India regularly requested Twitter to remove certain posts and accounts: Former CEO Jack Dorsey

A file photo of ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Photo/AFP

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has alleged that the Indian government threatened to shut the platform and raid employees' houses in the country if the tweets and accounts linked to the farmers' protest in 2020 were not removed.

Dorsey was speaking during an interview with a US-based YouTube channel.

Dorsey's latest allegations on Indian government's requests during the farmers' protests, have triggered another controversy. Calling India ‘world's largest democracy,' Dorsey alleged that the government issued regular requests to Twitter to remove certain posts and accounts, often accompanying these demands with threats.

The former twitter boss said that the micro-blogging site was also asked to censor journalists critical of the government.

Government of India has denied the allegations and repeatedly accused Twitter of violating laws.

"This is an outright lie... Perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history," federal minister Rajeev Chandrashekar tweeted on Tuesday. "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."

Dorsey's comments come at a time when the platform has been caught up in an intensifying debate on its role in supporting principles of free speech amid demands in several countries to control Twitter's influence.

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He quit as the Twitter CEO in 2021 and the social media platform was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022.

In the interview, which was uploaded on YouTube on Monday, 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 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.

"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; 'we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit.' And this is India, a democratic country," Dorsey told the show's hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti.