Is Dorsey trying to gain relevance in US political season? asks Rajeev Chandrasekhar

New Delhi, June 14

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on Wednesday again hit out at former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, further questioning his India 'pressure' statement amid the ongoing US political season.

Speaking at the 'FE Digital Bharat Economy Conclave 2023', the minister reiterated that the India 'pressure' statement was an outright lie by Dorsey.

"It is political season in the US. Is he (Dorsey) trying to claw his way back into relevance? All of those questions he can answer but certainly, without any fear of contradiction, what he has said is an outright lie," the minister said.

"We neither shut down Twitter nor had any other punitive consequences imposed on Twitter. We are a democratic country and live by the rule of law and, therefore, regardless of whether you are in San Francisco or Menlo Park or Bangalore or Hyderabad, the rule of law applies to you as well," Chandrasekhar stressed.

He said that it has become very clear that these social media platforms require more guardrails "because of the kind of arbitrary and abuse of power and misuse of power that they exercise".

"Either because they follow a particular political ideology or because somebody just wants to play God. A lot of the stuff about Twitter that is now in the public domain reinforces the need for guardrails all around the world," the minister emphasised.

The Centre earlier lashed out at Dorsey for claiming that the Indian government threatened to wind it down and conducted raids on employees' homes, saying it was an attempt to "brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history".

Dorsey alleged in an interview with YouTube channel 'Breaking Points' that the threats came as Twitter refused to comply with the government's demands to block accounts during the farmers' protests in early 2021.

In the interview, Dorsey claimed that India put pressure on the platform.