Reach Of Farmers' Protest On Twitter Wasn't As Expected: Rakesh Tikait Backs Jack Dorsey

Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait, who was at the forefront of the protest against the Centre's three contentious farm laws on Tuesday backed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's claims that the government of India had put pressure on Twitter over accounts related to farmers' protests during the agitation.

"Government of India must have made such attempts... what he said is correct," Tikait told reporters.

"We had information that the kind of reach on Facebook and Twitter that was expected on farmers' protest was not coming. They (the government) used to try to stop it at their level. The head (Dorsey) has clearly said this now... but such companies don't come under (just) anyone's pressure..." he said.

Pressure from India on Farmers Protest: Jack Dorsey

In an interview with YouTube podcast Breaking Points, Dorsey claimed the Indian government threatened to shut Twitter down unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts during farmers' protests.

He claimed that the Indian government "pressured" the company with threats of a shutdown and raids on employees if it did not comply with requests to take down posts and restrict accounts that were critical of the government over the protest by farmers against new agri laws in 2020 and 2021.

Union Minister hits back

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

"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.