(RightIsRight.co) – Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has caved to censorship pressure by the government of India despite claiming to be a “free speech absolutist,” according to a report by the far-left publication The Intercept.
The billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX bought Twitter for $44 billion in October. Then, in December, he began publishing internal corporate records, the “Twitter Files,” exposing Big Tech’s anti-conservative collusion with the Democrats, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and the FBI.
According to The Intercept report cited by Breitbart News, Musk heeded the Indian government’s requests to censor from Twitter a BBC documentary criticizing the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The report says the Twitter censoring corresponds to the Modi government’s recent free speech crackdown in India.
The BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question” argues that Indian democracy deserves the attention of the West as Western nations see it “as an important bulwark against Chinese domination of Asia.”
The first part of the two-part series looks into Modi’s early political career, his time as leader of the Indian state of Gujarat from 2001-2014, and his connections with Hindu nationalist organizations.
In the early 2000s, Gujarat saw rampant violence between Hindus and Muslims, including the killing of 60 Hindus in a train fire, which led to three-day mob violence killing about 1,000 Muslims.
The Indian government has reacted to the BBC documentary by “bombarding” YouTube and Twitter with requests to take it down, and both platforms complied.
“The government has sent hundreds of requests to different social media platforms, especially YouTube and Twitter, to take down the posts that share snippets or links to the documentary. And shamefully, the companies are complying with their demands and have taken down numerous videos and posts,” Indian journalist Raqib Hameed Naik commented.
Musk said he didn’t know of the case when responding to the Intercept report.
“First I’ve heard. It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things,” he wrote in a post.
Breitbart notes that YouTube’s owner Google has been complying to “varying degrees” with the numerous takedown request since 2011. However, Modi’s government has now moved to develop a new “fake news” legal framework raising fears of growing censorship.
Two Indian parliament members, Mahua Moitra and Derek O’Brien, from the opposition party, the All India Trinamool Congress party, posted tweets with links to the BBC documentary.
“Sorry, Haven’t been elected to represent world’s largest democracy to accept censorship. Here’s the link. Watch it while you can,” Moitra wrote.
O’Brien’s tweet was removed, while Moitra’s tweet survived, but the documentary link was disabled.
Elon Musk’s Twitter has reportedly caved to censorship pressure from a foreign government. Musk has complied with requests from the Indian government to remove a BBC documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. https://t.co/HXvg7iDamY
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 26, 2023
