Twitter must comply with content-blocking orders from the Indian government after its legal petition was dismissed by a local court Friday.
(Bloomberg) — Twitter must comply with content-blocking orders from the Indian government after its legal petition was dismissed by a local court Friday.
The “petition being devoid of merits, is liable to be dismissed with exemplary costs,” according to the judgment by the Karnataka High Court.
The San Francisco-based company will have to pay a fine of 5 million rupees ($61,000) for its conduct, having delayed compliance with several orders to block access to content, the Karnataka High Court ruled. Twitter has been in a protracted conflict with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration over the content on its network, dating back to farmer protests in 2021.
“For more than a year, the blocking orders were not implemented by the petitioner and there is no plausible explanation offered therefor,” the judgment said. “There is a willful non-compliance of the blocking orders.”
Twitter is under the same obligation as all other platform companies and has to abide by Indian law if it is to operate in the country, minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a tweet after the ruling. The Modi government has grown increasingly assertive in setting the terms of how foreign firms do business within its borders.
Modi was welcomed with open arms to the US this month, meeting President Joe Biden and tech industry leaders before addressing Congress for the second time. Among his meetings was Tesla Inc. chief and Twitter owner Elon Musk, who was enthusiastic after the visit and said he was “confident that Tesla will be in India and we’ll do so as soon as humanly possible.”
Read more: Musk Says Tesla Hopes to Invest in India After Modi Meeting
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