Ex-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey might have given another handle to Indian opposition parties and Modi detractors, the fact of the matter is Twitter was partisan under him !!
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MoS IT counters Jack's allegations
To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws. There is ample evidence now in public domain abt Jacks twitter's arbitrary, blatantly partisan n discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period.
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 ."
During an interview late Monday night to YouTube channel Breaking Points, when asked about the pressures he had received from foreign governments during his time as CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey said, “India is a country that had many request of us around the farmers protest, around particular journalists that were critical of the government, and 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; ‘we will shut down your offices, if you don’t follow suit,’ and this is India, a democratic country”.
Chandrasekhar has tweeted to say -- "This is an outright lie by @jack
- perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history
"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 repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied.
No one went to jail nor was twitter "shutdown". 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."
Indian parliament's standing committee on IT in February 2019 had disallowed its executive director Mahima Kaul to appear before the panel.
BJP lawmaker and now Union Minister of State for Finance, Anurag Thakur, was the chairman of the panel and even BJP patriarch L K Advani was a member of the panel.
Twitter had fought with the US Congress and also legislature bodies of Singapore and European Union.
Then the Twitter-Delhi police row had come to the fore and various pros and cons were debated.
BJP's Guru Prakash said the Congress seems to have found an 'ally' in Twitter in its long drawn battle against the Modi government. For his part, Congress leader Salman Khurshid said Delhi cops visiting the micro blogging platform's Gurugram and Delhi offices was like 'browbeating' the site.
Congress national convener Ruchira Chaturvedi even joined the bandwagon where 'demands' have started with hashtag #BanTwitterInIndia.
“And bhakts are trending #BanTwitterInIndia on Twitter. Didn’t they say they were moving to Koo? They are still here?”
tweeted Ms Chaturvedi.
After the US Presidential elections, it came to light even in the western media that much of the political content Americans saw on social media was actually 'not produced by human users'.
It was reported one in every five election-related tweets from Sept. 16 to Oct. 21 in 2016, - that incidentally Trump won against Hillary Clinton was generated by computer software programs called social 'bots'.
In circa 2020, Scott Nover wrote: "Joe Biden may have won, but it was Twitter’s election".
Nover is a Washington-based reporter who writes about social media for Adweek.
Even the BBC reported on Nov 4, 2020 that "Twitter had earlier taken similar action over a post in which Donald Trump said for the first time that his opponents "are trying to steal the election".
In India too, BJP leaders and sympathisers know pretty well how anti-Modi and anti-governments have been sharing more time and space on social media.
Many say, the popular microblogging site has given unto itself a new role.
It is no longer a technology enabler platform and hence rules of the game must change and if 'Twitter takes on the role of an editor', the FDI policies on the foreign media should fall on them, says a BJP leader.
At the height of the farmers’ protest in the country in 2021, the Centre had asked Twitter to take down nearly 1,200 accounts for alleged “Khalistan” links. Before that, it had asked the platform to take down more than 250 accounts.
Twitter had responded by blocking some of the accounts but subsequently unblocked them, which had irked the IT ministry. Later in its reply, Twitter had refused to block these accounts further citing freedom of speech on its platform.
The reply, however, had not gone down well with the Government, which had said that the platform could not possibly “assume the role of a court and justify non-compliance”.
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