NEW DELHI: Twitter ex-boss Jack Dorsey has triggered a political storm by alleging that India exerted pressure on the microblogging website to go soft during farmers’ protests in 2020-2021, a claim that the government on Tuesday rejected as an outright lie.
The former Twitter CEO in a TV interview in the US alleged that “during the farmer protest Indian government pressurised Twitter and said we will shut down Twitter in India, raid the homes of your employees if you don’t listen to us”.
India reacted sharply with minister of state for IT and electronics Rajeev Chandrashekhar calling Dorsey’s comments a plain lie.
“This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history,” the minister said tweeting “facts and truth” about Twitter.
Chandrashekhar said Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of India law.
“This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history Facts and truth @twitter undr Dorsey n his team were in repeated n continuous violations of India law. As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied. No one went to jail nor was twitter “shutdown”. Dorseys Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law. It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it. India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in India.
During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake. GoI was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news. Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, when they did it themselves when similar events took place in the USA.
To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws. There is ample evidence now in public domain abt Jacks twitter’s arbitrary, blatantly partisan n discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period. Twitter under Dorsey was not just violating Indian law, but was partisan in how it was using “deamplify” n deplatforming of some arbitrarily in violation of Art 14,19 of our constitution and also assisting in weaponising of misinformation. Our Govts policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India – compliance with laws to ensure Internet is Safe&Trusted, Accountable . #SafeTrustedInternet,” tweeted the minister.