Twitter Co-Founder, Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter has accused the centre government of pressurizing them to take down tweets and Twitter handles critical of the government. He posed the allegations in an interview with American News Series. In addition to this, he said that the Indian government ‘threatened’ Twitter that they will shut down the platform. The opposition party has passed a statement on this incident and said, “BJP is the killer of Democracy.”
Tussle between BJP and Twitter
These allegations are just an addition to the already problematic relationship between BJP and Twitter. At this time, there is a great demand in several countries of the world to control Twitter’s influence. There is a heated debate about Twitter’s role in supporting the principles of free speech.
“We will raid the homes of your employees, said the Indian government” accuses Dorsey
In the interview uploaded on Monday, Mr. Dorsey said, “Countries like India and Turkey made many requests to us to take down journalists’ accounts that give tactile information and remove them from the platform”.
He further added that he was “surprised at the level of engagement and requests” by governments of the world to censor content on the platform during his time.
“India, for example, was a country that had many requests around the farmers’ protests, around particular journalists that were critical of the government,” he said.
India pressurized Twitter in every possible way and they were convinced by saying, “We will shut Twitter down in India”. “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 added.
“This is an outright lie…,” says BJP
Rajeev Chandrashekhar Tweet on Tuesday, reacting to this whole matter. The tweet said, “This is an outright lie… Perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter’s history.”
He further added, “No one went to jail nor was Twitter ‘shutdown’. 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.”