Twitter blocked 122 accounts in India at the government’s request | Hacker News Reader

Twitter blocked 122 accounts in India at the government’s request

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17 pointsspopejoy13 comments

Not sure what people expect here?

The law is the law. India isn't a pleasant market to do business in but such is the cost of being in a lot of growing markets.

Twitter recently blocked something globally at the behest of the government of India. But if its just local blocking, then that seems reasonable if Twitter wants to operate in that country and the request is backed by law.

Yeah I think global blocking is probably not appropriate but I don't think any government mandates total censorship, usually it's only MPAA/friends that think they own the Internet rather than governments. Even China only cares about applying censorship for Chinese citizens.

> India isn't a pleasant market to do business in

Source? Most people I've spoken to are extremely keen to do business with India, as it's a growing economy with tons of potential.

Profitable and pleasant are not the same thing.

There's a large Indian community here on HN who would disagree with the notion that doing business in India is unpleasant.

I have no experience doing business in India and cannot meaningfully comment on how pleasant or unpleasant it is. I'm merely pointing out that being a "growing economy with tons of potential," as you put it, is not itself a sign of pleasantness.

These aren’t blocks issued by a court order where a judge has validated whether the law was broken or not - these are journalists being suspended at behest of the government. Twitter has fought such blocks in the court before. People expected the same from a “free speech” Twitter.

Recent IT amendment rules, mentioned in the article, make safe harbor much harder, and the older Twitter would have been one of the few voices resisting it. I’d be very interested to see a comparison of Twitter’s Transparency reports pre and post Elon.

IFF has a nice primer on the new rules: https://internetfreedom.in/public-brief-on-the-it-amendment-..., and recent updates, which include a Fact Checking Unit: https://internetfreedom.in/public-brief-it-amendment-rules-2...

Court order is us way of doing things.. not necessary everyone has to prescribe it that way

Twitter would probably consider India, with the world's largest population, to be a market worth continuing to operate in, even if only in accordance with the will of the government, since a social networking service whose main source of revenue is advertising is a business that needs to be used by a large number of people.

Eron Musk's ‘free speech’ only applies to what Eron, his associates, and Twitter Inc. want it to.

Twitter's policies and terms, unlike the Constitutions, can be easily changed if they want to, and Eron is a moody guy.

It’s funny that this can make the front page (at least as I’m typing this) but all the stories about all the accounts blocked at the request of the US government never did.

Since Musk took over? As the new information is mostly that Musk is becoming more lenient on blocking, not that accounts were blocked.

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