 "Twitter's dubious track record: Should Jack Dorsey's views matter?")
synopsis
Twitter's evident bias against right-wing ideology, along with its track record of collaborating with anti-national elements to disrupt harmony and suppress conservative and right-wing political perspectives, is well-documented, says BJP national spokesperson Prem Shukla.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s statement on the Indian government on June 12 sparked a huge controversy in India after he accused the Centre of coercing him to withhold accounts during the farmers' protests. Twitter has had a history of colluding with anti-national elements to disrupt harmony and silence a specific political stand (conservatives and right-wingers). Jack Dorsey in an interview has gone on to claim how their employees lean politically left, this bias is often seen in their discriminatory actions often locking or suspending accounts that have a different view or standpoint than theirs. Is this freedom of speech?
Dorsey, who pretends to be the herald of free speech suspended several accounts around the end of 2016 for criticising the Aam Aadmi Party. It also suspended a prominent nationalist account that questioned Kejriwal and anti-nationals. Further seven accounts of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) were suspended and only restored after protests.
In November of 2018, Dorsey posed with an anti-Hindu placard that read “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy”. Twitter issued a statement regarding this “Brahmin Bashing” saying it was merely a rhetorical that is a reflection that they hear from all sides. However, a Dalit activist Sanghapali Aruna who happened to present the said poster rejected the clarifications provided by Twitter and said that the poster was about the ‘Caste’ issue instead of any “rhetorical”.
Congress leader Manish Tewari had then added fuel to fire to the issue by saying "Brahmins are new Jews of India and we should learn to live with it”. The statement shows how Congress has and continues to defend the misdeeds of Jack Dorsey.
In January 2019, it locked the account of the well-known Twitter historian 'True Indology' that schooled NDTV regarding their incorrect understanding of Kashmir history where NDTV set a false narrative with distorted claims of communal harmony in Kashmir. True Indology reminded about the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits and further said that the Muslim population never elected a single Hindu from their region. Twitter defended itself by saying it violated their rules for 'hateful conduct'. Is stating a fact/ reminding an actual incident that occurred hateful conduct? Tomorrow if the Jews tweet reminding the holocaust will Twitter silence them under the purview of 'hateful conduct'?
Twitter has a clear bias against accounts whose ideology is right-wing and even declined to appear before the Parliamentary Committee on IT headed by Anurag Thakur that issued summons via an official letter on February 1, 2019, over the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights on social media. The reason for unavailability was cited as 'short notice of the hearing' despite them being allowed 10 days of time for their appearance and the meeting being postponed once from February 7 to February 11.
In October 2020, Twitter under Jack did another anti-India scandal where they disrespected the sovereignty of our country by depicting Leh as part of China. On October 18, Nitin Gokhale a national security analyst wrote on Twitter that while he was doing a live from Leh, Twitter marked his location as 'Nitin A Gokhale was Live. Jammu & Kashmir, the People’s Republic of China'. He tested multiple times even after entering Kushak Bakula Airport the location
remained the same, other users tried too and the result was the same.
In 2019, it was discovered that Twitter sold its data to Cambridge Analytica (CA) this was found after Facebook came under the bridge for leaking user data to Cambridge Analytica-linked researchers. Cambridge Analytica worked on several high-profile political campaigns, where it used the data leaked by social media companies to try to tweak the results.
What’s important to note is that Rahul Gandhi was speculated to meet the suspended global CEO of CA to work on UPA strategy. The parent company of CA Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) in a joint venture with an Indian company lists Indian National Congress (INC) as its client. Since they have such close relations no wonder INC is always first to defend or defame the country in defence of Twitter whenever its actions happen to be Anti-India.
Their censorship reached another level when in May 2020 they decided to censor the tweet of US President Donald Trump, this censorship came hours after the US President signed an executive order limiting liability protections for social media companies. Twitter went on to permanently suspend Trump’s account a few months later in January 2021, claiming that how Trump’s tweets were being “interpreted” to mean an endorsement of violence, i.e. Trump has been banned because of how others, unnamed in the statement, were interpreting his tweets.
The author is National Spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Views expressed are personal.
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