Tribune Press Service
New Delhi, 13 June
Twitter’s former chief Jack Dorsey caused a political firestorm when he alleged India pressured the microblogging site to moderate farmers’ protests in 2020-2021, a claim the government dismissed on Tuesday as a lie, plain and simple.
The former CEO of Twitter claimed in a televised interview in the US that “while farmers were protesting, the Indian government pressured Twitter and said we will shut down Twitter in India and raid the homes of your employees if you don’t listen to us.”
India reacted strongly with the Minister of State for Information Technology and Electronics, Rajiv Chandrashekhar, calling Dorsey’s comments an outright lie.
“This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to get rid of this highly questionable period in Twitter’s history,” the minister said in a tweet titled “Facts and Truth”.
Chandrashekhar said that Twitter, led by Dorsey and his team, had repeatedly and consistently violated Indian law.
This is an outright lie from @jack – perhaps an attempt to get rid of this highly questionable period in Twitter’s history Facts & Truthtwitter underdr Dorsey n his team has repeatedly violated Indian law. They didn’t finally comply until June 2022. No one was jailed and Twitter was “shut down”. Dorsey’s Twitter regime has struggled to accept the rule of Indian law. He acted as if the laws of India did not apply to him. India as a sovereign state has the right to ensure that its laws are adhered to by all businesses operating in India. During the January 2021 protests, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide that were definitely not true. The Iraqi government had to remove disinformation from the platform because it could further inflame the situation based on fake news. The niveau de comportement partisan sur Twitter sous le régime de Jack était tel qu’ils available du mal à supprimer la desinformation de la plate-forme en Inde, alors qu’ils l’ont fait eux-mêmes lorsque des événements similaires se sont produits in the United States of America. And to make things even better, no arrests were made or anyone sent to jail. Our goal was only to ensure compliance with Indian laws. There is now ample evidence in the public domain of Jacks Twitter of scandalous and abusive partisan behavior, discrimination and abuse of power on its platform during this time. Not only was Twitter breaching Indian law by Dorsey, but it was biased in the way it used “de-amplification” to remove some of the arbitrariness of violating Articles 14 and 19 of our Constitution and also help weaponize misinformation. Our government policies remain clear to all brokers operating in India – follow the laws to ensure the internet is safe, reliable and responsible. #SafeTrustedInternet,” the minister tweeted.
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