Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed

In the meantime, social media companies appeared to mostly cooperate with India: In late April, the country's government asked Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to take down more than 100 posts-52 of them on Twitter-from politicians, actors, and other prominent figures that bashed the administration's shoddy pandemic response. Facebook hid posts containing the hashtag #ResignModi-referring to India's prime minister, Narendra Modi-within India before restoring them in the course of a few hours. India complained to Twitter that the label was applied "Prejudicially," asked the site to remove the labels, and also requested that it take down posts referring to the so-called Indian variant of the coronavirus. The same day, Google and Facebook declared their intent to work toward compliance, even as they claimed to be discussing further concerns about the rules with India's government. The founding director for Twitter India joined the company in 2012 with hopes that the platform would help strengthen democracy in the country. In 2016, India blocked Facebook's "Free Basics" initiative, an attempt by the company to offer free internet access through a network of Facebook-approved sites, out of concern that the program would have created unfair tiers for internet access; that same year, Amazon found itself disfavored by the Indian government as it attempted to puncture the subcontinent's e-commerce market and compete with native Indian companies in the sector. Twitter's India employees remain worried for their lives-and India is pushing its own Twitter-like app, Koo, in order to draw its populace away from the American platform and its rules.