‘We’ll shut you down, raid homes': Twitter ex-CEO Jack Dorsey claims 'pressure' from Indian govt during farmers' protest

Jack Dorsey, Block founder and former Twitter CEO, has said in an interview which has gone viral that Twitter got a lot of requests from the Indian government to act against accounts covering the 2020-21 farmers’ protests. Dorsey claimed that the Indian government also urged Twitter to take action against those journalists who were critical of the government at the time.

The former Twitter CEO said in an interview to the YouTube channel Breaking Points: “India is a country that had many requests 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”.

The video was shared on Twitter by Srinivas BV, National President of the Indian Youth Congress.

MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar rejected Dorsey's claims in a tweet as an "outright lie" and said that this seems to be "an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history". Chandrasekhar also claimed that Twitter was in repeated and continuous violations of the Indian law when Dorsey and his team were at the helm of affairs. 

He further stated: "During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake. GoI was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news."

Chandrasekhar added: "Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, when they did it themselves when similar events took place in the USA."

The Union Minister cited "deamplifying" and deplatforming of some accounts arbitrarily, which was in violation of Articles 14 and 19 of the Indian Constitution. He added Twitter was also aiding the weaponisation of misinformation. 

In November 2020, farmers took to the streets against the three farm laws passed by the Parliament in September 2020. The farmers began these protests at three Delhi border points—Ghazipur, Tikri, and Singhu. Farmer unions had asked for a legal guarantee on the minimum support price (MSP) for crops among other demands.  

In November 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the repeal of the three farm laws. At the time, the Prime Minister had admitted the Centre’s failure in communicating with the farmers while appealing to them to call off the protests. The three laws that have now been repealed were The Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act; The Farmers' (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act; and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. 

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