Better to comply on content in India than risk jail, says American billionaire Musk

NEW DELHI: American billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the global micro-blogging giant Twitter, said on Wednesday that he would prefer his teams to take down content in India in line with the local laws, than run the risk of being sent to jail.

Musk was responding to questions around the blocking of a BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots when PM Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state. “I am not aware of this particular situation... don't know what exactly happened with some content situation in India,” Musk said in an interview with the BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces, when asked if the site took down some content at the behest of the Indian government.

“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of the country,” he said, adding, “If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.”


Looking at the sensitive nature of the documentary, the Indian government had banned it from being shown on social media, including Twitter, and elsewhere in the country. Musk also said during the interview that there is less misinformation and hate speech on the micro-blogging platform since he took over. The billionaire has labelled the BBC as a “government-funded media" organisation.

After labelling the @BBC account — which has 2.2 million followers — Musk tweeted: “What does BBC stand for again? I keep forgetting.”

However, Twitter did not label the BBC's other accounts like BBC News (World) and BBC Breaking News.The BBC had said in a statement: “We are speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible. The BBC is and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee.” According to Musk, “I do actually follow the BBC” as “they have some great material”.

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