Rajeev Chandrasekhar Calls Jack Dorsey’s Allegations of India Threatening to Shut Down Twitter an “Outright Lie”
Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has responded to a video interview of Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, which was posted online just hours ago. In the interview, Dorsey made allegations against the Indian government, claiming that they threatened to shut down Twitter offices in India if they did not block accounts critical of the government during the farmer’s protest. Chandrasekhar has called these claims an “outright lie” and accused Dorsey and his team of repeatedly violating Indian laws.
Chandrasekhar tweeted: “This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to debunk that highly questionable period in twitter history.” He then added the next part of his tweet titled “Facts and the truth”: “@twitter Undr Dorsey n his team repeatedly violated the Indian Act. In fact, they repeatedly failed to comply with the law from 2020-2022, and only in June 2022 did they finally comply.
“No one went to jail and Twitter was ‘shut down’. Dorseys Twitter management had trouble accepting the sovereignty of Indian law. It acted as if Indian laws did not apply to it. India as a sovereign state has the right to ensure that all companies operating in India obey its laws.”
Rajeev Chandrasekhar responds to Jack Dorsey’s claims
The Union minister also reviewed the events during the farmers’ protest and said that there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide on Twitter that were “preventatively fake” and that the Indian government had an obligation to remove such fake news that could “advance”. inflame the situation.”
“During Jack’s regime, the partisan behavior at Twitter was such that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India when they did it themselves when similar events happened in the US,” he added.
Chandrasekhar explained, “To set the record straight, no one was attacked or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring compliance with Indian laws.”
“There is now abundant evidence in the public domain about Jacks Twitter’s arbitrary, blatantly biased and discriminatory behavior and abuse of power on its platform during that time,” he said.
“Twitter under Dorsey not only violated the Indian Act but was biased in the way it used ‘deamplify’ and arbitrarily removing some from the platform in violation of Article 14.19 of our Constitution and also helped in weaponizing misinformation,” the Union minister said. .
“Our government policies are clear to all intermediaries operating in India – compliance with laws to ensure that the Internet is safe and reliable, responsible,” Chandrasekhar stated.
Jack Dorsey claimed that Twitter was threatened by the Indian government
Speaking on the Breaking Points podcast series, Dorsey was asked about anecdotal examples of pressure from foreign governments while on Twitter. Responding to a question, Dorsey said the Indian government “had many requests” for the farmers’ protests and certain journalists who were critical of the government. He also said the government threatened on Twitter to close its offices and raid workers’ homes if the demands were not met.
