BANGKOK: Entrepreneur Suhel Seth has slammed Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and called his statement “nothing short of utter lies and blasphemous”.
“What Jack Dorsey has said to a television channel in the United States is nothing short of utter lies, blasphemous, and a little too rich, a little too late. Twitter must understand that it is not a sovereign nation”, entrepreneur Suhel Seth said in a video message.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey claimed that the Indian government pressured the microblogging platform to block accounts covering the farmers’ protests.
Hitting back at him, Suhel Seth said, “It (Twitter) is (just) a company like most companies, and must follow the laws of the land it operates in. If it can kowtow and subjugate itself to the EU, and to the United States, it has no business to believe that it is above the law”.
“In India, they had all the options available to them, which they made use of. They went to the Delhi High Court, they went to the Supreme Court, and they were told in no uncertain terms that they must comply with the laws of the land”, Seth added.
Suhel Seth said that the claims made by Dorsey must be dismissed with contempt. “It borders on cerebral blackmail, and it must be dismissed with the contempt it deserves”, Seth added.
In an interview with a YouTube channel ‘Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar’, on Monday, Jack Dorsey, who stepped down from Twitter’s board last year, alleged that the Indian government had put pressure on Twitter and said that it will shut down the company in India and raid the houses of its employees.
“…..India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers’ protests, around particular journalists who were critical of the government and it manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’, India is a big marketplace for us. ‘We would raid the homes of your employees’, which they did and we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit and this is India, a democratic country ,” Dorsey is heard saying in the interview on the YouTube channel.
The Union government also on Tuesday rejected Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s claim that it put pressure on the microblogging platform to block accounts covering the farmers’ protests terming it as an “an outright lie” and “an attempt to brush out the very dubious period” of the social media company’s history.
“At the time, Twitter didn’t comply with Indian laws. It is clear that all social media platforms are respected in India, but they have to abide by the law of the land”, said former IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Jack Dorsey’s claim of ‘pressure’ from India. (ANI)