On Friday, Twitter’s lawyer told Reuters that India’s Karnataka High Court rejected Twitter’s challenge to the federal government’s tweet and account blocking orders and fined it 5 million rupees ($60,943.65).
The decision comes weeks after Twitter’s ex-CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey accused India of threatening to shut down the social media platform unless it restricted accounts critical of the 2021 farmer protests, a charge Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government called a “lie.”
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s Deputy Minister for Information Technology, tweeted that the court determined on Friday that Twitter was served notices but did not comply.
Twitter was unavailable for comment on the verdict. Last year, the U.S. corporation urged the court to invalidate government orders to remove content from social media.
The authorities ordered the removal of accounts supporting an independent Sikh state, posts claimed to have propagated misinformation about farmer demonstrations, and tweets criticizing the government’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
“So you have not given any reason why you delayed compliance, more than a year of delay… then all of sudden you comply and approach the court,” the bench said during the verdict on Friday, Chandrasekhar tweeted.
“You’re a billion-dollar company.” Twitter told Karnataka’s highest court last year that some removal requests violated India’s IT act, Reuters reported.
The IT Act lets the government ban content for national security and other reasons.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, advertisers have slowed spending, and the firm has lost roughly 80% of its workers.
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