Back in January, Twitter blocked content in India at Modi's request. More than just blocking links, certain tweets themselves were blocked:
https://theintercept.com/2023/01/24/twitter-elon-musk-modi-india-bbc/
In March, Twitter blocked a bunch of accounts in India, widening the censorship:
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punjab-amritpal-singh/
Guardian reported on it last week:
"Twitter agreed to block more than 120 accounts, including the Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh, the Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, several journalists and an Indian MP. Twitter also blocked the handle of the BBC’s Punjabi bureau."
In 2022, Musk said that Tesla looked into opening facilities in India but it as conditional on being able to sell and service cars in India (which makes sense). Given that it's an economically growing country of 1.4 billion people, it's a long-term important market to sell to. India might never be a profit center for Twitter, but it could certainly be a profit center for Tesla.
Yesterday, Elon Musk followed Modi on Twitter.
"Elon Musk has started to follow Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, on Twitter. The tech billionaire's action has generated a lot of discussion on social media, with many people guessing about what it might signal for the future of Tesla in India."
"Free speech absolutism" goes about as far as business interests do. Any centralized platform is corruptible, controllable.
To add more context, few years ago Indian government amended its IT laws, allowing them to take down any social media account or post without providing a reason.
All social media companies must comply with these regulations, or they risk losing their privileges, similar to those granted under Section 230 in the US.
Old Twitter resisted and even went to the Indian supreme court but it didn't work.
In short, no company or platform can restore free speech. I think nostr is the perfect answer.
India was also the first country to abolish most of its cash in 2016:
