Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, says India, the world’s largest democracy, repeatedly demanded the social media giant erase certain content and accounts, often with legal threats. Dorsey claimed India has several demands for farmers’ protests and critical journalists.
After the Indian government threatened legal action against Twitter, hundreds of accounts and hashtags were suspended in early 2021. Most suspended accounts supported farmers’ protests against the new legislation.
“We will shut Twitter down in India’… ‘we would raid the homes of your employees,’ which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit,'” the Indian government ordered. Dorsey told Breaking Points that India is democratic.
Twitter fought government orders to erase messages and suspend accounts. The business sued the Indian government over multiple tweet and account block orders.
Twitter took longer than American companies to comply with India’s new IT standards. These laws require enterprises to nominate and disclose contact information for regulatory compliance, the nodal point of reference, and grievance redressal representatives to address local issues.
A special Delhi Police force surprised two Twitter offices in 2021 for noncompliance with these new restrictions. Twitter was “concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve.”
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s government deputy minister for information technology, denied Dorsey’s claims and accused him of trying to “brush out that very dubious period of Twitter’s history.”
Chandrasekhar stated Dorsey and Twitter “repeated and continuous violations of India law.” “They violated the law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and finally complied in June 2022. Twitter was not “shut down” or imprisoned. Dorsey’s Twitter couldn’t embrace Indian legislation.
It ignored India’s laws. India has the right to enforce its laws on all Indian firms. Misinformation and bogus genocide claims abounded the January 2021 protests. Because fake news may inflame the situation, India had to remove misinformation from the platform.