World News | Elon Musk says social media rules in India are ‘quite strict’

LONDON, April 12 (PTI) Twitter CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday that India’s rules governing social media content are “pretty strict”, while claiming he was unaware when his microblogging site was blocked in relation to controversial content. The content of the “What the hell happened” BBC documentary.

In an interview with the BBC at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, the billionaire tech tycoon, who bought the Weibo platform last October, agreed that the company would change a new label added to the media company’s main account from “government-funded media” to “public-funded.” .

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He was asked about the extent of content moderation for reports from India, where some tweets linked to the BBC’s two-part documentary “India: The Modi Problem” were blocked earlier this year.

“I’m not aware of that particular situation,” Musk told the BBC.

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Pressed further by the interviewer if that meant he wasn’t sure about the campaign, he added: “I don’t know what’s going on with certain content situations in India. India has very strict rules about what appears on social media and we can’t go beyond a the laws of the country.”

India dismissed the BBC documentary as “propaganda”, saying it was designed to advance a particular “disreputable narrative” and that the ongoing colonial mentality was “blatantly visible” in the series.

Asked whether this would inspire countries around the world to pass tougher social media laws, the Twitter chief stressed that the social media giant’s focus has always been on compliance.

Asked about the decision to label the BBC’s main Twitter account, @BBC, and describe it as a “government-sponsored media,” Musk said he knew the BBC “usually isn’t thrilled about being labeled a state media outlet.” “.

Earlier this week, the media company, which is backed by British taxpayer-funded licensing fees, contacted Twitter about the changed name.

“The BBC is, and has always been, independent. We are funded by the British public through licensing fees,” it said.

Musk said Twitter was adjusting the BBC’s label to “publicly funded” to make it “accurate”.

“I actually have a lot of respect for the BBC,” he added.

Musk, who also runs automaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, bought Twitter for about $44 million — a purchase he acknowledged in interviews that came about because a judge was about to force him to do so. acquisition.

“It’s not boring. It’s been a rollercoaster ride … the pain level is really high, it’s not some kind of party,” he said, as he defended Twitter’s operations since the acquisition.

When it came to finances, the entrepreneur said Twitter is now “roughly breaking even” because most of its advertisers have returned, and claimed to have reduced its headcount to about 1,500 from less than 8,000 when he acquired the company People are not easy.

Acknowledging that he didn’t fire everyone personally, he said: “It’s impossible to talk face-to-face with that many people.”

The departure of many of Twitter’s engineers has raised concerns about the platform’s stability since Musk bought the company. He acknowledged there had been some glitches, including a website outage, but said the outage was short and the site was running fine.

In the interview, which was streamed live via the Twitter Spaces service, Musk was also questioned over misinformation and hate speech on the platform.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)