Twitter is struggling with India's stricter rules for online speech

Twitter announced that it has launched a lawsuit against the Indian government, the latest salvo in an ongoing fight over the country's aggressive speech laws. The suit comes after Twitter was ordered to remove a number of accounts and posts that violate India's obscenity and defamation laws, The New York Times first reported. Twitter has now removed the posts, but it is seeking court protection from such orders in the future.

The fight began last May when India issued new IT rules for online content, followed shortly after by a police raid on Twitter's offices in India. The following July, Indian regulators threatened to hold Twitter liable for any future breaches by its users.

Generally speaking, Twitter has long argued that it complies with local laws regarding speech, but Indian laws regarding obscenity and seditious speech are unusually aggressive. In the past, the country has used speech laws to quell environmental concerns or broader discussions of internal political conflicts. Prominent author Arundhati Roy, who faced sedition charges for statements about the conflict in Kashmir, described the system as chaotic and repressive in a 2016 report on the issue."The most frightening thing is that any mad coot can go and lodge a complaint against you," Roy said at the time. "It's a serious amount of harassment."

Twitter's legal fight is complicated by ongoing confusion over Elon Musk's attempt to buy the company and take it private. In June, Musk pledged to emphasize free speech values ​​as the Twitter owner but also said he would obey local laws and hinted at staff cuts that would make it harder to effectively defend the company's position in India. Despite having signed an agreement to acquire the company, Musk himself continues to cast doubt on whether the acquisition will go ahead, raising further questions about the company's future.