Tweeting about his meeting with the Prime Minister, Dorsey said that they spoke about "the importance of global conversation"
On his maiden visit to India, just ahead of election season, Twitter CEO and founder Jack Dorsey has run a marathon of meetings with political leaders. A day after he met Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Dorsey met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday evening.
Tweeting about his meeting with the Prime Minister, Dorsey said that they spoke about "the importance of global conversation" and that Modi gave him ideas for the social media site.
Dorsey's meeting with Indian leaders comes a month after he deposed in front of two congressional committees in the United States, defending Twitter amid allegations of Russian interference on American social media during the presidential elections that saw Donald Trump come to power.
Dorsey had then said that while Twitter "does not use political ideology to make any decisions", he has "learned from situations where people have taken advantage of our service and our past inability to address it fast enough." An internal audit of the company had revealed that 50,258 automated accounts were linked to Russia, and over 3,800 accounts were removed from Twitter.
After his meeting with Dorsey, Gandhi had tweeted that they spoke about the steps Twitter has taken to keep conversations healthy and tackle the "menace of fake news". Sources in the Congress said that the conversation between the two was mostly about battling fake news and rumour-mongering, of which Gandhi has been a primary victim.
"Gandhi pointed at the BBC report which claimed that Right wing networks push a lot of fake news, and he was keen to know of new tools that the Congress can use ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections in campaigns to interact with voters," said a party person in the know.
The party president was keen to know how Twitter could help in campaigns, and if Congress could have its own badge, like parties did in the US elections.
Twitter is working on new tools to be part of the Indian political system, aiding leaders and lawmakers in politics and policy matters, in a crucial election year. At a townhall with students of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Dorsey said that the company plans to deal with fake news and misinformation.
"We have to make sure that we are scoping this problem as tightly as possible, to make sure we are identifying misinformation, the context and the intent behind it. If it is intends to mislead, we need to pick it to ensure it doesn't spread," Dorsey said. It remains unclear how Twitter intends to fight the menace.
On the same day, officials from the Home ministry warned representatives of Twitter of legal consequences if they did not comply with requests for the removal of objectionable content that might incite violence. Home secretary Rajiv Gauba asked them to put up a mechanism where India-based company officials can be contacted at any time around the day for requests of such removals.
CONTENT CONTROL
- Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba told Twitter’s global legal head that the social media platform is “slow” in removing hateful content that can threaten peace
- Gauba asked Twitter executives to ensure “a round-the-clock mechanism for prompt disposal of requisitions of law enforcement agencies for deletion/removal of unlawful/objectionable content from their platform”.
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 "Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey")
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