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Comment by yangikan | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why twitter does this.

From https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/business/india-covid19-tw...

One of the tweets removed from view was posted by Moloy Ghatak, a labor minister in the opposition-ruled West Bengal state, where Mr. Modi’s party hopes to make big gains in an ongoing election. Mr. Ghatak accused Mr. Modi of “mismanagement” and held him directly responsible for the deaths. His tweet included images of Mr. Modi and his election rallies beside those of the cremations and compared him to Nero, the Roman emperor, for choosing to hold political gatherings and exporting vaccines during a “health crisis.” Another tweet from Revanth Reddy, a sitting member of the parliament, used a hashtag that blamed Mr. Modi for the “disaster.” “India recording over 2 lakh cases everyday,” it said, using an Indian numbering unit that means 200,000 cases. “Shortage of vaccines, shortage of medicines, increasing number of deaths.

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> I don't know why twitter does this.

A reality of scaring social media companies with regulatory threats.

People call for regulation and unsurprisingly their priority becomes keeping those who might regulate them happy with them.

I suspect that's the point.

>>unsurprisingly their priority becomes keeping those who might regulate them happy.

Unsurprising, and not necessarily unwanted. IDK if you mean people or politicians by "they," but (in a democracy) they're the ones who make rules. Whether it's mandating access, limiting access, moderating, censoring, allowing freedom of speech or just mandating that stated policies are followed consistently... I think social media is unquestionably a "public concern" currently.

That doesn't mean that I support Twitter censoring on behalf of Modi. But, it does demonstrate on how broken the new media is. Zuck and Dorsey have no sense of responsibility, and no idea how to take responsibility even if they did have the sense.

It goes without saying that Zuck and Dorsey have no journalistic ethic. They're not journalism, they just ate journalism. No counterpart to a journalistic ethic, or even a lip-service to one. So... they control the important chunk of media worldwide, and they truly don't know what an ethical approach would even be.

Makes Murdoch look like a saint.

A big part of the problem here, ironically, is that Twitter and FB can get away with absolute arbitrariness. It makes it easy for thuggish political types to get their way.

Companies who run social media sites are not in a position to be journalists, or even editors. They are mostly moderators, trying to navigate around regulatory rocks and PR disaster storms. I suppose they would happily not curb any speech, just because it increases engagement (and with it, ad revenues).

Actual journalists, that is, people reporting things, are those who have to demonstrate the ethos. But in social media, the people who white the posts are the users, in other words, ourselves.

O People, tell me, what material is Modi G's approval rating made of? That would be a material science breakthrough.

It seems as if his approval rating is just glued to the 60%-70% mark no matter what, even today.

If it keeps above 60% even with the current royal mess happening, I don't know what else Modi can do to loose the election.

Are people sick, and tired of INC so much that they still prefer Modi over an alternative of INC coming back to power?

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