Outright Lie: Centre Rubbishes Jack Dorsey’s Govt Pressurised Twitter During Farmer Protest Charge

Union Information and Technology Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday rubbished former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's claim that the social media platform came under pressure from the Indian government during the farmers' protest.

Taking to Twitter, Chandrasekhar said, "This is an outright lie by Jack Dorsey perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history.

"This is an outright lie by Jack Dorsey - perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history. Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of Indian law. As a matter of fact, they were in non-compliance with the 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," Chandrasekhar tweeted.

"Dorsey's Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law. It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it," he added.

"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. Government of India was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news," the union minister clarified.

"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," he said.

"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," he added.

"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," the union minister said.

"Our govts policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India - compliance with laws to ensure Internet is Safe and Trusted, Accountable," Chandrashekar said while responding to Dorsey's claim that Twitter came under pressure from the Indian government during the farmers' protest.

What did Jack Dorsey say?

In a YouTube Show 'Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar', Jack Dorsey claimed that Twitter had received many requests from India to block accounts covering farmers' protests and those critical of the government.

During the interview, Dorsey said, "India for example, India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as 'we will shut Twitter down in India'... 'we would raid the homes of your employees', which they did; 'we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit'. And this is India, a democratic country."