Centre refutes Twitter ex-CEO Jack Dorsey's claims over farmers' protest
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, has refuted the claims by Twitter's co-founder Jack Dorsey over farmers' protest. On Monday, Dorsey alleged that Twitter had received "many requests" from India to block accounts covering farmers' protests and those criticizing the Centre. He added that the Indian authorities threatened to close the company's offices if it didn't comply with the requests.
Outright lie by Dorsey: Chandrasekhar
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday, Chandrasekhar said, "This is an outright lie by Dorsey- perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history." "Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of Indian law...They were in non-compliance with the law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied."
Government was obligated to remove misinformation, says minister
Chandrasekhar stated that when Dorsey served as Twitter's CEO, it had a problem accepting India's sovereignty. "During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake." "Government was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news," he added.
Here's Chandrasekhar's full Twitter post
India threatened to raid Twitter employees' houses: Dorsey
In an interview with the YouTube channel Breaking Points, Dorsey said, "India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers' protests, particular journalists 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." "And this is India, a democratic country," he stated.
Turkey behaved similar to India, says Dorsey
Dorsey, who resigned as Twitter CEO in November 2021 and left the board of directors in May 2022, further said that Turkey behaved similarly to India. "The Turkish government, too, threatened to shut down Twitter, which often got engaged in court battles with the government and won," he added. Dorsey's interview clip was shared by a number of social media accounts of the opposition.
Youth Congress leader Srinivas BV shares Dorsey's video
Farm laws were repealed after a year of protest
Notably, thousands of farmers started protesting against the Centre's three controversial farm laws around November 2020. They camped at the Delhi borders to demand the repeal of the agricultural laws. After a year of protest, PM Narendra Modi acknowledged the failure to convince the farmers to end their demonstrations. He announced the withdrawal of the laws in November 2021.
