X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, has announced its intention to appeal an Indian court’s decision to dismiss its challenge against a government portal designed to remove flagged social media content, an action Musk views as censorship.
In a statement released Monday morning, X articulated its profound concern over a recent ruling by India’s Karnataka court. The company stated this order would “allow millions of police officers to issue arbitrary takedown orders through a secretive online portal called the Sahyog.” X further characterized this 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.”
The statement concluded by affirming, “We will appeal this order to defend free expression.”
Musk’s social media company initiated this most recent lawsuit against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in March. The suit argued that the portal establishes “an impermissible parallel mechanism,” leading to “unrestrained censorship of information in India.”
With an estimated 25 million users in India, X has, over the last two years, consistently issued statements and mounted challenges against the Indian government’s power to conceal or remove content, consistently citing free speech concerns.
Indian authorities have staunchly defended the Sahyog online portal, asserting its necessity due to the “growing volume of unlawful and harmful content” circulating online.
Sahyog stated its function is “to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries, such as X, by the appropriate Government or its agencies,” which effectively constitute government directives to remove social media posts deemed to violate Indian law.
TIME has sought additional comment from X.
Musk—a figure associated with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—has been embroiled in multiple international disputes concerning free speech and what he alleges is government censorship of online material.
In August 2024, Brazil implemented a ban on X after Musk’s platform failed to appoint a local representative, a mandatory requirement under Brazilian law.
Subsequently, in October, a court order instructed the social media company to block accounts “that disseminated false information,” designate a local representative in Brazil, and incur a fine of R$28.6 million ($5.3 million).
Additionally, Musk has clashed with the Australian government regarding social media oversight.
Following the April 2024 stabbing of a bishop at a Sydney church, an Australian judge mandated that X restrict access to a video depicting the assault.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was accused by X of censorship in response to this directive. Albanese retorted, stating, “This guy is showing his arrogance, a billionaire… who thinks he’s above Australian law.”
In September 2024, Musk once more criticized Albanese’s government, reacting to a report that Australia was contemplating fining social media platforms for inadequacies in preventing misinformation.
“Fascists,” X asserted in its reply. In November, Musk reiterated his critique of the Australian government following Albanese’s announcement of a proposed bill mandating a minimum age of 16 for social media users.
“Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians,” Musk commented in response on X.
Concurrently, X has faced criticism concerning content produced by its proprietary AI chatbot, Grok.
In July, the social media company issued an apology after Grok generated a series of antisemitic comments in response to a post about a tragedy that claimed over 100 lives, including young attendees of Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp.
An account named “Cindy Steinberg” shared a post referring to the children as “future fascists.” In response, Grok controversially claimed that Adolf Hitler would be the “best person” to address what it labeled as “anti-white hate.”
An X user asked Grok to identify “which 20th century historical figure” would be most appropriate for handling such posts. Widely circulated screenshots from other X users revealed Grok’s response: “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 an official statement from X.
