New Delhi, March 25 -- In a petition before the Karnataka high court, X (formerly Twitter) has challenged the legality of India's Sahyog Portal-a central digital repository that tells social media companies which sites they must block access to. This, the company argues, is an attempt to side-step procedures already approved by the Supreme Court under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act).

Few would disagree that some online content (child pornography, trafficking, etc) is so utterly unacceptable that law enforcement must actively track it down and immediately remove all traces of its existence. At the same time, there is other content that some may want removed for ideological, personal or other less explicable re...