Legal return for the withdrawal of Elon Musk’s content in the fight against the content of India

An Indian court rejected a case filed by Elon Musk against a government portal which, according to him, was used to arbitrarily censor the content on the platform.

A unique judge bench of the High Court of Karnataka ruled that the dispute of X against the SAHYOG portal, led by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, was “without merit”. The full order has not yet been made public.

X did not say if he would call on the order.

The dismissal of Wednesday marks the second case in just over two years that X has lost while defying the powers of the Indian government to block or dismantle content, leaving experts in matters of freedom of expression and worried digital rights. X is estimated at around 25 million users in India.

The researcher in technological policy, Prateek Waghre, told the BBC that the order was “worrying” and “legitimized the act of various government agencies sending directly withdrawal to social media societies”. He added that “the complete import” of the order could only be known once the judgment made public.

X lawyer told the BBC that the company did not want to comment now. The BBC contacted the ministries of India for the house and information technologies to comment.

The social media platform filed the case in March against SAHYOG, which describes itself as a tool to automate the process of sending government advice to content intermediaries such as X and Facebook.

While other American technology giants such as Google, Amazon and Meta joined Sahyog after its launch last year, X refused to do so. In his petition, X called SAHYOG a “censorship portal” which, he argued, allowed managers to issue content withdrawal by bypassing the rules that force them to give opportunities for hearings and the decisions to be examined.

This, he said, allowed “countless” government officers, including “tens of thousands of local police officers”, to “issue orders for the return of content unilaterally and arbitrarily. An X lawyer in July described this as” each officer Tom, Dick and Harry (being) authorized (to do so) “, a remark is opposed by the Government Council.

If social media intermediaries do not respect orders within 36 hours, they may lose their intermediate status and their protection against the safe port – which exempts intermediaries to be held responsible for the content hosted on their platform.

The Indian government had defended Sahyog, saying that this was necessary due to the “growing volume of illegal and harmful content” on social networks. He added that the portal was not intended to issue blocking orders, but to simply inform an intermediary that he hosted illegal content.

The Karnataka judge, while rejecting the protest on Wednesday, said that social media could not be “left in a state of anarchic freedom” and that “regulations are a must”. He also described the SAHYOG portal as “public good”.

The judge also said that even if X “chooses to follow” withdrawal orders in the United States, he “refuses to follow … similar withdrawal” orders “in India.

The judge referred to the Take IT Down law adopted by the United States earlier this year, which criminalizes the publication of “intimate images” – real or generated by AI – online without the consent of an individual and obliges technological companies to remove the content within 48 hours. X said he supported the act.

At the time when X deposited his petition, digital rights experts had told the BBC that the Sahyog portal had led to “a large increase in censorship”.

Judicial files have shown that various government authorities had directly requested social media websites to remove a multitude of content – videos of a crush in Delhi in which 18 people died for content “harming the reputation of eminent public figures” such as the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior.

Over the years, X has been the only social media platform to contest the mechanisms of blocking the content of the Indian government, which several legal experts describe as opaque and arbitrary.

In 2022, before Musk purchased the company, X was the first platform to challenge several orders to eliminate tweets and blocking accounts. A year later, the High Court of Karnataka ruled against the social media company and inflicted a fine of 5 million rupees ($ 56,000; £ 42,000) for delay in compliance with the order.

The appeal of X against this order is pending before the court.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram,, YouTube, X And Facebook.