{"id":254428,"date":"2023-01-26T17:11:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T22:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=254428"},"modified":"2023-01-26T17:11:38","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T22:11:38","slug":"a-bbc-documentary-highlights-growing-social-media-censorship-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/01\/26\/a-bbc-documentary-highlights-growing-social-media-censorship-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"A BBC documentary highlights growing social-media censorship in India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last weekend, the Indian government ordered YouTube to remove clips from a BBC documentary<\/a>. It sent a similar order to Twitter<\/a>, telling that platform to remove any tweets that featured links to those clips and pointing to more than fifty specific posts that had done so. The documentary, called India: The Modi Question<\/em>, covers, in part, a series of violent riots<\/a> in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002. More than a thousand people died\u2014most of them Muslims. The documentary features quotes from UK government correspondence that described the riots as having had<\/a> \u201call the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing\u201d and held Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who was then the chief minister of Gujarat, \u201cdirectly responsible.\u201d Modi is now India\u2019s prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the orders from India\u2019s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the clips from the documentary and the tweets referring to them were to be removed<\/a> under information technology laws that the Modi government implemented in 2021. According to one report, senior officials from different branches of the government reviewed the documentary and found it to be<\/a> \u201can attempt to cast aspersions on the authority and credibility of the Supreme Court of India, sow divisions among various Indian communities, and make unsubstantiated allegations regarding the actions of foreign governments in India.\u201d <\/a>(The Supreme Court had previously cleared Modi of blame for the riots.) One official told The Hindu<\/em> that the documentary<\/a> undermined \u201cthe sovereignty and integrity of India,\u201d and had the potential to \u201cadversely impact public order within the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India has several laws that give officials the authority to order information providers to remove or block access to content, including the Information Technology Act<\/a> of 2000, which allows the government to block content \u201cin the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, and public order.\u201d The additional law that the Modi government passed in 2021 bills itself as a \u201cdigital media ethics code\u201d that requires social media platforms to take down content within thirty-six hours of receiving a government order, and to otherwise assist law enforcement agencies with their inquiries. Foreign social-media companies are also required to employ a local staffer who can handle such official requests. Some critics have referred to this as a \u201chostage-taking law,\u201d<\/a> on the grounds that these local employees could end up in prison should their employer refuse to play ball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In February 2021, amid widespread protests sparked by new agricultural laws, Twitter took down more than five hundred accounts<\/a> that had posted critical comments about Modi and the government; the company also used its \u201ccountry withheld\u201d feature, a geo-blocking tool, to hide tweets from users located in India. (They remained visible for users elsewhere.) At the time, Twitter said that it had refused to remove any accounts<\/a> or tweets belonging to journalists, politicians, or activists because it believed that doing so \u201cwould violate their fundamental right to free expression.\u201d And Twitter said that it was committed to maintaining a healthy conversation on its platform, insisting that \u201cthe tweets should flow\u201d\u2014a clear echo of language that the company used in 2011, after the Egyptian government shut off access to the internet<\/a> during the Arab Spring uprising there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 2021 case, Twitter initially refused the Indian government\u2019s takedown requests before the company folded and complied. Last July, in a separate case, Twitter went further in its attempts to push back, suing the Indian government over a decree that forced the company to remove tweets and block a number of accounts, as I wrote for CJR at the time<\/a>. (It wasn\u2019t clear which tweets and accounts were in question because Indian law gags platforms from talking publicly about the orders they receive.) Twitter initially obeyed the order but then filed the suit, arguing that the government had interpreted the law too broadly, according to a report<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>. The suit described the order as<\/a> overbroad, arbitrary, and disproportionate; the content in question, Twitter argued, was either political commentary, criticism, or otherwise newsworthy, and therefore should not be removed. (The case, as far as I can tell, is ongoing.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, Maddy Crowell wrote for CJR<\/a> that the Modi government\u2019s weaponization of Twitter had endangered a number of news publishers, not least Caravan<\/em>, which Crowell (who once interned there) described as one of the few Indian media outlets that had \u201crefused to fall under the sway of the government or its acolytes,\u201d and which had become known for publishing<\/a> hard-hitting investigations of those in power. One day, without warning, Twitter took down Caravan<\/em>\u2019s account, along with more than two hundred and fifty others. The government told Caravan<\/em> that one of its tweets amounted to \u201cmalicious social media propaganda\u201d that could \u201clead to creating turmoil and havoc in the minds of the public.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Paromi Soni reported for CJR<\/a>, also in 2021, the rules under which a tweet may be considered inflammatory are now much broader in India than they have been in the past; tweets can be cited as \u201cobjectionable\u201d or \u201cseditious\u201d if they contain dissent of any kind, Soni wrote, and criticism of sexual violence can also be branded as dissent\u2014if the perpetrators are Hindu. The government has given itself the power to remove any form of content it sees as \u201canti-national,\u201d but the definition of that term is murky, Soni wrote. Now the government is reportedly considering new laws that would further extend its control over social media: according to Reuters, a draft proposal<\/a> published recently would allow the government to order the removal of any information identified as \u201cfake or false\u201d by the government\u2019s communications department or any other agency that has been officially authorized for fact-checking. The proposal, the Editors Guild of India said in a statement,<\/a> \u201cwill stifle legitimate criticism of the government and will have an adverse impact on the ability of the press to hold governments to account.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India isn’t the only country to have weaponized laws supposedly targeted at misinformation or offensive content against speech that the government dislikes. Vietnam and Pakistan already have so-called \u201cfake news\u201d rules<\/a> that give their respective governments wide latitude to remove content, or force companies to do so, in the name of \u201cpublic order and security.\u201d Brazil and Poland are considering similar laws<\/a>. Recently, the government of Turkey\u2014where the increasingly authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, is seeking reelection this year\u2014pushed through a law that threatens lengthy jail terms for the authors of stories and social media posts that<\/a> \u201cspread information that is inaccurate\u201d and creates \u201cfear\u201d and \u201cpanic\u201d in areas including \u201cdomestic and external security,\u201d \u201cpublic order,\u201d and \u201cpublic health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter, of course, has changed hands since it sued the Indian government last year. Its new owner, Elon Musk, once called himself a \u201cfree speech absolutist,\u201d but his behavior at Twitter so far has not reflected that ideal, as I wrote recently<\/a>\u2014and that was before being asked to stand up to any foreign governments. \u201cThere\u2019s this deep tension in the way that Elon Musk has talked about how he\u2019s going to run the platform,\u201d Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford who researches online speech, told Time<\/em> magazine<\/a> for a story about Twitter\u2019s \u201cIndia problem\u201d that predated the government\u2019s censorship of the BBC documentary. \u201cHis proclamations about being a free speech platform would suggest standing up to authoritarians, who are the biggest threat to free speech. But he has also said he will obey local laws\u2014which in many areas of the world, means being far more restrictive than Twitter\u2019s current content moderation rules.\u201d Since Musk\u2019s takeover, Twitter has reportedly restored several Hindu-nationalist accounts known for posting hate speech<\/a> directed at Muslims. This week, the platform complied with the Indian government\u2019s request to take down links to the documentary<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media is not the be-all and end-all of political speech, of course, nor is it the only focus of censorship in India. Modi\u2019s government, indeed, seems willing to go to extraordinary lengths to stop people from watching the BBC documentary. On Tuesday, students in New Delhi tried to screen the program at a university. The government responded by cutting off the power<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This\u00a0was originally published<\/a> as\u00a0the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer<\/em><\/p>\n

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Last weekend, the Indian government ordered YouTube to remove clips from a BBC documentary. It sent a similar order to Twitter, telling that platform to remove any tweets that featured links to those clips and pointing to more than fifty specific posts that had done so. The documentary, called India: The Modi Question, covers, in … <\/p>\n

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