Elon Musk censors BBC documentary critical of India's Modi

No?! Really? Elon "Free Speech Absolutist" Musk engaging in censorship?

Elon only cares about himself being censored. He has no problem censoring things he disagrees with. I feel bad for the people that believed he actually cared about free speech. Some regular posters here go home devastated.

Orangeman bad. Elonman bad.

This is odd because Tesla has been at odds with the Indian government over expanding manufacturing in India. Modi would not give Tesla any tariff concessions on vehicles imported from the US and China, which is what Tesla wanted in order to test the market in India before committing to a giga factory in India. India has a significant domestic EV industry (Mahindra, Tata, etc.) and does not want to do Tesla any favors.

Maybe Musk is trying to butter up Modi to reconsider. Or maybe Modi is just kicking Musk's a## by demanding censorship or threatening to ban twitter from India.

like Twitter and YouTube

waiting for all the real free speech heroes to boycott YT, Google, Chrome browser etc in "solidarity"

This unfortunately should not surprise anyone in the least. Elon’s “appeal to the right wing” shtick is completely self-serving, just like the banning of this documentary.

This should shock everyone. Modi is a Hindu nationalist and is vehemently anti-muslim and pro caste system. Within India he has empowered his cult followers and their media outlets and cracked down on opposing voices. People like Modi, Trump, Bolosnaro etc should not be allowed to determine who gets to write or document them and who gets to see it. Empowering people like Modi while suppressing his critics is the exact opposite of what Musk said he would do. And is in fact it was this sort of biase he was whining about when he took it over.

Am I surprised? Not one bit. This is who Musk is. He really doesnt understand free speech at all.

This is a nothingburger for two different reasons:
1) Musk as well as every tech company out there has to obey local laws, and he never said he would violate local laws, quite the contrary.

2) The “BBC investigation” is rather high browed colonial exceptionalism by a foreign media company when the incident in question was over two decades back, has been ruled on by the Supreme Court of India when the opposition was in power, and Modi has been since elected by the people multiple times as the leader of the largest democracy in the world.

#2 above doesn’t justify the heavy handed nature of state censorship of the documentary, but unless you lap up MSM narratives, such “disinformation control” happens in the US too, just through indirect low-key channels. In India, there is the additional risk of unnecessarily inciting Hindu-Muslim riots by reopening very old wounds, non-problem in first world countries with only tiny religious minorities.

Sorry to break it to you dude, but that’s the American MSM narrative. Modi is the democratically elected leader of 1.5 billion people by a significant popularity of the vote, not the leader of some cult. The people there have long made up their minds on this issue that’s over two decades old.

It is not a nothing burger because everyone else does it… it is note worthy because Elon pretended he wasn’t like everyone else. Much to the applause of the usual posters here. Turns out he is like everyone else and worse because he also sensors things he doesn’t like.

I hardly care to defend Musk, but I never heard or assumed anything he said meant he will violate local laws in the name of free speech. He theoretically has the choice to pull out of India but no tech company in its right mind would voluntarily do that. The pragmatic world simply doesn’t work like that.

He had to comply with EU laws as well.

techcrunch.com

Elon Musk tells Europe Twitter will comply with bloc's illegal speech rules

Natasha Lomas

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Link:techcrunch.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-tw...

How many of those who are angry about this situation had the same reaction when Dorsey banned the story of Hunter's laptop from being spread on Twitter?

I don't know the details of this story so I'm not going to comment, but I feel like an honest answer to this question is important.

Here is an interview by a very reputable senior journalist in India interviewing a very well known intellectual there: a writer, former diplomat, and former member of parliament from the opposition to Modi’s government who has been its fierce critic on many occasions. He makes the case that by banning it, the government only drew more attention to this silly documentary that’s saying little new; that the people of India don’t care about relitigating and reopening very old wounds; and that India is a robust enough sovereign democracy to not be afraid of a silly BBC documentary destabilizing “national security” (by inciting riots and such).

India has a diverse free press fiercely criticizing the Modi government all the time, not unlike our internal squabbling here in the US, notwithstanding the American MSM’s portrayal of India as being governed by some kind of a dictatorial radical nutjob who is somehow silencing all of his critics.

Britain (or America for that matter) are not in the EU. Sorry that doesn’t cut it. He lied.

Me, it’s called consistency.

The question could of course be easily flipped.

Try 1.4B.

China still ahead, but probably not for long, as Biden will no doubt nuke at least half of them in the coming months.

Wait no more. I've been boycotting them for years. Plenty of great options.

I'm also decades into boycotts of a couple airlines, but for different reasons.