Since 2021, communication between Twitter and the Indian government has deteriorated when Twitter was forced to shut down accounts after a massive farmers’ protest. Recently, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey blamed the Indian government of censoring content and threatening to shut the platform. However, the Indian government has vehemently denied the accusation.
In an interview with the U.S. YouTube show; Breaking Points on 10th June 2023, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey blamed the Indian government of censoring content and threatening to shut the platform while he was the CEO.
“India, for example, was a country that had many requests around the farmers’ protests, around particular journalists that were critical of the government,” Dorsey stated.
“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,” Mr Dorsey told the show’s hosts.
Since 2021, communication between Twitter and the Indian government has deteriorated. The government requested Twitter to remove tweets it believed had used an offensive hashtag, and accounts it claimed were used by Pakistan-backed Sikh separatist groups in response to farmer protests over several agriculture reform measures.
As a result, Twitter decided to block about 250 accounts, including those of a news publication, activists, and groups that supported the protests on the outskirts of Delhi for a whole year. However, Twitter later reinstated the accounts due to “insufficient justification.”
Even then, the Indian government remained persistent and immediately demanded that Twitter block the accounts again. They told their employees in India that legal action would take place, which could be up to seven years in prison if they did not comply.
However, with this latest allegation by Dorsey, the Indian government vehemently denied the accusation. In a Twitter post on June 13, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Indian Deputy Minister for Information Technology, called his claims an “outright lie” and suggested it was an attempt to “brush out” a “very dubious period of Twitter’s history.” “No one went to jail nor was Twitter “shut down’’ he added.
Although Modi and his ministers frequently post on Twitter, free speech activists have expressed worries about the government’s censoring of any criticism under the premise of national security.
This year, according to the most recent assessment from the international media watchdog, Reporters without Borders (RSF), India’s position on the World Press Freedom Index dropped from 140 to 161 out of 180 nations.
