Co-founder Jack Dorsey said India threatened to shut down Twitter unless it restricted accounts critical of the government’s handling of farmer demonstrations, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ministry labeled an “outright lie.”
On Monday, Dorsey, who resigned as Twitter CEO in 2021, said India threatened the business with employee raids if it would not comply with government requests to remove tweets.
“It manifested in ways such as:
‘We will shut Twitter down in India,’ which is a very large market for us; ‘we will raid the homes of your employees,’ which they did; And this is India, a democratic country,” Dorsey told YouTube news show Breaking Points.
Modi’s Deputy Minister for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar called Dorsey’s claims an “outright lie.”
“No one was jailed or Twitter’shut down’.” “Dorsey’s Twitter regime had trouble accepting Indian law’s sovereignty,” he tweeted.
Dorsey’s remarks again highlighted international tech titans’ challenges under Modi. His government has regularly criticized Google, Facebook, and Twitter for not addressing fraudulent or “anti-India” content on their platforms or for not following guidelines.
Since multinational corporations in India rarely criticize the government, the former Twitter CEO’s statements garnered notice. Xiaomi’s court declaration last year accused India’s financial crime bureau of “physical violence” and coercion.
Dorsey also referenced comparable pressure from countries in Turkey and Nigeria, which had banned the site at various times before lifting the bans.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last year.
Chandrasekhar said Dorsey and his crew had regularly broken Indian law. He didn’t identify Musk but said Twitter has been compliant since June 2022.
Comment Template