India’s government has denied claims from former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, that the country attempted to aggressively shut down the social media platform.

Speaking in an interview on Monday (June 12), Dorsey claimed that Indian authorities threatened to block Twitter unless it followed orders to shut down accounts critical of the government’s handling of farmer protests.

The former CEO also claimed that India had threatened raids on employees if it didn’t follow the orders. 

Dorsey 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. 

“And this is India, a democratic country.”

The claims were criticised on Twitter by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy minister for information technology – calling them an “outright lie”.

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

“Twitter was misusing its power as a platform to selectively de-amplify and de-platform people both in India and abroad,” Chandrasekhar wrote.

Adding: “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.

“India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in India.”

Dorsey’s comments drew attention to allegations that India’s government regularly attempts to silence its critics.

In May 2021, while Jack Dorsey was still CEO, the Indian government imposed tighter regulations on the publishing of online content. At the time, citizens and experts feared that the new rules could cause problems for free speech. 

Twitter spoke out about the safety of its employees as the legislation came into effect after police attended their offices to investigate the tagging of some of its governing party posts. 

Indian police served a notice to Twitter after a government representative claimed the tagging of a tweet was “manipulated media”.

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