HC Slaps Fine on Twitter, dismisses plea on Challenging Govt’s order to block Tweets, Accounts

Karnataka, 30th June 2023: The Karnataka High Court rejected Twitter’s petition challenging the central government’s authority to prohibit some offensive accounts and tweets on the network. The court has informed the social media network that the government has the authority to impose blocking orders.

Furthermore, Twitter has been fined Rs 50 lakh for failing to comply with blocking orders and failing to provide a cause for the delay. Hence, Twitter’s petitions were denied by the court.

The court also ordered Twitter to pay the fee to the Karnataka legal services body within 45 days. If the company fails to pay the bill on time, a punishment of Rs 5,000 per day would be applied.

Twitter was represented by Senior Advocates Ashok Haranahalli, Arvind Datar, and Advocate Manu Kulkarni, whereas the Central government was represented by Additional Solicitor General of India R Sankaranarayanan.

Twitter said that the Central Government lacked the authority to issue blanket instructions for the banning of social media accounts. It went on to say that in order to do so, the government must clarify the cause for restricting their accounts so that it can be informed to users.

The government, on the other hand, stated that the order was issued to Twitter in the national and public interest, as well as to prevent lynchings and mob violence.

The petition was submitted in response to 10 blocking orders issued by the government between February 2021 and 2022, which required Twitter to remove 39 URLs.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has alleged that the social media platform got threats of being kicked out of India for refusing the government’s request to deactivate particular accounts during the height of the farmers’ protest.

Elon Musk, also former CEO of Twitter , said that the company had no choice but to comply with the Indian government’s restrictions, noting that refusal to do so would have resulted in the platform being shut down. He stated that one cannot simply adopt American ideas universally, emphasising the importance of respecting and adhering to local regulations as well.