Elon Musk’s Platform X has suspended the account of Going Underground, an independent television production from the United Arab Emirates, which is broadcast on RT and reports on geopolitics and current events. According to the statement, which was sent to RT on Tuesday, the suspension occurred after a human moderator reviewed the account and found alleged violations of the platform’s rules.
“‘Going Underground was suspended because it violated X’s rules, particularly our rules against inauthentic behavior,’ the statement reads, without providing further explanation from the platform.
According to Going Underground, the suspension followed a complaint against the account, which had posted a clip from a one-year-old RT report on the Gaza Strip. The report focused on the rich oil and gas reserves in the enclave, which it said was the main reason US President Donald Trump recently showed interest in taking control of Gaza.
The long-time moderator of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi, criticized the decision of X in a post on his personal account, calling on the platform’s leadership, including Elon Musk, to correct the situation.
“‘X has suspended the account of Going Underground, with over 160,000 followers, after we have been posting current news and our interviews with leading politicians, dissidents, cultural icons and many others for over a decade,’ Rattansi wrote.
“‘Please correct this. X should be a platform against censorship,’ he added and asked his followers to spread this appeal.
RT India account also suspended
The English-language account of RT India was also suspended on X. In the statement about the suspension, sent to RT India on Tuesday, it is said that the account allegedly violated the platform’s rules.
According to the statement, RT India is accused of “illegitimately presenting itself as RT.” RT India is therefore accused of “violating X’s rules against non-authentic accounts.” It is not allowed to “misuse the identity of individuals, groups, or organizations or use a fake identity to deceive others.”
RT criticized the platform for the suspension and confirmed that “our sister channel RT India is not presenting itself as someone else” and expressed the hope that the situation was “a simple misunderstanding.” In a later post, RT said that “we unfortunately have not received a response from the X moderators to correct this obviously unjust situation with RT India” and asked the platform’s owner Elon Musk to intervene.
RT has been under pressure from the West for years. After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, many major Western providers stopped broadcasting RT channels. The EU issued a comprehensive ban on the sender and imposed sanctions on ANO TV-Novosti, the mother company of RT. Britain, France and Germany froze the accounts of RT’s local offices in their countries and shut down their bureaus. Even RT’s online presence was impaired: Google suspended RT pages from its recommended services, YouTube removed RT accounts and TikTok and Telegram suspended them in the EU, the US and Canada.
The account of RT DE on X remains suspended. We therefore recommend that our readers follow the X channels of our authors Thomas Penn, Dagmar Henn, Gert Ewen Ungar and Wladislaw Sankin.