Elon Musk announces new X move, vows to make government censorship requests more visible to users

Elon Musk has announced that X will increase the visibility of government demands seeking the removal or restriction of content on the platform. The move is part of a broader effort to provide greater transparency over content moderation, recommendation systems and government involvement in regulating online speech.

Musk shared the update through his X account, saying, "Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible."

Under the planned transparency changes, X users will be notified when government agencies request that specific posts be taken down or accounts face restrictions. The platform also reportedly intends to disclose which government body made the request and, when available, the legal basis or reasoning provided for seeking the action.

According to Crypto Briefing, X has complied with between 83% and 98.8% of government requests for content removal since Musk acquired the platform. The compliance rate has varied by reporting period and is higher than the rate recorded under Twitter’s previous management, the report said.

Netizens react

One of the social media users said, “Having politicians during election season not pop up in your “for you feed” unless you follow them isn’t censorship. America has laws where you can and cannot place political signs.” Another remarked, “This is the best way for exposing govt pressure on social media platforms.” “That is absolutely amazing, and how it should always be. Thank you”, “Love you” were some other comments.

Govt rejects X's claim on blocking order last year

The government on July 8 last year rejected X’s assertion that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had issued a new blocking order on July 3 covering 2,355 accounts, including those belonging to international news agency Reuters and Reuters World.

A MeitY spokesperson told news agency ANI that the government had asked X to restore access to the news agency’s handles in India immediately after they were blocked.

However, the spokesperson alleged that the Elon Musk-owned platform " unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn't unblock the URLs,".

"The government has not issued any fresh blocking order on 3rd July, 2025 and has no intention to block any prominent international news channels including Reuters and Reuters World. The moment Reuters and Reuters World were blocked on X platform in India, immediately the government wrote to 'X' to unblock them," the spokesperson said.

The government said it continued to press X to restore the accounts, adding that the engagement intensified from the night of July 5.

"The government continuously engaged and vigorously pursued 'X' from the late night of 5th July 2025. 'X' has unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn't unblock the URLs. However, after a lot of follow-up on hourly basis, X has finally unblocked Reuters and other URLs after 9 pm on 6th July 2025. They took more than 21 hours to unblock Reuters," the spokesperson added.