CALIFORNIA: Social media platform X on Thursday refused Indian government’s directive to block accounts and posts related to the ongoing farmers’ protests, emphasizing the importance of extending freedom of expression to the affected content.
In response to orders from India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT, which required temporary blocking of 177 accounts linked to the protests, X stated its opposition to these actions, asserting that freedom of expression should be upheld for such posts.
While complying with the government’s orders by withholding the specified accounts and posts in India alone, X highlighted its disagreement with these measures and revealed its ongoing legal challenge against the blocking orders.
X emphasized the necessity of transparency by calling for the public disclosure of the government’s orders, citing concerns regarding accountability and potential arbitrary decision-making in the absence of such transparency.
Despite legal constraints preventing the publication of the executive orders, X notified the impacted users about the government’s actions in line with its company policies.
To get their demands—which include a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP) for crops and the cancellation of farm debt—farmers from all around the nation have been staging protests.
A protester was killed and roughly twelve police officers were hurt in clashes at one of the protest locations on the Punjab-Haryana border, prompting farmer leaders to postpone their march to the nation’s capital for two days on Wednesday. –APP
