Netizens slam new Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal over old tweet on racism

Parag Agrawal, the new Indian-origin CEO of Twitter replacing Jack Dorsey, was trolled on Tuesday on his own platform for an 11-year-old tweet that carried racist remarks.

In 2010, when he was not even an employee of Twitter, Agrawal quoted a comedian mocking racism and Islamophobia in America.

"If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists," Agrawal said in the tweet posted on October 26, 2010.

Also Read | Twitter's Parag Agrawal joins club of Indian-origin CEOs heading big tech firms

Questioning this, Republican Ken Buck, who represents Colorado's Fourth Congressional District, asked how users could trust Twitter's new CEO to treat everyone equally.

However, Agrawal was quick to clarify his comments to a user. "I was quoting Asif Mandvi from The Daily Show. The article you are reading seems too deep for my current mental state," he posted.

Agrawal also posted about Facebook and noted that the social media giant is simply a waste of time. "Facebook is like a jail. You sit around, waste time, have a profile picture, write on walls and get poked by guys you don't know (via gizmodo)," he wrote.

Also Read | Who is Parag Agrawal, Twitter's new CEO?

Agrawal had earlier tweeted: "Facebook is seriously messed up. The https settings revert back to http when you use any app that doesn't do https."

Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday tweeted, "Wishing you the very best ahead @jack, and congrats @paraga and @btaylor - excited for Twitter's future!"

"Wishing you the very best ahead @jack, and congrats @paraga and @btaylor - excited for Twitter's future," Pichai said in a tweet.

Agrawal will take over from Dorsey as the CEO in 2022. Agrawal joins a select group of CEOs of Indian origin heading technology companies in the US.

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