TWITTER’S CO-FOUNDER SAYS INDIA THREATENED SOCIAL NETWORK WITH SHUTDOWN

Tue 13 June 2023:

India, Nigeria and Turkey had threatened to shut Twitter down unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts, co-founder Jack Dorsey has alleged.

Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, said on Monday that India threatened the company with a shutdown and raids on employees if it did not comply with government requests to take down posts and restrict accounts that were critical of the government over protests by farmers in 2020 and 2021.

Former Twitter CEO @Jack Dorsey in an interview to @esaagar @krystalball on Breaking Points talks about Worlds Largest Democracy,
“India for example, India is one of the country which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of… pic.twitter.com/unF6dVmv0O

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) June 12, 2023

“India, for example. India is a country that have many requests of us around the farmers protests, around particular journalists that were critical of the government. 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 don’t follow suit.’ And this is India, a democratic country,” Dorsey said in an interview with YouTube news show breaking Points on Monday.

The former Twitter CEO added that Twitter had a feud with authorities in Turkey, who even filed complaints against the company in court, but lost most of the cases.

He also mentioned Nigeria as another country where Twitter has had problems, adding that the company was afraid to send its employees there because it believed they would be in danger.

In addition, Dorsey shared his story of communicating with the US government. He said it felt “super challenging” because the government was “asking to do things” and he personally had to testify for hours in front of Congress.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has repeatedly denied accusations that it is involved in online censorship, and on Tuesday called Dorsey’s comments an “outright lie.”

During farmer protests in 2020-2021, the Indian government asked Twitter to ban the “provocative” Twitter hashtag “#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide” and numerous accounts, Aljazeera reported. The company initially complied with the request, but later reinstated most of the profiles. After Twitter flagged some posts by India’s ruling party as misinformation, Indian police visited one of the company’s local offices, the report said.

Dorsey in his interview said many content takedown requests during the farmer protests were “around particular journalists that were critical of the government”.