Twitter CEO Elon Musk has made a big show of portraying the site before his takeover as a bastion of government censorship. He has coordinated with journalists to publish information known as the “Twitter Files” that suggest that the company was overly compliant in submitting to demands from governments — especially the U.S. government — to take down posts or limit their visibility.
But new data suggests that, at least by some measures, Twitter has become more compliant with government authorities than before he took over. Musk’s promises to shepherd Twitter into a new era of radical free speech are looking phonier by the day.
It’s evident that Musk has failed to fulfill his mandate of ushering in a new era of free speech to the platform.
According to a report from Rest of World, based on data from Harvard University’s Lumen Database, in the six months since Musk’s arrival, Twitter’s compliance with government demands for censorship or surveillance has risen to over 80%, from around 50%. The information comes via Twitter’s largely automated self-reporting to the Lumen database, which monitors government requests for content removal online. According to Lumen, out of 971 government requests received from last Oct. 27 — when Musk took over — to April 26, Twitter completely complied with 808 requests, partially complied with another 154 cases and did not report a response for 9 cases. Notably, Twitter did not report any outright refusals during this period, as pre-Musk Twitter did from time to time.
Some of the most worrisome requests have come from India, where Narendra Modi’s right-wing government has bombarded Twitter with demands to censor unflattering media portrayals of the governing party. Under Musk, Twitter blocked in India posts sharing a BBC documentary that questioned Modi’s role in a 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat. (Musk at one point said he hadn’t known that Twitter was complying with India’s requests, and…
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