Thread by @KumarSeshadri

L'affaire #Dorsey

There's been a minor kerfuffle in India for the last two days since the Twitter ex-CEO, Jack Dorsey, @jack, made some statements about freedom of speech in India under #Modi.

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#Liberals are gleefully sharing these comments as evidence of #India not being a democratic country, and defenders of the government are going into attack dog mode, as usual.

But many people on both sides are missing some key things here:

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1. Dorsey didn't talk only about India. In fact, he also talked about how the #USA government tried to suppress things. As also #Turkey, #Nigeria.

2. This points to a deeper issue underlying the whole controversy: Is #FreedomOfSpeech absolute?

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3. No. In no country or continent is it absolute. In fact, even on Dorsey's @Twitter, it was not absolute. #Twitter had fact checkers who could block your post and even terminate your account if you posted something they didn't agree with.

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4. So you could report someone for hate speech and the Twitter police would look their post over and decide if it was or not.

5. This is, of course, Twitter's right as a private organization to decide who gets to be on their platform and who doesn't.

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6. That's why they were within their rights to de-platform President @realDonaldTrump.

7. But Twitter is a multinational organization. When it operates within a country, it has to comply with the rules of that country - whether it agrees with those rules or not.

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8. Twitter has the right to remove any content from its platform as it deems fit. And it is not obligated to allow any content to satisfy anyone. But it is also obligated to remove any content from its platform if the rules of the local government deem necessary.

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9. In the case of the #FarmProtests, if the #Indian government rules that any videos posted on the platform will lead to disruption of the peace and must be removed, Twitter has to comply, because freedom of speech is not absolute in India.

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10. The Indian #Constitution makes it clear that if speech could lead to violence, it can be blocked.

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11. One may disagree about whether certain content can lead to violence. But the Indian government has the right to determine this, and their decision can be questioned in a court of law.

12. But Twitter cannot decide to unilaterally ignore what the government decides.

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13. As Dorsey mentioned in his interview, the US government also pressurizes Twitter on the content that is displayed there, and Twitter complies. It HAS to.

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14. Twitter and its fact checkers cannot decide what is free speech and what is not when there are laws to decide this in a country governed by laws (however flawed.)

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15. Twitter has a clear political #bias. It doesn't bother to fact-check the US government when #Democrats are in power. Dorsey himself has admitted his bias.

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16. One example will suffice. When the #Nordstream pipelines were blown up, the US, contrary to every fact on the ground, blamed the #Russians for the attack. Even after a #Polish #MEP thanked the US. Even after videos of #Biden vowing to destroy the pipelines came out.

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17. Twitter continued promoting such lies until the US government changed tack and started blaming Ukraine for the bombings.

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18. Twitter is a #multinational corporation. It is NOT a #supranational organization. It should remember that. It has to comply with local laws, be they those of the #US, #Turkey, #China, #Nigeria, or #India.

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19. And if it doesn't, national governments will resort to whatever means necessary to force them to comply.

Nations cannot and will not surrender sovereignty to Facebook, Twitter, and the like; and citizens cannot rely on them to fight their battles. We are on our own.

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