KOLKATA: Former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey ruffled quite more than a few feathers as he claimed that the Indian government has requested to block Twitter accounts that were focussing on farmers’ protests.
The Twitter co-founder’s comments drew sharp reactions from the opposition parties, with Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC), which cautiously supported farmers’ protests, launching a scathing attack on the central government.
In a scathing attack on the central government, senior TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said that Dorsey’s comments show the rise of ugly heads of authoritarianism.
ALSO READ: ‘Outright lie’: India slams ex-Twitter boss for farmer stir censorship claim
Speaking to The New Indian, Roy said, “AITC has all along focused on the danger of subversion of democracy with denial of personal liberty and the right of expression of the citizens coupled with infringement of freedom of the press. These issues have since been highlighted by foreign media and also discussed in parliaments both inside and outside India.”
“Examples are galore as to how the opposition’s voice is being throttled and print, electronic and social media have been made to measure,” he added.
“The revelations made by Jack Dorsey on the suppression of tweets regarding farmers’ agitation have clearly depicted the rise of ugly heads of authoritarianism,” Roy asserted.
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
Earlier, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said, “The same familiar statement was received from the government that he is lying, but Jack Dorsey has no reason to lie against the government. He is neither a Twitter CEO nor a board member. Who is the central government really afraid of? But the more you suppress the truth, the faster it emerges.”
Shrinate accused the central government of imposing a shadow ban on Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account for a period of six months starting from August 2021.
Twitter’s ex CEO Dorsey is making a desperate case for himself to cover up his sins. In fact, this inveterate liar is doing nothing different today from what he did in 2018-20 when his Indian female colleagues — now ousted from Twitter — openly joined hands with 39 Indian… pic.twitter.com/E8odNaATgs
— Rohan Dua (@rohanduaT02) June 13, 2023
In an interview, Dorsey, who sold Twitter to Tesla’s Elon Musk for $44 billion last year, said, “India, for example, is a country that sent many requests regarding the farmers’ protest, particularly journalists critical of the government.”
ALSO READ: Twitter before Musk regime had power to read your DMs!
“And 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,” he added.
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