'Will shut you down, houses of employees will be raided'; Twitter co-founder accuses Centre of threatening company

NEW DELHI: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has alleged that India had put pressure on the micro-blogging platform during the farmers' protest in the country. He alleged that the company received 'several requests' from India to black out the accounts of those supporting farmers' protests and criticizing the government.

Jack Dorsey made this revelation during an interview. He said this when quizzed about whether the company had faced any pressure from foreign governments.

"India is a country that had many requests of us around the farmers' protest, around particular journalists that were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as 'we will shut Twitter down in India', which is a very large market for us. We would raid the homes of your employees', which they did; We will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit," Dorsey said during the interview.

"Indian govt told Twitter to black out farmers protests&tweets by journalists critical of the govt. Threatened to shut Twitter down in India&raid the homes of Twitter employees, which they did. And India is supposed to be a democratic country!": Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter pic.twitter.com/UDaBw92GBq

— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) June 12, 2023

Congress leaders, including Randeep Surjewala, have come out criticizing the Modi government by retweeting the interview.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar responded that the allegation is an outright lie. He said that Twitter under Dorsey and team were "in repeated and continuous violations of Indian law and that they complied only after June 2022.

This is an outright lie by @jack - perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history

Facts and truth@twitter undr Dorsey n his team were in repeated n continuous violations of India law. As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law… https://t.co/SlzmTcS3Fa

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) June 13, 2023