An Indian court has dismissed a case filed by Elon Musk's X against a government portal that it argued was being used to arbitrarily censor content on the platform.
A single-judge bench of the Karnataka High Court ruled that X's challenge against the Sahyog portal, run by the federal home ministry, was without merit. The full order has not been made public yet.
X has not indicated whether it plans to appeal this order.
Wednesday's dismissal is the second case in just over two years that X has lost while challenging the Indian government's powers to block or take down content, leaving free speech and digital rights experts concerned for the implications of such decisions. X is estimated to have around 25 million users in India.
Technology policy researcher Prateek Waghre expressed to the BBC that the ruling was worrisome as it legitimises various government agencies directly sending takedown orders to social media platforms. He noted that the full import of the decision could only be understood once the judgement is fully disclosed.
The social media platform filed the case in March against Sahyog, which is designed to automate government notices to content intermediaries like X and Facebook.
Other American tech giants such as Google and Meta have participated in Sahyog since its launch last year, but X has opted out, labelling the portal a censorship tool that allows officials to issue content takedown orders without providing due process.
This, according to X's filings, permits numerous government officials, including tens of thousands of local police officers, to unilaterally issue orders for content removal. During one hearing, a lawyer for X described the situation as allowing every Tom, Dick, and Harry officer to have this authority, a statement that the government contested.
If social media intermediaries do not comply with the orders within 36 hours, they risk losing their intermediary status, which protects them from liability for hosted content.
The Indian government has defended Sahyog, asserting that it is essential to combat the increasing prevalence of unlawful content online and that the portal serves merely to inform intermediaries about potentially unlawful material.
The Karnataka judge, while dismissing the challenge on Wednesday, remarked that social media cannot be left with anarchic freedom and emphasized the necessity for regulation, dubbing the Sahyog portal a public good. The judge also noted that while X adheres to takedown orders in the U.S., it resists compliance with similar orders in India.
This ruling follows a trend where X has been the only major social media platform consistently challenging the Indian government's content blocking mechanisms, which many legal experts criticize as arbitrary and lacking transparency.
In 2022, prior to Musk's acquisition, X was the first platform to contest multiple orders to take down specific tweets and suspend accounts. A subsequent ruling by the Karnataka High Court resulted in a fine of 5 million rupees ($56,000) for X's delayed compliance with another content removal order, a matter currently awaiting appeal.
