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    Is Musk a Hypocrite? Content Removal Cases in Turkiye and India  

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    Since March 19th, 2025, thousands of people in Türkiye have been protesting the government’s arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul. The Mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, was a presidential candidate backed by the main opposition party (CHP). He might have won an election against the current President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, so Erdoğan had him arrested. The protestors knew that their democratic rights were being eroded and needed to mobilize collective action. During these protests, social media platforms became an important field of interaction and expression.  

    That is when Erdogan’s government asked X to suspend several accounts belonging to opposition figures. The majority of the suspended accounts were “university-associated activist accounts, basically sharing protest information, locations for students to go,” Yusuf Can, Free speech rights as well as voting rights were now at stake.  Yet X complied with the requests. 

    X’s compliance generated negative reactions towards its owner and CTO, Elon Musk. Musk claims to be in favor of “freedom of expression” and has criticized political opponents in Brazil and the U.S. on those grounds. The Turkish Opposition viewed X’s compliance as an authoritarian intervention, not by the Turkish government, but by X Corporate and Musk himself. Charges of hypocrisy elevated when, on literally the same day, March 20th, X sued the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) claiming the Ministry had “unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered countless government officials to execute such orders”. X’s actions in Türkiye and India were seen as a “double standard”  

    But was it? I’ll be explaining why it’s not in this post.  

    The Legal Basis in Türkiye 

    First, let’s discuss the legal basis of the actions in Türkiye. When there are mass mobilizations, social media becomes an information sharing arena that serves diverse and often conflicting purposes. It provides a means of cultural expression, political activism, and coordination and mobility management, but can also be used for manipulation, provocation, surveillance, espionage, or targeting individuals. Thus, any group may use it as a means of organization and mobilization. We see some examples from the Gezi Parkı Protests of 2013, when false claims that police were using live bullets increased protestors’ aggression. There are also many tweets that reveal coordinated efforts to move protestors from one location to another. Thus, communication in such settings is not only about influence but shifting on-the-ground power dynamics. 

    The Minister of Interior of Turkiye stated that 326 social media accounts, 72 of them from a foreign country’s location, had been inciting hatred among citizens during current protests. Youth Organizations Forum, a multiorganizational NGO hosting youth-based organizations in Turkiye, claims, by referencing Freedom of Expression Association, that 53 youth NGOs and more than 500,000 individual accounts had their X access restricted. On the other hand, X’s Global Affairs account shared the post “In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today” claiming that request was made by the government and X was complying to ensure continued availability of X to Turkish citizens.  

    X is bound to follow its own “Country Withheld Content” policy depending on the legal system of the country it is operating in. This policy limits access to content on X due to legal requests and court judgements. Hence, different countries with different social media compliance laws would end up receiving different outcomes for their requests.  

    However, going through Turkiye’s and India’s relevant laws we’ll see some major similarities. Thus, the question of a double standard remains. 

    Domestic Legal Backing of Content Restrictions in Turkiye  

    Turkiye’s social media law, no. 5651, “The Law on the Regulation of Broadcasts via Internet and Prevention of Crimes Committed through Such Broadcasts” has multiple parts regulating different aspects of internet-based broadcasts. Article 8/A covers “Removal of content and/or blocking access in non-delayable cases” which is the relevant legal statement for reference. What critics generally consider a legal loophole for governmental interventions is the definitions of “national security” and “public order.” The vagueness of these terms allows governments to project authority over intermediaries whenever they like.  

    Requests based on Article 8/A are considered urgent, hence their restrictions cannot be delayed. Article 8/A also allows the President or a public prosecutor to restrict access to content if the court has been late to respond to a legal request. (Normally public prosecutors present their decision to judges within 24 hours, and judges would make a decision within another 24 hours). Also, social media platforms are obliged to provide “The information necessary to reach the perpetrators of these crimes;” not complying leads to financial penalties. The protests, while being a standard tool of democratic activity, can be defined as a security risk or harm to public order by governments, allowing them to utilize tools of intervention and suppression. Thus, the question comes back to how national security and public order are defined, which is a topic that has been used as needed by states to gain or protect their power throughout history.  

    Could X choose not to restrict access to given content? There are some options: it can appeal the decision, claiming that content does not actually fit into the legal category; it can delay implementation; it can pay the fines. Or it can ignore the requests which would create a different set of trade and diplomatic tensions.  

    The point everyone seems to be missing is that X is being threatened to comply with a national government’s laws, so it is the state, not X, that is primarily responsible for the loss of access. X would clearly prefer not to close these accounts, but refusing to comply raises the risks of serious costs and dangers. Could X take on pressure from state actors or are its hands tied? A recent update shows that Meta decided to resist the Turkish court decisions and is currently facing fines.  

    One should also consider the possibility that X is not just a business looking at this choice as cost-benefit tradeoff, but a diplomatic actor, too. Is the compliance decision furthering the agenda of the new American Presidential administration?  

    Parallels between X and India 

    Looking at India’s case, we see that X had previously complied with requests by the Indian government on multiple occasions. One of the cases was about blocking access to the BBC’s documentary on Indian President Modi’s active role in 2002 Religious Massacre in Gujarat. (Hussain & Grim, 2023); another one was 2024 Farmers’ protests in India. During these protests the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Home Affairs told X to avoid dissemination of content that might incite hatred and unrest in the rest of the country. X and other popular social media platforms withheld 177 social media accounts (Livemint, 2024). While X complied, their Global Affairs profile (2024) shared their objections as “In compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts”. In both cases, we still see full compliance.  

    The first round of the Farmer’s Protests in 2021 was probably the closest case to non-compliance: in this case, the government’s reasoning was like the 2024 case. As a result, it demanded that 250 accounts be withheld, but the condition was kept for less than a day and accounts were reinstated (Perrigo, 2021). Relevant laws about these cases are “The Information Technology Act” (2000) and The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules (2021) and in neither of these documents there is a regulation on reinstatement. Turkish laws similarly also lack regulation for this action. While X legally complied with government requests, it reversed its course after a public backlash and reinstated accounts; this was perceived as non-compliance by the Indian government. In 2022 X sued the Indian government for their content blocking orders claiming arbitrariness and opaqueness. The Karnataka High Court ruled against X’s claims and fined the company $61,000.  

    Ultimately, what got public attention as X’s non-compliance with the Indian Government’s censorship demands was not the denial of legal requests by X; but a new legal loophole designed by the Indian Government. This is a website named “Sahyog,” which allows lower ranking officials to issue orders to withhold content without going through any legal procedure. This loophole effectively bypasses the relevant laws. X argued that The Information Technology Act” (2000) Section 79a, 3,b is interpreted in a way to create Sahyog but it bypasses the procedure defined in article 69A “Power to issue directions for blocking for public access of any information through any computer resource.” These sections also include the same vague justifications as Turkish law, such as the “Security of State” and the “Sovereignty and Integrity of India”. Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules (2021) part 2 to addresses “Due Diligence by Intermediaries and Grievance Redressal Mechanism”: article 4 defines a “Chief Compliance Officer”, by use of Sahyog this actor is bypassed and there would be no direct actor checking for legal compliance. The legal document proposes an opportunity for users to file complaints against takedown requests within 24-72 hours; with Sahyog system, however, users cannot appeal. 

    X’s Compliance Behavior 

    We see that in both countries X is complying with content regulation laws. What currently looks like non-compliant behavior in India is really its opposition to the Sahyog portal, which bypasses the law. This is a totally different issue than compliance with content removal requests. In the Turkish case, X has directly complied with takedown orders, as it did in the 2024 Indian Farmers Protests. Thus, there is not a double standard. X has been compliant with domestic laws in both countries in recent years. In India, it is not refusing the comply with the law but resisting an unlawful expansion of the police authority.    

     

    References: 

     

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