Jack reveals the pressures Twitter faced from Governments to trample on free speech
There is a current need for a decentralised Web3 Twitter, let me explain this based on real news.
Jack Dorsey, the former founder and CEO of Twitter had revealed something extremely sensational during his interview with “Breaking Points”, when he was asked what were the kind of pressures he, when heading Twitter, had to deal with in Twitter’s struggle to maintain free speech?.
They further allude that it is understandable the kind of huge difficulties Twitter must have faced dealing with pressures coming from the most powerful people on earth (political heads of country Governments.)
Hear it from Jack - The Indian Government forced Twitter to censure posts of users!!
Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO alleges that during the farmer protest Indian govt pressurized us(Twitter) and said we will shut down Twitter in India, raid the homes of your employees if you don’t listen to us. pic.twitter.com/tnNYta5G20
— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) June 12, 2023
Jack alleged that the Indian government lead by Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had demanded Twitter during the period of 2020 - 2021 to take down tweets and posts of farmer activists who were protesting against the 3 Agricultural Farm laws, which I remember was also called 3 Black Laws because they were thought by many to be anti-farmer.
Besides this the Indian Union Government had also demanded accounts and posts of particular journalists who were critical of the Government to be removed.
Indian Governments threats to twitter - either censure free speech or shut down!!
Jack further continues that the Indian Union Government threatened to close down Twitter if they did not comply, along with harassing employees of Twitter by raiding their home(which also they did).
Ofcourse, this threat was a powerful one, as Twitter did not want to close its office in India as India is a large market for the Web2 Social Media Platform.
He further ironically points out that India is a democracy!! So the Government of a supposedly democratic country is demanding Twitter to not allow free speech in its platform. Although this same Government would want to be left free to spread its propaganda message & hate speech.
Huge vulnerability of Twitter exposed as it’s not a Censorship Resistant Platform
Right(: this vulnerability of Web2 platforms like twitter of getting manipulated by powerful entities like the Government is called lack of ‘Centureship Resistance’. Yup, I am twisting this a bit(: but Twitter is not a Censorship Resistant platform.
Elon Musk bats for Twitter restricting free speech say’s that’s how it’s going to be!!
Source Elon Musk meets Indian PM, Narendra Modi during Modiji's New York tour
Now, let’s go on further with more juicy news related to this(:
Elon Musk clarified that Twitter’s capacity to allow free speech depends on the will of concerned Government
Elon Musk, the current head of twitter after his meeting with the Indian PM, Narendra Modi in New York confirmed that Twitter has limited power to allow freedom of speech as that power can only be to the extent the local laws of a country permits.
Yes, it’s coming from the same Elon Musk who once strongly stated that he is “a free speech absolutist”!!.
Now, Elon says, “One cannot just apply America to the earth,”
Americans have complete freedom of speech in Web2 platforms even though they lack Web3 freedom!!
Wow, so Americans enjoy complete Web2 freedom of expression in Twitter, that’s good because poor things can’t enjoy Web3 freedom in peace with US SEC’s Gary Gensler very prone to declaring random Blockchain project crypto tokens as securities.
Yet at least they can criticize Gary Gensler and US SEC on twitter without being censored as the US Government allows Americans freedom of speech.
Ahh… so lots of Americans I guess freely were able to vent their frustration against the SEC and Gary Gensler on Twitter.
(Ah… we all must be thankful for these small mercies.)
Yet Americans have it better than us Indians, we fear writing anything criticizing Government policy actions… fear of trolls, raids, arrest, besides other threats endangering our personal safety!!... (I am gulping now!!)
Anyway… you guys get the point. Twitter can allow only so much freedom of expression that the Government of any country allows.
Web3 Decentralised Twitter Leo Finance is a Centureship Resistant Social Media Platform..
Now where is this leading to ?… Yes, the Leo Finance platform on Hive Blockchian that I have used to write this post is Centureship Resistant(: and Leo Finance has Web3 decentralised twitter, so the Indian Government cannot delete Indian users’ posts and tweets criticising their policies. Also they cannot censure users by removing their Hive accounts.
That’s because Leo Finance is a decentralised Blockchain platform not controlled by any one centralised entity. It’s managed by witnesses (validators), but they all have community backing, as these witnesses are voted by the users (sounds like democracy, but let’s not get confused ok?). Community, also votes on which development proposal deserves funding through voting, in Web3 language this voting power of a token holder(in this case Hive) is called Governance.
Ha…heee…heee…heee … Power of Web3, Censorship resistance and community involvement
So, what can the Indian government do against users who freely critique their policies in Leo Finance?
Well, maybe the Indian Government will be forced to buy a lot of Hive and Leo tokens, stake it just to downvote posts of Indian users who criticise any of its policies(including their anti-crypto 30% crypto tax laws)…
This will be a good scenario too because it will cause the price of Hive tokens to increase in value and there is another good thing to come from all this…
Indian Government will be forced to be pro crypto, reducing the 30% plus tax they charge on Indian crypto users irrespective of weather they make profits or not.
Well, all this is obviously a hypothetical scenario, but it was fun dreaming of it, shrugs.
My Reluctancein promoting this post on Twitter due to fear!!
It’s with some passion I am writing this, post for I hardly write political posts particularly on the Indian Government, I am writing this only in the context of web3, sharing real news, not fake news and I am not criticising Government just narrating what's been already mentioned in news articles and by many prominent Indian Citizens.
Perhaps, (& I mean this) I cannot make a threadstorm about this post on twitter, no, I don’t have that bravodo!! For I actually fear writing something like this there with the BJP Government ‘s IT cell trolls stalking and harassing people for just expressing an opinion like this. This sort of article by me is actually damn rare by me!!
In that, I end. More power to users freedom of speech and expression because that’s actually our Constitutional right!!
Thankyou for reading!!