Tech companies can choose to obey laws of a foreign country to gain access to their populace. I don't really see the controversy, US first amendment rights don't apply beyond our borders. This article is an incredulous take considering the increase in censorship within the US media-sphere which actually violates the law.
First of all, from a purely legal perspective, the first ammendment has nothing to say on whether a private company can or can't censor speech.
Secondly, the article is saying that tech companies are starting to censor speech in the USA that dictators in China or authoritarian leaders in India don't like.
It is positing a slippery slope where you may one day soon be banned from Twitter globally for posting an image of Winnie the Pooh, which would be done in order for Twitter to gain and maintain access to the Chinese market.
> the first ammendment has nothing to say on whether a private company can or can't censor speech
Yes, but the first amendment _does_ bear on whether or not a private company can or can't be compelled by the state to censor speech, which is what OP was referring to.
The first amendment directly powers section 230 of the communications decency act which gives these companies the legal right to host whatever they want. So the first amendment has everything to do with what a private company can or cannot say.
Doing 3 minutes of research on this topic lead me to the Indian posters page, in which he doesn't even remember the context of his tweet and has reposted the screenshot. He has dozens of tweets discussing censorship, they're all up and available.
Tbh this just sounds like incompetence rather than malevolence, which considering Musk's bungling overhaul of Twitter shouldn't surprise anyone.
Sufficient incompetence can be indistinguishable from malice. For example, it's possible Elon may have fired all the teams that review and push back on government complaints -- effectively ensuring that any large government can report and block tweets through a portal that has no reviewing staff. Even if true, the fact that Elon did this through ineptitude would not change the final result, namely that foreign governments can now block Tweets in the USA at will, with little oversight and pushback from Twitter.
Perhaps such incompetence will be corrected. But it is definitely worrying that Twitter has continued to keep the content blocked even after multiple news articles brought it to public attention. To me that takes it from "whoopsy daisy we made a mistake" to "we do not intend to/are not capable of correcting this mistake." One can apply the principle of charity too liberally.
The problem, IMO, isn't that they blocked a tweet in India based on a request from India. The problem is that Twitter blocked a tweet globally based on a request from India.
The founders of the United States thought it was too dangerous to let a democratic government influence the media, which is why we have the first amendment.
Rival nations with totalitarian governments are now exercising control over US media to cover up terrible human rights abuses and influence US politics...and your only feeling on the subject is "meh not illegal"?
Foreign propaganda is an existential threat to a democracy, we can't look the other way as us media giants cede control to other nations.
I have no problem with companies that censor for their international audiences, since asking them not to do it is akin to asking them to simply be banned in an overwhelming number of places. I think the advantages to having American companies operate abroad in many places is probably worth making this trade off.
I DO think we need legislation stop this censorship from affecting Americans though, because that's a tradeoff not worth making. And companies have a very clear profit motive in these cases to comply.
