Twitter’s global HQs goes live on India situation as Delhi Police swoops in | India News

NEW DELHI: There is outrage at the India office and the global headquarters of American micro-blogging giant Twitter following the raid by Delhi Police, and the company’s worldwide deputy general counsel and VP (legal), Jim Baker – who is also a former FBI official — has been roped in to take stock of the situation.
Sources say that the US government may also be approached by the company as the escalations in India over the ‘manipulated media’ tag to the BJP’s tool-kit tweets has spiraled over after the action by the police in Delhi.
“The only good part is that the local offices in India had been shut due to the Covid situation. The global HQs has stepped into the matter and is closely coordinating with the India team,” top sources told TOI.

While the company is yet to give out any official statement on the issue, sources say that there was a situation of “near panic” after the Delhi Police’s Special Cell served a notice to Twitter India, with two teams descending on its offices in Delhi and Gurgaon.
The company’s global team was informed of the development, even though it was near pre-dawn in the US at the time of Delhi Police’s action.

There is a large amount of distrust that has built up within Twitter’s global officials regarding the Indian government following the series of regulatory challenges over demands to take down content which is seemingly critical of the official machinery.
In February earlier this year, government sources had even objected to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s decision to ‘like’ some of the tweets that had been made in support of the farmers protests, saying it “raised questions over the neutrality of the platform.”
Baker, it is believed, will lead the next steps on the matter as he was also instrumental in dealing with the previous escalation of Twitter in India when the government had threatened to arrest officials of the company and impose a financial penalty over its reluctance to take down over a 1,400 accounts that were accused of carrying “inflammatory content” regarding the farm laws.
After efforts by Twitter’s India team did not reap much results, the company had deputed Baker to carry out the discussions with the Indian government. The matter was finally sorted out after his coming into the picture, and Twitter ended up in disabling nearly 97% of the users flagged off by the Indian government.