Modi’s vision of a restrained online space in India had a busy but not wholly satisfying 2024. The latest version of the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill vanished from sight after content creators vociferously pushed back. The Digital India Bill, which aimed to wrestle control from Silicon Valley, similarly could not be saved from a similar fate after Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the former minister of state for information technology, lost his seat.
The Bombay High Court also stymied the government’s attempt to refashion the IT Rules into a censorship device that allowed the government to determine truth and falsehood, leaving the IT Act a powerful but fragmented vehicle for state control.
This was not for lack of trying. Indeed, 2024 saw the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanita come into force, with alarming, illiberal and expanded sedition provisions. The threats of this have been widely documented for years but now are being tested, after an FIR, that included the sedition provision, was lodged against fact-checker and journalist Mohammed Zubair.
But politically, the end of November gave the governing party something they desperately needed: confidence. Modi’s BJP party won a landslide in the Maharashtra regional election. When I met people in New Delhi last year before the result was announced, it sat heavy on the horizon. While the 2024 parliamentary election punctured the idea of Modi’s electoral invincibility, this result went some way to stem the tide.
So, looking forward, we now need to ask – what does the new year mean for online free expression in India?
Meta’s shifting goalposts
On January 7, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, announced a raft of changes to how the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, will moderate speech. This included moving away from fact-checkers in the United States in favour of community notes as deployed by X (formerly Twitter). It also included loosening restrictions on speech related to topics such as immigration and gender, as well as rewriting its hateful conduct policy.
Some of the decisions – a removal of barriers to the sharing of political speech, a more responsive appeals process, and a weaker dependence on automated content moderation processes – are welcome. But concerns have been raised that these decisions will open up communities of users to greater unchecked online abuse and harassment, undermining their ability to express themselves freely. The overall impact is unclear and impossible to detangle from Meta’s courting of the new Trump administration.
While Zuckerberg was responding to the political realities of the US, less has been said about what this decision will mean for Meta’s millions of users based elsewhere around the globe. For example, the removal of fact-checkers is not limited to the US, it is just “starting” there. As a result, we are in the dark as to what the roll-out timeline is for other jurisdictions, what work is underway to explore this in a more local and specific context, and what amendments or protections will be necessary.
This uncertainty extends to India. A number of Indian fact-checking organisations depend on Meta funding to continue their work. A senior executive from a fact-checking organisation told The Indian Express that this represents “the biggest existential threat many fact checkers will have to contend with”. All they have for sustenance is a lukewarm pledge from Meta’s Head of Global Business, Nicola Mendelsohn, who told Bloomberg there is “nothing changing in the rest of the world at the moment, we are still working with those fact checkers around the world”.
The clock is ticking, fact-checkers just do not know for how long.
A number of Indian fact-checking organisations depend on Meta funding to continue their work. A senior executive from a fact-checking organisation told The Indian Express that this represents “the biggest existential threat many fact checkers will have to contend with”.
European regulators appear to be a sticking point as to how smoothly this roll out will take place, but Meta would be naïve believing this to be the only complexity. For instance, how will Meta insulate this programme from fears that it could embolden cyber vigilantism? This is a concern raised in relation to the Cyber Crime Volunteers Programme run by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which allows members of the public to facilitate “law enforcement agencies in identifying, reporting and removal of illegal/unlawful online content”.
One thing is clear: Meta’s policy change requires transparency to ensure it works as envisaged and will not facilitate greater censorship. The closed-door approach to its development – described by The New York Times as a “closely held six-week sprint, blindsiding even employees on his policy and integrity teams” – does not inspire confidence.
Zuckerberg’s speech included a reference to pushing “back on governments around the world. They're going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
We know that India is no stranger to exerting pressure on online companies. In 2021, an Amazon executive was forced into hiding due to the representation of a Hindu god in the series Tandav. X has been similarly leant on. According to The Washington Post, conversations between the platform and the government shifted towards a more pronounced intention for state censorship.
The article states: “Where officials had once asked for a handful of tweets to be removed at each meeting, they now insisted that entire accounts be taken down, and numbers were running in the hundreds. Executives who refused the government’s demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market.”
Any move to harden Meta against such undue state influence is welcome. But it is vital this is directed at attempts to censor protected speech and not solely to insulate governments or platforms from scrutiny and accountability.
When it comes to international censorship, Zuckerberg suggested that the “only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government”. Whether this theory holds for such a transactional president, who is no stranger to threatening the speech of others, remains to be seen. However, Zuckerberg appeared oblivious to what his alignment may signpost to other authoritarian leaders. The tithing of online speech to Trump demonstrates a malleability of Meta’s standards, principles and rules that could be exploited by other governments willing to apply political or commercial pressure to further expand online censorship.
Zuckerberg spoke about loosening restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender as limitations that “are just out of touch with mainstream discourse”. But this is in reference to mainstream discourse in the US specifically, not the globe as a whole or other markets where Meta operates.
As a result, what does that mean for topics that play a similarly prominent role in discourse in countries such as India? Will there be a similar loosening? Only time will tell. Working to universal standards, such as those established in international human rights principles, can better address this issue, however these were totally absent from Zuckerberg’s speech.
Sharing the tools of censorship
While this is a shift in the policies of a platform used across the globe, developments closer to home also suggest a shift in how content will be moderated in India. As reported by Medianama, underpinned by the IT Act and the IT Rules, a number of state bodies, including the Delhi police, the Indian army and the Directorate General of GST Intelligence Headquarters, have been afforded new powers to demand illegal or unlawful content to be removed from platforms or, in the context of DGGI, block websites of online gaming companies suspected of tax evasion.
For example, in the context of the Indian army, Medianama says this power “allows a government official to classify information as ‘unlawful,’ which could suppress dissenting opinions and critical discussions about military operations”.
This threat is not hypothetical.
In February 2024, the Indian government directed The Caravan magazine to take down an article which discussed the army’s role in the “alleged torture and deaths of villagers in Jammu and Kashmir”. While the publication committed to fight the order, nearly a year later, the article is still not accessible, presenting this message when you visit the page:
Empowering these bodies to make unilateral decisions threatens to establish a dispersed network of censorship. Without protections against abuse and transparency as to how these agencies wield this power, how can we be sure that “illegal” or “unlawful” content is not just content that embarrasses the state and its agencies?
Making up for lost time
The Broadcasting Bill and the Digital India Bill were intended to build on the Indian government’s existing framework of online content policy and patch up the gaps in the IT Act exposed by legal challenges. While the shelving of these laws has not stopped the deployment of censorship powers, 2025 may afford the government ample opportunities to further extend their influence.
Against this backdrop, too many questions remain unanswered. Will the Broadcasting Bill or DIB ever re-emerge? If not, what will the next legislative vehicle be? What will the global implications be of Meta’s policy changes? Will the BJP attempt to make the most of Meta’s apparent malleability to shape the online rules that all Indians would have to abide by?
All we know is that Mohammed Zubair continues to face legal threats based on an outdated and dangerous provision – a throwback to British colonial times, refashioned by a government uneasy with criticism or dissenting voices – and The Caravan is still unable to publish its piece. The IT Act continues to give enough legal cover for state agencies to control what is said about them and the BJP’s functional majority leaves the door open for further legal measures to control all online speech.
The next 12 months may be a time of uncertainty and jeopardy but embedded in the experiences of last year is a blueprint for optimism. The Broadcasting Bill was an exercise in state control. Copies of the bill shared with industry were watermarked to allow any leak to be traced back to its source and there was no public consultation on the amended version of the law. However, this did not stop content creators, digital rights organisations, lawyers, social media users and the wider civil society speaking up about the bill and its threats to India’s vibrant online spaces.
While the bill hovers in legal liminal space, the fact that it is not in India’s statute book is down to democracy working. This is something to take into 2025, and something to hold on to.
Nik Sunil Williams is the policy and campaigns officer at Index on Censorship, looking at global threats to free expression, including SLAPPs and online censorship. He is also the co-chair of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition.
In times of misinformation, you need news you can trust. We’ve got you covered. Subscribe to Newslaundry and power our work.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
