Elon Musk has taken an increasingly combative approach to what he claims are government efforts to censor posts on his social media platform The wealthy are fighting in public with politicians.
In recent weeks, X has attacked “takedown” requests in Brazil, India and Australia after authorities demanded the removal of content on the site deemed illegal or harmful.
Its owner, a self-described free speech absolutist, goes further, calling Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes a “dictator” and Australian eSafety commissioner and former Twitter employee Julie Inman-Grant ” He was labeled as “Censor Commissioner''.
In one of those disputes, an Australian legal hearing to determine whether X should remove footage of the violent attack in Sydney from its platform began on Friday.
As with similar requests around the world, X deleted the tweet locally so the video is no longer seen in Australia, but disputes Inman Grant's request to remove the video globally. .
During the hearing, the government argued that the case was not about “free speech” but about the application of existing law. X called the government's approach “astonishing”.
“This is a dangerous precedent,” Nick Pickles, head of global government at X, told the Financial Times. “This is a real danger to the global internet, press freedom, and political debate everywhere.”
“It is important that democratic governments do not unwittingly support or adopt the policies of governments that do not want to protect an open, global internet.”
Free speech activists and some digital rights experts and academics have praised Musk's approach. But critics argue that he and X only launched the challenge selectively.
The move is likely to complicate Musk's expanding business interests. In India, where Tesla is aiming to build an electric car factory, Mr. Such disputes may also cause advertisers to withdraw.
The battle comes amid pressure for the platform to prove it can be profitable under Musk's leadership after he bought it for $44 billion in October 2022.
“We've seen a lot of changes,” said New Wechsler, a partner at Four Corners Public Affairs who previously worked in policy communications for Twitter. Companies that are more likely to disclose takedown requests will receive fewer takedown requests because the government would rather keep the process behind closed doors. ”
But Wexler added that Musk's “optimal choice” is when to withdraw or disclose requests based on opaque criteria. “If the government wants to remove something, the calculation is [X] “Is that country going to buy electric cars from us?” he added.
The company said decisions about how to respond to requests will be made with Musk, CEO Linda Yaccarino, and other members of its political and legal teams, including Pickles.
Experts say the number of takedown requests social media companies are facing is increasing. Countries such as India and Turkey have also introduced strict social media laws, which critics say can be misused to silence dissidents. Penalties for violations include fines and threats to arrest staff. Some regimes require companies to have field offices within their jurisdiction, a phenomenon colloquially referred to as “hostage law.”
“The trend is definitely for different governments to look for more ways to enforce their requests and enforce their laws online,” Pickles said. “We are at risk of a race to the bottom as ever stronger sanctions are used to try to control the global internet without respecting global norms and freedom of expression. ”
Under Mask, X removed parts of its process regarding responding to government removal requests.
The European Commission this week sent a request for information to Company X regarding its moderation capabilities after the company reduced its number of content moderators by about 20 percent since October.
X also took several steps to make it difficult for outsiders to understand when responding to takedown requests.
In April 2023, the company announced that it would stop publishing its semi-annual transparency report (a breakdown of the number of requests by country and shared figures regarding compliance). That same month, the company stopped sending data about takedown notices to Lumen, a database collected by Harvard University.
The move comes as a report from Rest of the World, which cited Lumen data, said the company had complied with more than 80% of government takedown requests in the first six months of Musk's ownership, and that prior to that. It was found that the increase was from about 50%. his takeover.
Platforms like Meta and Google's YouTube have long published data on how many requests they receive from governments, including copyright and law enforcement requests, and whether the government complies, but they share little else. Not yet.
Udbhav Tiwari, Mozilla's director of global product policy, said there are signs that under Mr. Musk, Company X will be less likely to pursue public attacks on takedown requests through legal means.
“If you look at the number of cases that have come to court, there is a lot of evidence that Twitter has been litigating more in the past,” Tiwari said. “Independent of tweeting about things… actually taking the government to court is very important.”
Musk initially said the platform would not comply with a court order in Brazil requiring the company to block accounts believed to belong to certain far-right users, arguing that the order violated the country's laws. X has since reversed course and agreed to comply, but is appealing the court's decision. In the process, Musk gained support from supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.
X also made public removal requests from authorities, including the Election Commission of India, and complied with the orders even though he made it clear that he did not agree with them. These included recent posts by several opposition figures calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “thief”, as well as posts from the prime minister's political party.
Musk argued that in India, X has little choice but to comply. After the company rejected takedown requests in 2021, the Modi government tightened rules for social media executives, including possible criminal liability.
“This is a private company owned by one person, and direction can change very quickly,” said Prateek Waghre, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation.
“We don't know, and we probably won't even know, when other business considerations will become important inputs into decisions. That creates biased incentives for X, and that's a concern. .”
Additional reporting by Nick Fildes in Sydney and Michael Pooler in Sao Paulo
