Twitter Vs Indian Government- the Long-Standing Battle on the Use of Free Speech.

Twitter and the Indian government have been embroiled in an issue concerning free speech for quite some time that has been closely followed by the masses. This in light of the government removing Twitter as an intermediary due to its non-compliance with the new laws that were implemented.

Both the parties have been at loggerheads ever since the government accused Twitter of not moderating questionable and harmful content from their users on their platform which was directed at the government.

Tweets concerning the farmer’s protest that took place earlier this year were the starting point of this battle, where the government said that there were around 1400 users who had tweeted unfairly about the protests and Twitter should have taken action against them, to which the social media giant responded that they want to protect the democratic principles of free speech.

The government sends non-compliance notice to Twitter.

· Recently Twitter received a non-compliance notice from the government where they were asked to appoint a grievance redressal officer /Nodal officer who would be responsible for monitoring the activity of the users on the platform. He will also be liable to solve grievances of users who were subject to offensive behavior from other users on the platform.

· Twitter responded by saying that the new laws somewhat go against the principles of free speech and openness practiced in social media platforms. Along with that, the government’s previous remark of Twitter’s lack of strictness in dealing with the users who had reported and tweeted on the farmer’s protest to which it said that ones who had tweeted on the subject were news agencies, media entity, and journalists who had clean track records in terms of their conduct on the platform.

The government says Twitter has blocked free speech.

· In a response to Twitter's statement that the new rules and regulations don’t allow free speech, a spokesperson of the government said that twitter themselves are the ones who don't allow free speech in their platform. This statement was made in relation to Twitter labeling ‘’manipulative media’’ to a BJP politician's tweet about the Covid 19 toolkit created by the Congress party.to bring down the government's handling of the Covid-19 situation.

· The politician’s tweet was labeled by twitter to which the government took offense by saying that labeling such tweets go against the very idea of allowing free speech and being ‘’Neutral and unbiased’’.

Implementation of the new laws will take time — Twitter.

Twitter recently stated that they have agreed to block certain aspects of content in order to adhere to the new laws of the government and will need three months to implement the changes in their system. This comes after a long back and forth between the two parties. It remains to be seen what transpires next.

Sources- the verge