X goes to court against what it calls new parallel censorship mechanism in India

Elon Musk as well as his social media company X somehow manages to remain in the news almost daily. I hope you remember that showdown with the government in brazil? Well, the latest bit of news related to X is coming from India, where – as per an NBC report – the company has dragged in the Indian government to court over what it is calling an “impermissible parallel mechanism” which is leading to “unrestrained censorship of information” in the country.

So, what’s going on here?

Well, as per the report, India already has a mutually-agreed-upon process in place that is used by the government to issue content takedown orders to social media platforms like X. However, the Elon Musk owned company is now complaining that the government last year created a website which all its departments can use to directly issue censorship requests, and is also mandating social media companies to join it.

X says the new system doesn’t have the legal guardrails that the previous content takedown process had. It also says the new system lacks supervision from top government officials. Hence, it’s referring to the new website-based system as an “impermissible parallel mechanism.”

The first hearing of the case already happened on March 05 in the Indian state of Karnataka, wherein no decision was passed on by the court. The second hearing is due on March 27. X is seeking the court to quash the new directive from the Indian government.

It’s imperative to note here that this is not the first time X and the Indian government has locked horns over censorship. It happened back in 2021 as well during farmer protests against the government policies. Though X (called Twitter back then) blinked first, it did knock the court’s door back then as well. That case is also still going on.

This new legal battle comes at a crucial time for X, as owner Elon Musk is on the verge of launching his Tesla and Starling businesses in the country. As such, India already holds importance for X, as it’s the third largest market for the social media company after the US and Japan.

Though likely unrelated, this development came shortly after it came to light that X’s valuation jumped back to $44 billion (the price at which Elon bought it when it was called Twitter), after being under $10 billion just a few months ago.