Dorsey, govt in tweetstorm over Twitter ex-CEO's armtwisting charge

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, in sensational allegations, claimed the Indian government threatened to shut down Twitter unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts during farmers' protests, a charge denied by the government on Tuesday as an "outright lie".

In an interview, Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, claimed that the Indian government "pressured" the company with threats of a shutdown and raids on employees if it did not comply with requests to take down posts and restrict accounts that were critical of the government over the protest by farmers against new agri laws in 2020 and 2021.

Rubbishing the claims, Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar launched a no holds barred attack and said Dorsey's Twitter regime "had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law... It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it."

"No one went to jail nor was Twitter 'shut down'," Chandrasekhar said. "This is an outright lie by @jack --- perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history."

Dorsey also mentioned similar pressures from governments in Turkey and Nigeria.

Others in the government too joined Chandrasekhar in rebutting the claims.

Denying allegations made by Dorsey, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former IT and communication minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "No threat was issued to Twitter. We did, however, flag anti-India activities being entertained on the micro-blogging site."

"We did raise objections to Twitter timelines teeming with footage of the tricolour being pulled down at Red Fort and police personnel being beaten up," said Prasad, in an oblique reference to unsavoury events that took place during the agitation against farm laws.

"We pointed out that the act was no less outrageous than the siege of Capitol Hill for which Twitter had shown sensitivity," Prasad, who was IT and communication minister between July 2016 and July 2021, said.

"There were also instances of unverified accounts of people not living in the country engaging in anti-India activities. We had requested that they act against such users," he added.

He also lashed out at the Congress for doing politics on the "sacked" CEO of the company.

Information Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur in Shimla said Dorsey was attempting a cover-up of past misdeeds and Twitter's internal communications had exposed that the platform was "misused and there was bias and tinkering”.

The BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya said the social media company violated laws between 2020 and 2022 when Dorsey was at the helm of affairs.

Opposition parties quickly latched on to Dorsey's comments to attack the government with the Congress saying when farmers were protesting, the government was trying to suppress this news.        

"Be aware, 733 farmers were martyred in this movement and the dictator was engaged in polishing his image on their dead bodies," it tweeted without naming anyone.

Rajya Sabha MP and leader of Shiv Sena-UBT Priyanka Chaturvedi, replying to Chandrasekhar's tweet, said the law Twitter broke was to "allow hate speech and rabid BJP agenda."

The government had in 2021 asked Twitter to block certain provocative hashtags which the social media platform initially compiled but later restored most of the accounts, citing "insufficient justification". This led to a standoff with government officials threatening legal consequences.

Weeks later, the police visited a Twitter office as part of another probe linked to tagging of some ruling party posts as manipulated. Twitter at the time said it was worried about staff safety.

In the longish Twitter post, Chandrasekhar cited what the government saw as non-compliance with the local laws governing social media platforms.

"Facts and truth - @twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of Indian law. As a matter of fact, they were in non-compliance with the law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied," he said.

In Thiruvananthapuram, he said Twitter was not in compliance with Indian law during 2020 and 2022 but "they were neither raided nor sent to jail and so this is a fiction that Dorsey has put out there for whatever reasons he has put out there."

"But the facts are that the Government of India has consistently maintained that any platform, whether foreign or Indian, whether big or small, must comply with Indian laws if they are to operate in India and offer services and products to the Indian citizens," he said.

"The most important thing that I would like to share is that certain people are now aware of what Twitter was doing during those two years as that has come out into public domain through the Twitter files," he added.

Twitter, he said, was misusing its power as a platform to selectively de-amplify, selectively deplatform people both in India and abroad.

In India, it was a direct violation of Article 14 and Article 19 of the Constitution and the government has always maintained that any platform, whether Twitter or any other in in the country, has to protect every Indian citizen's fundamental rights -- Articles 14, 19 and 21-- and has to be in compliance with Indian laws, the minister said.

"That is exactly where the government's views are, then in 2020 and currently in 2023," he said.

He said he was "deeply disappointed" by Jack Dorsey's attempt at "lying about what happened because certainly whatever he has said in yesterday's statement is untrue and is false".

India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in India, the minister.

"During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake.

"GoI (government of India) was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news," he said in the Twitter post without giving details.

The minister charged Twitter with not complying with requests to take down tweets spreading misinformation.

"Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under the Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India..." he said, noting that they did it when similar events took place in the US.

He also alleged that there was ample evidence in the public domain about Jack's "arbitrary, blatantly partisan and discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period".

Twitter under Dorsey was not just violating Indian laws but was partisan in how it was using "deamplify" and de-platforming arbitrarily, in violation of the Constitution and also assisting in "weaponising of misinformation", the minister alleged.

"To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws," Chandrasekhar said. "Our government's policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India - compliance with laws to ensure the Internet is Safe and Trusted, Accountable".

Dorsey made the sensational allegation in an interview with the YouTube news show Breaking Points on Monday.

"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; And this is India, a democratic country," he said talking about pressures Twitter faced from the Indian government when he was the CEO.

The Indian government has repeatedly denied engaging in online censorship.

"Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of Indian law. Say MoS IT. Lol! Yeah, the law they broke was to allow hate speech and rabid BJP agenda. But there was no crackdown or compliance issues since it supported their agenda. The minute people and opposition started to fight back using the platform, the government started to crackdown! So please, spare this little sermon," Chaturvedi tweeted.

She went on to state that Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has "on record spoken about GoI's multiple requests to take down content/suspend accounts that goes against his own belief regarding absolute FoS (freedom of speech). They comply, since GoI."