Though Elon Musk’s X disagrees, it removes political messages in response to an ECI order

Prior to the April 19th, 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has directed the social media site X (previously known as Twitter) to remove some politically charged remarks.

Tuesday’s postings in India that included political statements from elected officials, political parties, and candidates for office were removed by X in accordance with directives from the ECI.

X, which is controlled by Elon Musk, is against these measures and has demanded that the Election Commission make available all of its future takedown orders.

“Takedown orders containing political speech shared by elected politicians, political parties, and candidates for office have been issued by the Election Commission of India, compelling X to take action on these posts.” We disagree with these actions and believe that freedom of expression should apply to these postings and political discourse in general. As per the directives, we have withheld these posts for the duration of the election season,” X said.

“We have notified the affected users and in the interest of transparency, we are publishing the takedown orders here,” X said in a strongly worded statement. We demand that the Election Commission make available to the public all of its future removal orders.

The Election Commission said in its ruling that these postings had broken clause (2) of Part 1 “General Conduct” of the Model Code of Conduct for Elections.

The Indian Lok Sabha Elections of 2024 are scheduled to take place in seven stages, starting on April 19 and ending on June 1. On June 4, the votes will be counted, and the results will be made public after that.

A whopping 968 million registered voters—497 million males and 471 million women—will participate in this election, according to Reuters.