How The Modi Factor Tamed Twitter And Other American Tech Giants: Report (Image:Pixabay)
How India tamed the American social networking service Twitter (now renamed X) and set a global standard for ‘censoring’ is a great topic for discussion and debate. A recent report on the same by Karishma Mehrotra and Joseph Menn was published by The Washington Post on Wednesday, November 8 and states that “a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube”.
As said by the report, it was in the past two years, India and its government “dramatically tightened” its control over the American social media giants. The ‘free’ platforms were even forced to accept the dictatorship of the BJP ruled administration and censor or drop materials which criticizes the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his party.
How much India stands for the conduct of western originated social media platforms? How much India contributes their standards? And why? The report claims the escalating trend of censorship on social media is the result of advancing ‘Modi campaigns’. It is considered as an after effect of a “wider campaign by Modi and his Hindu nationalist allies to monopolize public discourse: tightening their grip on power, advancing their Hindu-first ideology and squeezing out critical and dissenting voices”.
According to The Post, the meetings of Indian officials with the tech firms occur in a regular basis, in which the Indian IT and security officials demands for what should be screened and what are to removed from these networking service platforms. As reason, they often indicated security threats to India’s “sovereignty and national security”. Several times, the tech giants step back from the Indian suggestions and demands, upholding the right of “free speech”. The report claims, it is Twitter, the company which resisted most.
The situation was bit frightful at least two years ago, said the report, as the Indian agencies threatened to jail the company executives if the suggested tweets remains unremoved or the company resists to take down those accounts itself. “Executives who refused the government’s demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market”, reads the report.
Two years ago, India also adopted new regulations to hold tech companies in the nation “criminally liable for failing to comply with takedown requests, a provision that executives referred to as a hostage provision”. The government even set its anti-terrorism police to Twitter’s New Delhi office. The company then forced to remove its top executive of the country, fearing an arrest, and former company employees recounted.
The Twitter was once seen “as Silicon Valley’s flag-bearer for resisting government pressure worldwide”. But situation changed drastically and dramatically. It seems the company lost its power and energy to fight against the so-called ‘democratic giant’ is repeatedly taking down anti-BJP, and anti-Modi posts and barring “accounts belonging to journalists and the BJP’s political opponents”.
