 "Rajeev Chandrasekhar")
Minister of State IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar slammed Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter on his comments on Farmer Protests. He said, “No one went to jail nor was Twitter ‘shutdown’.”
Chandrasekhar was responding to Dorsey’s comment he made during an interview on YouTube news show Breaking Points. Dorsey, former CEO Twitter said that during the farmer protest Indian government pressurized Twitter and said they will shut down twitter in India, raid the home of its employees if they didn’t listen.
He was responding to a question by the host of the show how governments across the world have used pressure tactics. He also added that Turkey Government too threatened to shut down Twitter.
“This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitters history,” said the Minister in his tweet.
He further goes on to explain how Twitter under Dorsey continued to violate Indian laws. “As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied. Dorseys 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 said.
Chandrasekhar further said that during the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake. “GoI was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news. 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 added.
He further added that no one was raided or sent to jail.
“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. Our govts policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India - compliance with laws to ensure Internet is Safe&Trusted, Accountable,” tweeted Chandrasekhar.
