Twitter’s plea challenging Govt’s order to block tweets, accounts dismissed by HC; company fined

Karnataka High Court has dismissed Twitter’s plea that challenged central government’s order to block certain objectionable accounts and tweets on the platform. Court has told the social media company that the government has the power to issue blocking orders.

In addition to this, Twitter has been charged with Rs 50 lakh fine for failing to comply with blocking ordering and not providing a reason for the delay. The court has dismissed Twitter’s petitions. The court has further instructed Twitter to pay the imposed fine to Karnataka legal services authority with a span of 45 days. In case there is any delay in the payment of cost, a fine of Rs 5,000 per day will be imposed on the company.

Justice Krishna S Dixit further told Twitter that it is not a farmer/ labourer who doesn’t know the law, but is instead a billion-dollar company. He further added that Twitter is free to argue before court to change the cost imposed.

All platforms hv to be in compliance with Indian law n @Twitter under @jack repeatedly refused to do so. In response to @GoI_MeitY 's notice for non-compliance they approached Karnataka High Court n judgement 👇🏻

✅Karnataka High Court has dismissed the petition filed by…

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) June 30, 2023

Twitter was represented by Senior Advocates Ashok Haranahalli, Arvind Datar and Advocate Manu Kulkarni represented Twitter while Additional Solicitor General of India R Sankaranarayanan represented the Central government.

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Twitter Karnataka High Court Case 

Twitter argued that the Central government was not empowered to issue general orders calling for blocking of social media accounts. It further added that to do so, the government needs to specify reason for blocking their accounts so that it can be communicated to users.

The government, on the other hand, claimed that the order was given to Twitter in national and public interest and to prevent incidents of lynching and mob violence.

The petition was filed challenging ten blocking orders issued by the government between February 2021 and 2022 that ordered Twitter to take down 39 URLs.

Recently, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had claimed that the social media platform received threats of being booted out of India after not accepting the request to block certain accounts at the peak of the farmers' protest by the government. To this, Twitter’s Elon Musk responded saying Twitter had no choice but to adhere to the regulations imposed by the Indian government, stating that failure to do so would have resulted in the platform being shut down. He expressed the view that one cannot simply apply American principles universally, highlighting the need to respect and comply with the laws of each country.

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