Musk's X Vows to Appeal Indian Court Order Over Content Removal as Free Speech Fight Escalates

Elon Musk’s social media platform X said it plans to appeal an Indian court ruling’s decision to dismiss its case against a government portal that removes flagged content from social media platforms, an action Musk views as censorship. In a statement on Monday morning, X said it is “deeply concerned by the recent order from the Karnataka court in India, which will allow millions of police officers to issue arbitrary takedown orders through a secretive online portal called the Sahyog.” X referred to the social media content removal mechanism as a “new regime” that “has no basis in the law” and “infringes Indian citizens’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression.” “We will appeal this order to defend free expression,” the statement concluded. Musk’s social media company launched this latest lawsuit against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in March, arguing that the portal creates “an impermissible parallel mechanism” that causes “unrestrained censorship of information in India.” Over the past two years, X—which has an estimate of around 25 million users in India— has made various statements and challenges against the Indian government’s ability to hide or take down content, with the social media platform citing concerns over free speech. The online portal Sahyog has been strongly defended by the Indian authorities, which argues it’s needed due to the “growing volume of unlawful and harmful content” online. Sayhog said it functions “to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries, such as X, by the appropriate Government or its agencies” which are effectively government orders to remove social media posts said to be in violation of Indian law. TIME has reached out to X for further comment.  Musk—the former lead of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—has had several disputes with other countries over disagreements on freedom of speech and what he argues is government censorship of online content. In August 2024, Brazil placed a ban on X after Musk’s platform failed to appoint a local representative in the country, a requirement under Brazilian law. Brazil lifted the ban in October, ordering the social media company to block accounts “that disseminated false information,” appoint a local representative in Brazil, and pay a fine of R$28.6 million ($5.3 million). Musk has also been in disagreement with the Australian government over social media monitoring. After the stabbing of a bishop at a church in Sydney in April 2024, an Australian judge ruled that X must block access to a video showing the attack. Musk then accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of censorship in response to the order, to which Albanese responded: “This guy is showing his arrogance, a billionaire… who thinks he’s above Australian law.” In September 2024, Musk again criticized Albanese’s government, responding to a post reporting that Australia was considering fining social media platforms for failing to prevent misinformation.  “Facists,” Musk argued in response. In November, Musk reiterated his criticism of the Australian government after Albanese announced the introduction of a bill that would require social media users to be at least 16-years-old. “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians,” wrote Musk in response on X. Meanwhile, X has come under criticism for the content generated by its own AI chatbot, Grok. Read More: Elon Musk’s AI Company Apologizes Over Chatbot Grok’s ‘Horrific’ Antisemitic Posts on X In July, the social media company apologized after Grok posted a series of antisemitic posts in response to a post on the deadly Texas floods which killed over 100 people, including young girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp. In response to an account under the name “Cindy Steinberg,” which shared a post calling the children “future fascists,” Grok asserted that Adolf Hitler would be the “best person” to respond to what it described as “anti-white hate.” Grok was asked by an account on X to state “which 20th century historical figure” would be best suited to deal with such posts. Screenshots shared widely by other X users show that Grok replied: “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time” “We deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. Our intent for Grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers Grok,” read a statement from X.