India threatened to shut Twitter and raid employees

At the height of the farmers’ protests against a series of agriculture reform laws, the government had asked Twitter to remove tweets it believed that had used an incendiary hashtag and accounts it alleged were used by Pakistan-backed Sikh separatist groups.

The request came after the largely peaceful protest had been jolted by violence on 26 January 2021, which left one person dead and hundreds of policemen injured.

Twitter had first blocked some 250 accounts, including those of a news magazine and activists and organisations associated with supporting the year-long protests on the outskirts of the capital Delhi.

But six hours later, Twitter restored the accounts, citing “insufficient justification” for continuing the suspension.

The Indian government immediately ordered Twitter to block the accounts again and told the company’s employees in India that legal action would be taken – which could be up to seven years in prison – if they did not comply.

Twitter responded, saying it would not block accounts belonging to media companies, journalists, activists and politicians because that would “violate their fundamental right to free expression under the Indian law”.

Relations between Twitter and Mr Modi’s government have been downhill ever since.

Critics say that at the heart of this is a new internet law that puts social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook under the direct supervision of the government. The government says the rules are meant to tackle misinformation and hate speech, but experts worry it would lead to censorship.

Mr Musk, who succeeded Mr Dorsey, said in April that “rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict”.

In Monday’s interview, Mr Dorsey compared India’s actions to those by governments in Turkey and Nigeria, which have briefly restricted the platform in the past.

“Turkey is very similar [to India], we had so many requests from Turkey. We fought Turkey in their courts and often won, but they threatened to shut us down constantly,” he said.

“Nigeria is another example… The situation was such that we could not even put our employees on the ground in the country out of fear of what the government might do to them.”