There were several tweets and handles mentioning the Delhi farmers’ protest from the year before. The court not only denied Twitter’s appeal, but it also fined the firm Rs 50 lakh. It mostly accepted the government’s arguments and, as a result, granted it virtually unrestricted authority to obstruct dissenting content on social media without any safeguards.
Source: The Treatment Room Guernsey
Twitter said that the government’s instructions to block not just individual tweets but also whole accounts, and that too permanently, violated the law and the proportionality principle. The court rejected it and declared that the Information Technology Act gave the government the authority to compel such takedowns. However, the reason for blocking an account forever when there is only one post in question remains a mystery. That essentially limits the freedom of the Twitter user. Censorship is preventing access to new content.
The court also rejected the argument that the user should be made aware of the grounds for the content’s banning. The court stated that because anti-India campaigners, terrorists, sedition-seekers, and foreign adversaries who intend to destabilise India and jeopardise national security on communal lines do not deserve to be issued notifications, the government has the option to withhold the information from the users.
On the grounds that there were legal procedural protections for it, the Supreme Court had permitted content filtering under Section 69A of the IT Act. However, a government action that did not adhere to the established protocols has now been upheld. Therefore, the precautions are not actually in place.
Source: Times Now
Twitter was also fined by the court for engaging in speculative litigation, disobeying the court’s directives, and doing so in defiance of the court. Since Twitter’s current administration is different from the management that brought the complaint, it is unknown if Twitter would appeal the ruling. But the Supreme Court will need to evaluate the judgment’s disputed reasoning and findings.
The case raised significant problems about the citizen’s right to free expression, the right to be heard, the right to due process, and ideas like transparency and penalty proportionality. The government has full authority to address these concerns as a result of the verdict.
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