Elon Musk on why Twitter has to ‘obey’ what governments say – Times of India

Twitter owner Elon Musk was asked about former CEO Jack Dorsey’s claims on being threatened by the Indian government. Earlier this month, Dorsey accused the Indian government of issuing threats to shut down the company in India. Musk, in response to a question regarding Dorsey’s claims, said that Twitter has little choice but to obey governments. “Twitter doesn’t have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don’t obey local government laws then we will get shut down,” Musk said after meeting the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He further said that, “The best we can do is to follow the laws in any given country.” He also said that it is “impossible for us to do more than that.” The owner of Twitter further said that, “One cannot just apply America to Earth.”

What Dorsey had claimed

In an interview earlier this month, Dorsey alleged that during the farmer’s protest in 2021, Indian government had issued several threats and wanted to take down critical content from the social media platform. Dorsey was asked if governments interfered in running of Twitter. “India, for example, was a country that had many requests around the farmers’ protests, around particular journalists that were critical of the government,” he said.
He also said that India is a large market but the threats “manifested in ways such as: ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’ – which is a very large market for us; ‘we will raid the homes of your employees,’ which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit.’ And this is India, a democratic country.”
The Indian government had rejected Dorsey’s claims and termed them as an “outright lie.” Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a tweet said that, “This is an outright lie… Perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter’s history. No one went to jail nor was Twitter ‘shutdown’. Dorsey’s Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law. It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it.”