- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Twitter chief Elon Musk is all for free speech and zero censorship on the social media platform but at the same time, he also feels that it is not possible to uphold those principles in India and when it comes to choosing between the social media employees going to jail and complying with the land’s laws, he would choose the second.
In an interview to the BBC, he said that social media rules in India are very strict and it is not possible for Twitter to come up with the same freedom of speech for its Indian users that it does in the US and other countries in the west.
Musk admitted in a way that Twitter often blocks and censures content in the Asian nation and that if it doesn’t comply with the rules, its employees in India will find themselves behind the bar.
“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country… if we have a choice of either our people go to prison, or we comply with the laws, we’ll comply with the laws,” Musk said in the interview conducted on Twitter Spaces.
While he did not explain what specific Indian laws he was referring to, he came up with the remark when asked by the broadcaster about Twitter blocking posts related to the controversial BBC documentary series on Indian prime minister Narendra Modi that caused a huge row recently.
The documentary series was slammed as a propaganda piece by the Indian government.
Musk also said that he was not aware of the specific details about the documentary.
Earlier, he had responded to a Twitter user, who asked about censoring posts related to the documentary, saying, “First, I’ve heard. It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.”
However, while Musk has spoken in favour of free speech, there have been instances where Twitter did not exactly practise what he preached.
The social media platform has been accused of arbitrarily censuring content, including posts related to India.
