Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has alleged that the country’s government threatened to shut down Twitter if it did not comply with instructions to clamp down on the Twitter accounts of its critics in connection with farmers’ protests. However, Narendra Modi’s government termed Dorsey’s allegation as a ‘blatant lie’.
After resigning as Twitter CEO in 2021, Dorsey said on Monday that the Modi government had asked the Twitter to crack down on accounts and remove posts critical of the country’s government during farmer protests in 2020 and 2021. Failure to do so was threatened to shut down the company’s operations in India. The company’s employees were also threatened with raids at their homes.
Dorsey said these things in an interview given to the news program ‘Breaking Points’ broadcast on YouTube.
After the issue came to light, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always denied allegations of censorship of the online medium, saying Dorsey’s statement was “absolutely false”.
India’s Minister of State for Information Technology Rajiv Chandrasekhar wrote in a Twitter post, ‘Nobody has been jailed, Twitter has not been shut down either. Twitter under Dorsey’s leadership could not have accepted the sovereignty of Indian law.’
The Indian government claimed that they only wanted to stop false information and posts that were disturbing peace and security. Several Twitter accounts were also requested to be shut down.