Union Minister and senior BJP leader Anurag Thakur took a swipe at former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey for his claims that India tried to ‘pressure’ Twitter during the farmers’ protest. Thakur pointed out that Dorsey woke up after years of sleep and that too just when elections approach India.
Anurag Thakur told news agency ANI, “What was said, is a blatant lie. Jack Dorsey woke up after years of sleep & wants to cover up his misdeeds. When Twitter was bought by another person, it was revealed in ‘Twitter Files’ how was the platform being misused. Jack Dorsey has not been able to answer this to date because he was exposed…Several foreign forces wake up when elections approach India…”
Earlier in the day, Deputy Minister for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar also lashed out against Dorsey in response, calling his assertions an “outright lie”.
“No one went to jail nor was Twitter ‘shut down’. Dorsey’s Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law,” he said in a post on Twitter.
Meanwhile, former IT Minister RS Prasad said “At the time, Twitter didn’t comply with Indian laws. It is clear that all social media platforms are respected in India but they have to abide by the law of the land”
Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, said on Monday that India also threatened the company with raids on employees if it did not comply with government requests to take down certain posts.
“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,” Dorsey said in an interview with YouTube news show Breaking Points.
Meanwhile, many opposition party leaders came into his support saying that Dorsey had no reason to lie.
(With inputs from agencies)
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Updated: 13 Jun 2023, 01:12 PM IST