On June 12 (local time) former CEO and founder of Twitter accused the Indian government of threatening Twitter during farmer protests and projected himself as a ‘free speech’ warrior. However, the truth is far from what he has projected. Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, he had accused the platform of suppressing his tweets. Interestingly, his accusations came at the time when Musk was in a legal battle with Twitter over the proposed purchase of the social media platform.
On September 13, 2022, Musk wrote, “My tweets are being suppressed!” and asked Twitter, Twitter Verified and then-CEO Parag Agarwal to fix it.
My tweets are being suppressed!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2022
Several people had confirmed that Elon Musk’s account had been suppressed. A USA based commentator had also confirmed that he was not being able to see tweets by Musk.
I hadn’t been seeing them and thought you weren’t posting. Only saw it at someone quote RT’ed Lex’s reply to you. Definitely something is up.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) September 18, 2022
Notably, Musk had desired to buy Twitter, and the deal was in place. However, Musk allegedly found discrepancies in the dealings that he mentioned in his submission at a US court after Twitter sued him for trying to back from the deal.
Later, on October 28, 2022, Elon Musk officially “took over”freed the bird” and made it a Private Company. Since taking over Twitter, Musk has unsuspended hundreds of accounts suspended for no concrete reasons or because of ideological differences.
Changes Musk brought to Twitter for better user experience
Musk has brought many changes to the platform, including ending the “verified” and replacing it with “Twitter Blue”. Previously, only “notable” people were verified by the platform, and it was a biased process that Musk pointed out several times. On the contrary, anyone with real credentials can now get verified by purchasing Twitter Blue Subscription. Only government handles are provided free verification under Grey Checkmark.
Furthermore, Musk has brought long tweets, high-resolution videos, and options like long videos, business account verification and monetisation options for creators as a step further to make the platform a one-stop solution for all.
Jack Dorsey lies, blames Indian govt – what Union Minister said
A video went viral on social media on Tuesday, 13th June, where in an interview, former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey went on a tirade against India, claiming that the Indian govt had threatened Twitter with a shut down if they did not withhold accounts that were critical of the government of India during the extremely violent farmers protest.
Responding to Jack Dorsey, Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said:
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 repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied. No one went to jail nor was twitter “shutdown”. Dorseys 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.
During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake. GoI was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news. Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, when they did it themselves when similar events took place in the USA.
To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws. There is ample evidence now in public domain abt Jacks twitter’s arbitrary, blatantly partisan n discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period. Twitter under Dorsey was not just violating Indian law, but was partisan in how it was using “deamplify” n deplatforming of some arbitrarily in violation of Art 14,19 of our constitution and also assisting in weaponising of misinformation. Our govts policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India – compliance with laws to ensure Internet is Safe&Trusted, Accountable”.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who is a union minister and Member of the Consultative Committee on MoE & IT, Ministry of Communications, essentially said that Twitter under Jack Dorsey was partisan, de-platformed those from India who they thought did not conform to their partisan and ideological view and refused to accept the sovereignty of Indian laws.
