Making this worse are the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (the “Intermediary Rules”)[3]. Among the many issues, they increase obligations on large social media platforms (above 5e5 users), enforce government takedowns within 36 hours, enable mandatory social media verification, enforce algorithmic (AI-driven) censorship and change intermediary liability to criminal. IFF has gotten one victory against these in court[2], but there's a long way to go.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-threatens-twitter-with-pe...
[1]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/india-threa...
[a]: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/twitter-restricts-over-a-d...
[b]: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/03/india-sends-warning-to-twi...
[3]: https://internetfreedom.in/intermediaries-rules-2021/
[2]: https://internetfreedom.in/kerala-hc-grants-a-stay-of-the-op...
All of them downplaying the pandemic, praising the handling, and painting a rosy picture.
I've been forcing myself to remember lakh=1e5,crore=1e7,million=1e6 while doing calculations these days, so just happened to write it that way.
India banned TikTok last year after the app was determined to be "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order". Twitter doesn't want to be next.
The way TikTok manipulates its feed to serve the CCP's interests and influence public sentiment in the country is a threat. Things like downplaying the CCP's invasion of HK.
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
That's basically the opposite of what's happening here. TikTok's threat is foreign government manipulation of the public and the block is blocking that government manipulation.
Here if Twitter got blocked it'd be because they refused to implement the government manipulation - it's a difference in kind.
At least people outside can see that information, not ideal though. If we had more platforms and less concentration it would be harder to build these walls.
On the other hand, my understanding is that Twitter did self-report these actions to Harvard, so they should be given some credit.
This is a disappointing outcome of our community (software engineers, hackers, builders) and our technology - the web as we've built it.
The promise of decentralized communications empowering people.
We should expect more, those in a position to do the right thing at Twitter should try to do so. I hope long term something like urbit wins out and actually empowers its users.
What's the point of being a free western country if the people that need the support most are the most ignored?
The more powerful is the government, the quicker it is at slapping your hand, and the more efficient it is at it.
If you operate in a country, you normally can't avoid the limitations of the country's laws, no matter how nonsensical you might find these laws. Technology does not change this equation materially, given strong enough law enforcement.
Sure - if it came to that, try and get Indians access anyway via VPNs, making it easy to access over Tor, helping them get on Twitter anyway.
You can accomplish something by not sacrificing your principles. Doing the right thing matters when it's hard. Anyone can do the right thing when it's also the easy thing.
I'm not a crazed absolutist - I'm pragmatic, I just find western companies repeatedly capitulating to authoritarian countries very frustrating. People have given up their lives to fight for these things and western companies can't even risk getting kicked out?
South Park's Band In China episode was right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_in_China
Unfortunately enlightenment / classically liberal values (different from leftist liberal values) have been on the decline in the US, particularly with younger generations. Free speech is one of those values under attack. Even the ACLU, under different leadership than in the past, is wavering on free speech (https://reason.com/2018/06/21/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech/). James Kirchick spoke at length about this unfortunate evolution in a recent podcast (https://quillette.com/2021/04/09/podcast-144-james-kirchick-...).
The West (as nations, corporations, citizens, etc) is not in a position to proselytize on this front any longer. Although the US government is bound by the first amendment, we have effectively outsourced our right to free speech over to private monopolies that aggressively censor views that don’t fit progressive perspectives. Biden even recently said that no constitutional amendment is absolute, which seems like further normalization of erosion of fundamental rights.
With the floodgate of censorship already being opened in the West, it seems there is no one on the side of unfettered speech and intellectual freedom today. At the same time I understand why other nations are wary of both the power vested in social media and the influence of savvy or highly active participants therein. It’s a risk for local culture, politics, and stability to be undermined through that channel. Even European nations are increasingly skeptical of outside influences corrupting their sovereignty (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...).
Private companies being able to do this is a form of speech. I think it's problematic, but ultimately they should be able to moderate their users/choose who they allow on their platform (outside of a few protected characteristics). I think it'd be a worse speech violation if the government forced them to do otherwise.
I think we should be using tools that make this irrelevant by making decentralized communication tools actually work. I agree with Moxie that in the current system this is basically impossible. That's why urbit gives me hope.
> The West (as nations, corporations, citizens, etc) is not in a position to proselytize on this front any longer.
I don't mean to proselytize - I mean to say we have a responsibility to do better since we live in a freer society. Nobody at Twitter is going to be killed for doing the right thing here, and while liberal (little L) values are under threat in the west, there is still a massive gulf between the west and countries like China.
I’m also conflicted on this point, but my present feeling is that these tech companies constitute a different situation from a “regular” private company exercising their own free speech rights. Several of them are too big and monopolistic (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) and the ones that aren’t on that scale, like Twitter, are still very shielded from competition because their product (social media) relies on network effects (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). My take is that when a company has so many users that its scope of influence is larger than most governments, or when it has unprecedented financial size, or when there are barriers to competition like network effects, we have to take action. That action could be breaking up companies, or regulating them like a public utility, or just taking them into public ownership. Otherwise I feel the erosion of rights from ubiquitous all-powerful private entities is a loophole that runs around our intended fundamental rights.
Leaving all that aside - what platforms do you believe hold promise for a decentralized future? I remember looking at Mastodon but they seem to have gravitated towards their own form of censorship. And then there’s the chicken and egg problem of getting users, content creators, and advertisers to move. Has anyone thought of a plan to make that happen?
I think stuff like mastodon is dead on arrival and will never succeed outside of its extremely niche audience. Urbit has the potential to solve a lot of these issues because of its architecture.
The design is such that it's possible for it to be as easy to use as FB. Running your own linux server will never be.
The urbit tooling still has a way to go, but it's improving. I'm hopeful that it can get there.
Mastodon is trapped by the problems of the existing software stack - they can't escape them: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/
- Version mismatching and updates
- Running the servers (admin, setup, config)
- Spam and problematic users
Urbit ID fixes the spam issue, Urbit OS fixes the admin and version update issues. Mastodon (but really any non-urbit system) is going to always be a mess of dependencies and things that break.
This old post (2010 before urbit was a real thing) goes into most of it: http://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progra...
There's also a podcast called Understanding Urbit that's a decent introduction.
All they do is dump waste amounts of shit on the plates of decision makers and then crucify them for problems no one can solve or have capacities to solve only badly.
People think this is a great way to take out buffons like Modi or Trump. But the truth is such systems will take out anyone propped up especially dealing with complex problems.
If people continue to believe that public posts on Twitter and Facebook accurately reflect reality, and it's possible for governments to silently (or not silently!) censor those platforms, then social media becomes an incredibly effective tool for propaganda.
My personal solution is not to use any public social medium (places where I consume posts from anonymous strangers) except HN. Unfortunately that solution can't scale.
Leaders of all stripes will lose no matter what position they take on anything Complex, as social media enables the mob to immediately point out flaws and crucify them.
No one can lead in those conditions. Only the crazy or totally stupid will end up getting propped into leadership roles.