the Indian government from censoring content on the platform. Twitter fought back, leading to its offices being raided by law enforcement. The Modi government demanded Twitter silence certain critical accounts and even threatened to jail employees if the company didn’t obey. We’ve pointed this out many times, especially with regards to India.Īs you’ll recall, the Modi regime has been especially authoritarian and suppressive of critics. Saying that free speech means “that which matches the law” means that when you have an oppressive, censorial government, they can suppress speech all you want, and Musk will support it.
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