The cases are coming thick and fast. Twitter, having decided not to abide by the law of the land it operates in, finds itself in the middle of several FIRs that have been lodged against it. One of Twitter’s major transgressions was uploading a headless Indian map, with Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh shown as a separate country and with Aksai Chin generously made a part of China. Twitter did something similar earlier too, during the height of the tensions along the Line of Actual Control, when it showed parts of Ladakh as a part of China. For some reason, Twitter, which is not allowed to operate in China, scrupulously follows the Chinese map and has no regard for India’s territorial integrity. But then Twitter has been following in the footsteps of BBC, which too made India lose the whole of J&K and Ladakh in one of its maps. It is difficult to believe that the worthies working in BBC (several of them Indian/Indian origin), or Twitter in India, do not know what the Indian map looks like. So there is reason to believe that these are deliberate acts, whereby some keyboard warriors decide that in their view J&K and Ladakh are under India’s oppressive rule and hence must be given independence. It is a different matter that the actual human rights violations taking place in Chinese occupied territories such as Tibet and Xinjiang do not melt the hearts of these activists and no such subversive zeal is shown in dismembering China at the click of the mouse.
But then BBC’s dislike for anything and everything Indian is legendary, even though they have a huge following in this country. This dislike has increased manifold in the last seven years of the Narendra Modi government being in power—in their view, a fascist, right-wing authoritarian power. Sadly, Twitter seems to have fallen into the same trap and this in spite of having a huge following in this country. But then BBC is a news provider and content creator, and editorializing is a part of its job, however much it may misuse that job by feeding sheer propaganda to its audiences. Twitter is not a publisher, but a platform, an intermediary. Twitter is not supposed to be ideologically inclined and go around censoring content based on its ideology. Worse, Twitter, by refusing to follow Indian law, has gone into a territory which is extremely problematic.
It is not that Government of India is making outrageous demands. It is asking for the appointment of grievance redressal officers who are Indian citizens; apart from the protection of women and children from malicious and pornographic content, and stopping the dissemination of fake news. As Facebook’s Indian MD, Ajit Mohan told an Indian newspaper, “The agenda of safety and security online is an important agenda for us, especially in a country where we have 700 million people online. I think it makes sense to have a framework for accountability and for having rules around harmful content.” Certain provisions of the Act can always be challenged in court, as Facebook-owned WhatsApp has done about tracing the originator of a particular message, but to appoint an American citizen, Jeremy Kessel as the grievance officer for India is a violation of the provisions of the Act and may be interpreted as an open declaration of war. That Twitter blocked Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account for an hour over an alleged copyright violation according to an American law, deepens this suspicion. Can any Indian company operating in the United States get away by quoting Indian laws to justify its actions on American soil?
There is some speculation that Twitter is doing all this as it knows any compliance with Indian laws will have a domino effect and it will have to follow similar laws in other countries as well. But then Twitter is just a private company, peopled with some very woke “liberals”, behaving as if they are above governments and nations. Following the rules of the country they are operating in should be a part of their job profile. Making spurious claims about the platform standing up for freedom of expression, is exactly that—spurious. Too many instances of censorship of the ideologically right prove it to be so.
As for the law of the land, if not followed, there are consequences. According to the government, Twitter has lost its intermediary status by refusing to comply with the revised Information Technology Act, which came into effect from 26 May. It no longer has protection from legal action offered to all intermediaries under Section 79 of the same Act. Twitter may be operating under the belief that the Indian government will never ban it, for that will limit Indians’ access to international voices and content. It may also be thinking that it will get support from anti-government voices in India, which it may; but that support will be limited to a few cyberspace warriors. No lawmaker will endorse Twitter violating Indian laws. If any lawmaker does that, it will become a political hot potato—Twitter and its cyberspace wokes don’t have to win elections; lawmakers do. And now that Twitter has lost legal protection, it is likely to be mired in FIRs and court cases and other legal tangles for a long time to come. There is trouble on the horizon for the micro-blogging site.