Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey claimed that the Indian government pressured the microblogging platform to block accounts covering the farmers’ protests. On June 13 in New Delhi, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar called Dorsey’s claim “an outright lie” and “an attempt to brush out the very dubious period” in Twitter’s history.
Dorsey, who resigned from Twitter’s board last year, made these claims in an interview with the YouTube channel ‘Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar’ on Monday, when he claimed that the Indian government had threatened to shut down Twitter in India and raid the homes of its workers. India is a major market for us, and we’ve had numerous demands to disable our service there in the wake of recent demonstrations by farmers and the imprisonment of journalists who have been outspoken in their criticism of the government. Dorsey is quoted as stating in an interview with a YouTube channel, “We would raid the homes of your employees, which they did, and we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit and this is India, a democratic country.”
Twitter under Jack Dorsey and his crew were “in repeated and continuous violations of Indian law,” Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated today.
He tweeted, “No one went to jail nor was Twitter shutdown.”
He said on the social media platform today, “This is an outright lie by @jack—perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period in twitter’s history.” There were frequent and ongoing breaches of Indian law committed by @twitter under Dorsey and his crew. From 2020 to 2022, they were continually out of compliance with the legislation, and it wasn’t until June of 2022 that they caught up. According to his post, nobody was arrested and Twitter was not taken down.
He went on to say that Dorsey’s Twitter administration has trouble respecting Indian law as supreme.
It acted as if it were above India’s law. “As a sovereign nation, India has the right to require all businesses operating within its borders to abide by Indian law,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar wrote.
He made reference to the January 2021 farmer protest and said that the government of India had a responsibility to censor the spread of false information that may inflame the situation.
There was a lot of false information and even allegations of genocide during the riots in January of 2021. Due to the possibility for the spread of false information, the GoI was required to take down the offending content. Because of the extreme partisanship on Twitter under the Jack rule, Chandrasekhar tweeted, “they are having trouble removing misinformation from the platform in India, despite having no trouble doing so themselves when similar events occurred in the USA.”
The emphasis, he said, was on ensuring compliance with Indian regulations, so no one was raided or thrown in prison.
No one was arrested or subjected to a raid, to put the record right. Our only concern was with following Indian regulations. There is now “ample evidence in the public domain” of “Jack Twitter’s arbitrary, blatantly partisan and discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period,” he said.
“Twitter under Dorsey was not only breaching Indian law, but was political in how it was employing “deamplify” n deplatforming of individuals arbitrarily in violation of Art 14,19 of our constitution and also helping in weaponizing of disinformation. According to a subsequent email, “our govts policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India — compliance with laws to ensure the Internet is Safe&Trusted, Accountable.”
The three Central agriculture laws were slated for repeal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2021.
Then Prime Minister Modi said in his speech to the country, “Today I want to tell everyone that we have decided to repeal all three farm laws.”
Since the Centre enacted the three agricultural regulations in 2020, farmers have protested in significant numbers.
These three agriculture statutes are: There will be a system in place for farmers to sell their goods outside of the APMCs thanks to the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act. Produce may be purchased by any licenced dealer at prices determined by the dealer and the producers. The state governments will not levy the mandi tax on this agricultural trade.
Farmers are able to engage in contract farming and sell their products in whichever market they want thanks to the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act.
An update to the original Essential Commodities Act, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act brings about these changes.
