The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a standoff with social media companies over what content gets investigated or blocked online, and who gets to decide. Bikas Das/AP hide caption
toggle caption Bikas Das/AP 
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a standoff with social media companies over what content gets investigated or blocked online, and who gets to decide.
MUMBAI AND SAN FRANCISCO — One night last month, police crowded into the lobby of Twitter's offices in India's capital New Delhi. They were from an elite squad that normally investigates terrorism and organized crime, and said they were trying to deliver a notice alerting Twitter to misinformation allegedly tweeted by opposition politicians.
But they arrived at 8 p.m. And Twitter's offices were closed anyway, under a coronavirus lockdown. It's unclear if they ever managed to deliver their notice. They released video of their raid afterward to Indian TV channels and footage shows them negotiating with security guards in the lobby.
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The May 24 police raid — which Twitter later called an "intimidation tactic" — was one of the latest salvos in a confrontation between the Indian government and social media companies over what online content gets investigated or blocked, and who gets to decide.
While the Indian constitution includes the right to freedom of speech, it also bans expression or publication of anything that risks India's security, public order or "decency." But the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced a long list of new IT rules going beyond this. They require social media platforms to warn users not to post anything that's defamatory, obscene, invasive of someone else's privacy, encouraging of gambling, harmful to a child or "patently false or misleading" — among other things.
If the government orders it, platforms are required to take down such material. The rules also require platforms to identify the original source of information that's shared online or, in the case of messaging apps, forwarded among users. Company executives can be held criminally liable if the platforms don't comply.
Many tech companies are aghast. They say these rules violate their users' freedom of expression and privacy, and amount to censorship. Free speech advocates warn that such rules are prone to politicization and could be used to target government critics.
India's Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad (left) and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announce new regulations for social media companies and streaming websites in New Delhi in February. India's government has warned Twitter to comply with the country's new social media regulations, which critics say give the government more power to police online content. Manish Swarup/AP hide caption
toggle caption Manish Swarup/AP 
India's Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad (left) and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announce new regulations for social media companies and streaming websites in New Delhi in February. India's government has warned Twitter to comply with the country's new social media regulations, which critics say give the government more power to police online content.
But India — with nearly 1.4 billion people — is one of the tech companies' biggest markets. The country's hundreds of millions of internet users present a ripe business opportunity for companies such as Twitter and Facebook, especially since they're banned from operating in China.
Sponsor MessageAnd India's government — like others around the world — knows this, says Jason Pielemeier, policy and strategy director at the Global Network Initiative, a coalition of tech companies and other groups supporting free expression online.
"Over time, the governments have become more and more sophisticated in terms of their understanding of the pressure points that large internet companies have and are sensitive to," he says. "Those companies have also, to some extent, become more sensitive as they have increased the revenue that they generate in markets all around the world. And so where you see companies having large user bases and governments increasingly dissatisfied with those companies' responsiveness, we tend to see situations like the one that is currently flaring up in India."
Some companies, including Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, have reportedly complied, at least partially, with the new rules, which took effect May 25. Others are lobbying for changes. Twitter says it's "making every effort to comply" but has asked for an extension to do so. WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has sued the Indian government.
The police raid last month on Twitter's offices in New Delhi came amid squabbles between India's two biggest political parties, accusing each other of spreading misinformation.
Politicians from Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, had been tweeting screenshots of what they claimed was a "media toolkit" used by their main rival, the Indian National Congress party, to amplify online complaints about Modi's handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Twitter's rules about platform manipulation prohibit users from "artificially amplifying" messages.
But the screenshot BJP politicians were tweeting of this alleged "toolkit" was fake. Some of India's most reputable fact-checkers concluded it was a forgery. After its own investigation, Twitter slapped a "manipulated media" label on those tweets by BJP politicians.
The government then asked Twitter to remove that label. Twitter did not. Police raided its offices three days later.
"We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules," a Twitter spokesperson wrote in a statement emailed May 27 to NPR and other news organizations.
To many observers, it looked like the Indian government was trying to drag Twitter publicly into a dispute between rival political parties, by sending the police to serve Twitter executives with a notice that could have been sent electronically — especially during the pandemic.
Sponsor Message"Serving a notice of that kind, in the form that played out, just confirms the idea that this is just theater," said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of India's Software Freedom Law Center.
