The former Twitter CEO alleges the Indian government threatened to shut down the platform
unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts critical of the handling of farmer protests.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government quickly fired back:
"What he has said is an outright lie."
So how did we get here?
India's farmer protests between 2020 and 2021
were one of the biggest challenges Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers rallied across the country
to press the government to repeal new agricultural laws that they say were anti-farmer.
The government eventually repealed the controversial laws.
At the time of the protests, Modi's government sought an "emergency blocking" of the Twitter hashtag "#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide" and dozens of accounts.
And Twitter initially complied - but later restored most of the accounts, citing "insufficient justification."
This led to officials threatening legal consequences.
Dorsey, who quit as Twitter CEO in 2021, alleges India also threatened to raid employees' homes
if Twitter did not comply with government requests to take down certain posts.
In a recent interview with YouTube news show Breaking Points,
Dorsey said many of the take down requests were "around particular journalists that were critical of the government."
Modi's government has branded Dorsey' claims an "outright lie."
Deputy Minister for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar:
"During that entire period, nobody went to jail, nobody was raided. And so, Jack Dorsey, knowing fully well that Twitter did not comply with Indian law and did not face any consequences of that, is today lying and making up this story about raids and arrests."
Dorsey's comments put the spotlight on struggles faced by foreign tech giants operating under Modi's rule.
His government has often criticized Google, Facebook and Twitter
for not doing enough to tackle fake or "anti-India" content on their platforms, or for not complying with rules.
Free speech activists say Modi's administration resorts to excessive censorship of content it thinks is critical of the government.
India maintains its content removal orders are aimed at protecting users and sovereignty of the state.
Since Modi took office in 2014, India has slid from 140th in World Press Freedom Index to 161, out of 180 countries.
making it the country's lowest ranking ever.
