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Elon Musk, the owner of social media network Twitter, said the platform has no choice but to follow local laws in every country.
Musk’s comments, following his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York, came in response to questions regarding Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s allegations that the Indian government had threatened to “shut Twitter down in India” if it did not take down critical content during the farmers’ protest against the three farm laws.
“Twitter doesn’t have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don’t obey local government laws, we will get shut down," he told reporters while responding to questions regarding Dorsey’s allegations.
Musk’s remarks gain significance because of his previous stand against censorship of content and his projection of himself as a “free speech absolutist”.
He said there were different rules and regulations for different forms of governments, and “we will do our best to provide the freest speech that is possible under the law”.
Dorsey, who served as Twitter CEO till 2021, has recently claimed that the Indian government threatened the company of closing its business in India for not complying with its orders to block certain accounts. As per Dorsey, the orders were issued during his tenure as the CEO and were related to people covering the 2020-2021 farmers’ protests and those critical of the government. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for Electronics and IT, denied the allegations, calling it an “outright lie”.
