https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210211/00392446229/twitter-india-still-arguing-over-whether-not-twitter-accounts-supporting-farmer-protests-need-to-be-removed.shtml

Last week we wrote about the Indian government threatening to jail Twitter employees after the company reinstated a long list of accounts that the government demanded be blocked (Twitter blocked them for a brief period of time, before reinstating them). The accounts included some Indian celebrities and journalists, who were talking about the headline news regarding farmer protests. The Mohdi government has proven to be incredibly thin-skinned about negative coverage, and despite Indian protections for free expression, was demanding out-and-out censorship of these accounts. The threats to lock up Twitter employees put the company in an impossible position -- and it has now agreed to geoblock (but not shut down) some accounts, but not journalists, activists and politicians.

The company implies, strongly, that the demands from the Indian government deliberately mixed actual incendiary/dangerous content with mere political critics of the Mohdi administration -- and makes it clear that it's willing to take action on "harmful content" or accounts that legitimately violate Twitter's rules. But that it will not agree to do so for those whose speech it believes is protected under Indian freedom of expression principles:

We took steps to reduce the visibility of the hashtags containing harmful content, which included prohibiting them from trending on Twitter and appearing as recommended search terms.

We took a range of enforcement actions — including permanent suspension in certain cases — against more than 500 accounts escalated across all MeitY orders for clear violations of Twitter’s Rules.

Separately, today, we have withheld a portion of the accounts identified in the blocking orders under our Country Withheld Content policy within India only. These accounts continue to be available outside of India. Because we do not believe that the actions we have been directed to take are consistent with Indian law, and, in keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians. To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law. We informed MeitY of our enforcement actions today, February 10, 2021. We will continue to maintain dialogue with the Indian government and respectfully engage with them.

Later that day, after Twitter made this announcement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) set up a call with Twitter officials and released an incredibly lame press release, effectively saying "we support freedom of expression, but not when protesters say stuff we don't like."