On Monday, co-founder and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in an interview with a YouTube channel, Breaking Points, that the Indian government warned the tech giant that it would “shut down” the social media platform and conduct raids at employee homes.
Dorsey said that Twitter also received “many requests” to block accounts of those critical of the government, particularly during the farmers’ protests in 2021.
Dorsey’s Interview
In the scathing interview, Dorsey said that India had demanded several posts and accounts to be taken down, saying that “it manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India,’ which is a very large market for us.”
The comments were a likely reference to the Indian government’s request to take down 1,200 accounts for their “Khalistan” links during the farmers’ protests. While Twitter temporarily blocked a few accounts, it lifted the block, raising tensions with the government.
He also said that Twitter offices were raided and threatened to be shut down despite India being a democratic country.
In the interview, Dorsey claimed that Nigeria and Turkey had also made similar threats to the social media platform.
#WATCH | On former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey's claim on ‘pressure’ from India, Congress party's Chairperson of Social Media & Digital Platforms Supriya Shrinate says, "The topic of this press conference is to reveal how murder of democracy is being done in the mother of… pic.twitter.com/gLMK9C9PKb
— ANI (@ANI) June 13, 2023
Indian Government Responds
Indian Minister of State for Electronic and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said Dorsey’s comments were an “outright lie.”
Reversing the allegations, he said that Twitter was in “repeated and continuous violations of Indian law” and, on several occasions, “weaponised misinformation.” Chandrasekhar added that these violations were carried out “repeatedly” from 2020 to 2022, following which, the company only complied in June 2022.
The Indian Minister added that under Dorsey’s leadership, Twitter had “a problem accepting the sovereignty of India law” and “behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it.”
To this end, he said that India was “obligated” to request takedowns during the farmers’ protests as there was “a lot of misinformation and reports of genocide, which were definitely fake.”
This is an outright lie by @jack - perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history
— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) June 13, 2023
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… https://t.co/SlzmTcS3Fa
Past Allegations
In April, current Twitter CEO Elon Musk also raised concern about India’s “strict” social media regulations. Musk added that he would choose to follow the government’s orders rather than risk Twitter employees being imprisoned.
This was a likely reference to India’s Information Technology Rules, 2021, which allows authorities to arrest social media companies’ chief compliance officers in case of violations.
Last year in July, Twitter sued the Indian government in court and accused it of abusing its power over the “several” content takedown notices it has received in recent years.
In May 2021, the police in New Delhi also raided Twitter offices after the ruling BJP’s spokesperson Sambit Patra’s post was tagged as “manipulated media.”