Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is on a visit to India, his first visit to the country. After arriving on 10th November, he has been several people in the country. On 10th, he met Dalai Lama, whom Jack described as an amazing teacher. On 12th, the Twitter boss met Rahul Gandhi, where Jack was seen showing his tattoos to the Congress president.
On 13th, Jack met prime minister Narendra Modi and posted pictures of the meet on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1062328599296917504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This pictures drew sharp reactions from tweeple in India, who didn’t approve of several things seen in the pictures.
First, Jack was seen sitting cross-legged in front of the Prime Minister, and many people didn’t like it. People pointed to Jack that it is considered rude to sit cross-legged in front of a head of government/state. Many thought that while meeting someone like a Prime minister a more formal sitting posture should be adopted.
https://twitter.com/Amy_8888/status/1062331182304673792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/yelvee/status/1062337378574979072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/osteopathblah/status/1062334545939226624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/abhikhandelwal/status/1062360935631749121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The second point some people noted is the attire of Jack. He was wearing a black hoodie, a pair of black casual trouser which seemed to be leather, and black casual shoes. It was a rather unusual choice of dress, as most people prefer standard formal attire or traditional dress while meeting heads of governments.
https://twitter.com/saurabhsuman88/status/1062337368324296704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/meenavyas50/status/1062356636667273218?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The third point which attracted most outrage was the presence of Mahima Kaul in the meeting, who is Director of Policy for Twitter India and South Asia. Several people pointed out the fact that Kaul is a known Modi hater, and they objected to her accompanying Jack while meeting PM Modi.
https://twitter.com/cshobhauday/status/1062343834640752640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Many Twitter users sent screenshots of Mahima’s past tweets as replies to Jack, which show how she used to abuse Modi earlier. The screenshots also show how she used to praise Rahul Gandhi.
https://twitter.com/AbhinavAgarwal/status/1062345807771381760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/SirJadeja/status/1062367719432052737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/dhirajsingh14/status/1062330554748612608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/SatyaDevGuru/status/1062362349330296833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We had reported last month that after a popular right-leaning spoof maker @Spook_Junkie was suspended by Twitter for unknown reasons, people started to search for political bias in Twitter India. In the process, several anti-Modi, pro-Rahul Gandhi tweets of Mahima Kaul was discovered by many people. Later, Mahima deleted many of such tweets. These tweets show deep-rooted hatred Mahima has for prime minister Modi. It was also discovered that she follows several left-leaning hate-mongering handles, including @AmbedkarCaravan that regularly spews venom against Hindus.
People also called Jack out for Twitter’s self-admitted left-leaning bias and complained about suspending right-wing users while taking no action against abuses by left-wing users. Some people also complained about ‘shadow banning’ right-wing users, which means a user is not banned by Twitter, but their tweets don’t appear in the timeline of their followers. Such shadow-banned users also don’t appear in search results and auto-complete suggestions.
https://twitter.com/masala_chaas/status/1062355264920346626?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Even US president Donald Trump had attacked Twitter for this practice, and Twitter had admitted that it does filter users but blamed an algorithm for the same.