Motorola Sues Social Media Platforms and Creators in India

"Motorola has filed a lawsuit in India against social media platforms and content creators," reports TechCrunch, "over posts it alleges are defamatory..." The lawsuit, filed in a Bengaluru court and obtained by TechCrunch, names platforms such as X, YouTube, and Instagram along with dozens of content creators, and seeks takedown of the content as well as broader restraint on what it describes as false or defamatory material related to the company's devices. In its over 60-page filing, Motorola has sought a permanent injunction restraining the defendants from publishing or sharing what it describes as false or defamatory content about its products, including reviews, videos, comments, and boycott campaigns.

The complaint cites hundreds of posts across platforms, including videos alleging device issues and phones catching fire. But it is also targeting unfavorable product reviews and user commentary that the company alleges are false or defamatory. In a statement after publication, a Motorola spokesperson said it had initiated legal action "in the interest of public safety" against what it described as demonstrably false claims that its devices had exploded or caught fire.
One online creator told TechCrunch "they expect more such legal action in the future, as evolving rules around online content increase liability for creators and platforms — a trend reflected in recently proposed changes to India's IT rules aimed at tightening oversight of online content."

A Motorola spokesperson "said the company did not seek to suppress legitimate reviews or criticism and was reviewing the scope of the proceedings, adding that it apologized to creators affected inadvertently."

Just to add some context

[Anonymous Coward]

The Motorola that is being discussed here is a subsidiary of Lenovo.

Motorola should thank the Streisand effect

[shanen]

I didn't know the company still existed. I vaguely remember vultures selling off pieces.

Should I do an AI-polluted search to find out whatever happened to Nokia?

Re: Motorola should thank the Streisand effect

[FudRucker]

I remember Motorola when they sold commercial and public service two-way radios for cars & trucks, I guess they still do I have not kept up on that end

Re: Motorola should thank the Streisand effect

[Z00L00K]

They still do, severely overpriced too.

But they 'need' it to pay for their lawyers.

Re:Motorola should thank the Streisand effect

[amp001]

Some brief history (from memory, not AI, so a few facts may be wrong here and there):

Motorola was founded in 1928 as Galvin Manufacturing Co. After creating the first commercial car radio in 1930 (the "Motor Victrola", or "Motorola") they renamed the company. It has a long history of creating new businesses and then either spinning them off or selling them outright to other companies (usually right before they become low margin / commodity). Televisions, pagers, semiconductors, etc.

The handset (and cable modem, set-top box, and cable infrastructure) business was spun off in 2011. The only unusual thing about that transaction was that due to the significant consumer brand recognition for handsets at the time, the new company took the "Motorola" name, while the old company was renamed again to Motorola Solutions (but can still put the "Motorola" name on non-consumer products like police radios, etc.). Yes, this is confusing.

Then, Google bought that company, sold the cable business to Arris, stripped out the core handset engineering teams (which now design Pixel phones for Google), and sold the rest to Lenovo for just under $3B.

Motorola Solutions currently has a market cap around four times larger than all of Lenovo, not just the part of Lenovo descended from the Motorola handset division they eventually bought from Google. They still make police radios, but also body worn cameras, command center solutions (911 call-taking, dispatch, etc.) and a whole bunch of fixed surveillance cameras under various brands.

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

Some brief history (from memory, not AI, so only a few facts may be wrong here and there)

Fixed that for you...

Re:

[unixisc]

It doesn't - not as the historic company. Freescale, for instance, is a part of NXP. The phone business was sold to Lenovo, which still uses the Motorola brand while manufacturing phones

Re:

[shanen]

Interesting replies, and thanks. Should I add the note that Lenovo bought the ThinkPad business from IBM as part of that branch of the corporate histories?

right

[Anonymous Coward]

A Motorola spokesperson "said the company did not seek to suppress legitimate reviews or criticism and was reviewing the scope of the proceedings, adding that it apologized to creators affected inadvertently."

No, you just waited until the month it was legal to suppress legitimate reviews in India, and accidentally sued only in India and no other country, you know all the ones that didn't just make this legal.

All a super coincidence after another after another.

Oh and it's the same oppression that's happened countless of times in the past just like this?
Yup they made it decades through life never hearing of a single one of them.
All an accident.

Well, as I don't live in India I'm free to say, hey Moto maybe if you m

The beginning of the end

[ZombieCatInABox]

When your company is already on shaky grounds, you can always count on your legal team to deliver the coup de grâce.

Re:

[Brymouse]

Motorola has a long, long history of suing people and businesses over patents and using the government to harass and intimidate researchers. They were the final defendant to lose to Armstrong's widow in 1967 after the supreme court refused to hear their appeal. This was 13 years after he killed himself over this litigation. Till the end, they maintained they invented FM.

I'm currently fighting several parallel SLAPP suits from a Motorola dealer for and exposing his resume as being likely fabrications. [w9cr.net]

probably backlash

[FudRucker]

Motorola is going to sell a smartphone with GrapheneOS that will take google's digital umbilical cord out of your phone so the google fanboys in India organized a shitposting campaign.
I will buy one as ASAP when they are released

proof?

[freeze128]

How does Motorola know that the claims of exploding phones are false? I personally knew someone in the U.S. with a Motorola phone that inexplicably caught fire.Since there are a Billion possible customers in that market, it's possible that the numbers of faulty phones could be much higher.

I had a Motorola battery swell up.

[Fly Swatter]

It swelled so fast it pushed the screen off the case, which turned out to be a help for removing said screen to install the replacement battery.

The real problem isn't that the battery swelled up - it is the fact that no one would take the battery for recycling because it was now worse than toxic waste. The official method cost nearly one third of a new phone or at least twice the new battery. It wound up quietly placed in the self-serve battery recycling kiosk in a random hardware store.

Here's the thi