WITH HIS 68.7m Twitter followers Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, nestles comfortably between the American celebrities Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian in rankings of popularity on the service. This is not by accident. Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) have been early and avid exploiters of social media. Whether to lure new members to join the 180m who already make it the world’s biggest political party, to hustle donations or amplify attacks on its critics, the BJP has relied on internet platforms to reshape India’s politics.
But with Mr Modi’s popularity tumbling in recent months, his government is turning against these useful messengers. At the end of May it began enforcing new rules that, among other things, make internet-based conduits of information, such as Twitter and Facebook, legally liable for any content that they carry, oblige them to respond promptly to official demands to block sites the government deems bad, and will force messaging services, such as WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, to break the encryption that guarantees privacy to their users. The rules also extend government oversight of digital news platforms and streaming services, such as Netflix.
A first shot across the bows came on May 24th, when police arrived in force at Twitter’s offices in Delhi and Gurgaon, a satellite city, to serve a legal notice regarding the firm’s decision to mark some posts as “manipulated media”—part of Twitter’s global efforts to identify blatant misinformation. The labels were added in response to investigations that showed BJP officials to be the source of tweets about a so-called media “toolkit” laying out how to attack the government’s handling of the pandemic. The offending tweets alleged that the “toolkit” (which was later exposed as fake) had been created by the rival Congress party. But rather than investigate the political smear campaign, the government demanded that Twitter remove its tags.
Twitter’s response, proclaiming its commitment to free speech within ethical bounds, and expressing concern for the safety of its employees, seems to have enraged the government further. The ministry of information technology accused the American firm of attempting to “dictate terms to the world’s largest democracy”. It said that Twitter routinely turned a blind eye to content hostile to India, such as use of the term “Indian variant” to describe a nasty mutation of the coronavirus. The onus to protect Indians’ freedoms lies with their elected government, not foreign tech firms, thundered Bhupender Yadav, a top BJP official, in an opinion column.
Mr Yadav has a point. No country has yet satisfactorily answered the question of how to regulate online content. It makes sense, at a minimum, for big multinationals to face some degree of local scrutiny and accountability. Yet India’s tangle of laws and slow and capricious courts make the task of moderation infinitely complicated. In the absence of universal rules and standards, or of handing Chinese-style censorship powers to a single agency, it must rely largely on trust.
The trouble is that while India’s new rules make it clear that the government no longer trusts internet firms to police themselves, its own behaviour brings into question whether ordinary Indian citizens can trust their government to protect their freedoms. With dismaying frequency Mr Modi’s men have used the institutions they control to target and punish not people who represent any clear threat to India, but rather the BJP’s own critics and opponents.
Companies affected by the new rules are trying various tactics. Google is seeking exemption on grounds that it acts more like a utility than a content manager. Twitter has partly complied, by appointing an interim “grievance officer” to address complaints. Other firms, including WhatsApp, have sent in the lawyers: at least seven lawsuits are currently being heard in Indian courts. But don’t hold your breath. Judges know that those who give rulings favourable to Mr Modi seem mysteriously to be rewarded with plump post-retirement sinecures. The internet is a marvel, but older ways of communicating still work, too.■
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Shooting the messenger”
