‘Will shut Twitter down… raid homes’: Jack Dorsey’s claim on ‘pressure’ from India during farmers’ protest

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, in a stunning allegation, claimed that the company had received “many requests” from India to block accounts covering farmers’ protests and those critical of the government.

While the government was yet to react to Dorsey’s allegation, the Congress’s wings – the Youth Congress and National Students’ Union of India – took to Twitter to share the clip of his claim which he made during an interview to YouTube channel Breaking Points on Monday.

During the interview, when asked if he had faced any pressure from foreign governments, Dorsey, who stepped down from Twitter’s board last year, replied, “India for example, India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’… ‘we would 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.”

In November 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the repeal of the three controversial farm laws, after thousands of farmers had been camping at Delhi border points in a protest of unprecedented scale since November 2020. Modi admitted the failure in convincing the farmers and appealed to them to call off their year-long protest. In the winter session of Parliament, the three laws were withdrawn.

According to Dorsey, Turkey behaved similarly – like India. The Turkish government, too, threatened to shut down Twitter, which often got engaged in court battles with the government and won, he added.

Reacting to Dorsey’s interview, national president of the Indian Youth Congress Srinivas BV tweeted, “Mother of Democracy – Unfiltered.”

Neeraj Kundan of the NSUI alleged that the “BJP is the killer of democracy, it is being proved again and again”.

Elon Musk became ‘reckless’: Jack Dorsey

Dorsey also spoke on Elon Musk’s run as Twitter CEO, calling some of the moves the billionaire made “fairly reckless”.

The former Twitter CEO, who has backed the invite-only, Twitter-alternative Bluesky. Dorsey said he asked Musk to join Twitter’s board many times before Musk joined in April of last year, during which Musk also agreed to buy Twitter.

“Elon is our number one user. He’s our number one customer… He understood the platform deeply, and he’s a technologist and he builds technology,” Dorsey said. But when Musk tried to back out of buying the company, prompting a lawsuit from Twitter, Dorsey said was “when things really went south”.