Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Today, saying that cow dung does not cure covid, can land you in jail because it goes against the government's narrative. I can't even imagine of the things to come.
https://theprint.in/india/journalist-activist-jailed-under-n...
I overall agree with the point that many indian authorities have been using laws to punish dissent, but that is a little disingenuous. The specific context in that case was that those comments were made about the death of a BJP leader. So, those people were jailed for mocking the death of a politician, not for merely saying that cowdung does not cure covid.
I mean, the reality is bad enough as it is. There is no need to exaggerate.
> I mean, the reality is bad enough as it is. There is no need to exaggerate.
You reminded me of how American commentary seems determined to push the obviously false claim that Uyghurs in China are being oppressed because of their religion, when it would be so much easier to defend the claim that they're being oppressed because of their race. (Even easier would be that they're being oppressed due to dissidence.)
Most people are just repeating something they've heard, and couldn't analyze the merits of a claim if they wanted to.
This is something I have thought about a bit over last several years. A lot of people I trust to have good intentions seem to regularly indulge in untruths or exaggerations to rile up support for their cause.
One particular example that comes to mind is how pretty much all liberal voices (including nobel peace prize winner Kalyan Sathyarthi) spread lies about a child labour bill in India that was passed in 2016. All of them were saying in unison that this bill was weakening the existing child labour laws and will allow all sort of child exploitation. So, I decided to read the bill and the original act that the bill was supposed to amend. I was stunned. There was absolutely no truth to the claims. The bill was actually making the child labour law much, much more stringend and I, even with my programmer in bug-fixing mode brain, couldn't conjure up a single hypothetical scenario where a child was forbidden from working earlier would now be allowed to work. So why were all these people lying? Why would Kalyan Sathyarthi, of all people, who has saved hundreds of thousands of children from child labour and trafficking, lie about something that pertains directly to his life's work?
The only explanation I could think of is that perhaps the law didn't go as far enough or didn't include certain amendments as they wanted and this was their way of pressurizing the government to listen to them. But that still left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps this is something my brain, trained to value truth above everything else, isn't quite mature enough to understand.
Not really, that article is an example of people spreading the lies.
Perhaps it was not clear to you, but my claim in the previous comment was that a, pretty much all liberal voices were saying that bill would weaken the existing child labour laws and b, that all of them were lying. So the fact that you can find many such articles saying those things is not really inconsistent with my claim.
>How did your programmer brain not see the flaws satyarthi is pointing out?
Because they did not exist. Like I said, I read the bill and the law that the bill seeked to amend and found that there was not a single instance or way in which the bill would weaken the child labour law. In fact, in was very significantly strengthening the child labour law.
Look, I know for you it is just one random person speaking on the internet vs hundreds of sources and people that you inherently trust. So, I can understand if your instinct is to not believe what I say and in that case you are welcome to just ignore me and move on.
But if you actually want to get to the bottom of this, then please do read the bill (now act) and the original law, and you will find that I am right. All you would need to prove me wrong will be a single example, however hypothetical or far-fetched, of a situation in which it was earlier forbidden for a child to work that would have been allowed under the new bill.
Also, I figured out why your username seemed familiar and I do not want to discuss anything with you. Not this. Not anything else. Ever. I hope you will respect my choice. Have a good day.
There is already another person who I am discussing this with, and we are already much along into the discussion that we ever got here. So you can follow that thread to understand more.
>You are simply placing an absurd requirement on the reader
I admitted so much in the previous comment, no? Ignore and move on.
A claim of "lots of liberal media are lying about an Indian law" cannot be refuted by citing that same media, and making him say it repeatedly doesn't seem likely to yield any further insight.
He also does not respond to simple yes/no questions. Does the law relax the restrictions on child labour for family businesses- yes/no? Several paragraphs about programmer brain, but no answer to simple yes/no questions.
How absurd is it that several dozen media articles cant be trusted, but an hn comment about programmer brain debugging the law, with no citations, must be trusted.
So I'd wager the reason there was backlash against the bill was that it did not close the exemption, not (as mentioned in the article I posted originally) that it introduced the exemption.
It was not merely kept, the scope of the sort of work allowed under that exemption was also reduced to non-hazardous work and that too was only allowed after school hours or during vacations.
>So I'd wager the reason there was backlash against the bill was that it did not close the exemption
I pretty much said the same thing in my original comment.
>>The only explanation I could think of is that perhaps the law didn't go as far enough or didn't include certain amendments as they wanted and this was their way of pressurizing the government to listen to them. But that still left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps this is something my brain, trained to value truth above everything else, isn't quite mature enough to understand.
>this quite thorough article [0] shows the similarity/difference
This article is definitely more thorough than most others I have read, and at least quotes you relevant passages from the laws and points out all the different ways in which the bill was an improvement. But in the end, even this article ultimately concludes by calling the bill "one step forward and two steps back", which is a lie. The introduction teases you with "Thirdly, the legislation actually reduces the scope and applicability of some of the earlier provisions on prohibition of child labour" but that claim is never substantiated within the article.
Tangential, but I'm fascinated by the name of the mentioned "Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act" of 2009. You don't often hear about your right to be compelled to do something.
Reporting claims that (1) the Uyghurs are suffering under much more oppression than other Chinese groups, such as live-in minders and a legal ban on owning kitchen knives; and (2) this is because of their religion.
These two claims cannot both be true. Islam is one of the traditional religions of China, and it benefits from legal and social recognition not given to e.g. Christianity. You are free to make the argument that Western reporters are hallucinating or lying about what is happening to the Uyghurs. Or to make the argument that reports of the Uyghurs' oppression are accurate. But you can't make the argument that the reported oppression is due to religion, or that it's just another example of the same oppression that other groups experience.
If you asked the Chinese, they'd tell you that Uyghur oppression comes from the Chinese not wanting to have their schools bombed.
> You are free to make the argument that Western reporters are hallucinating or lying about what is happening to the Uyghurs.
Again, that is not the point in dispute. My position is even more anti Chinese than the norm, that what is happening to the Uighurs is bad but just not unusual for China. Your argument against mine then is that things are actually better for the other groups, but you really don’t provide any evidence of that, and I can guarantee you that it’s not (other minorities, Tibetans especially, Christians, especially those outside the official church, Hui over the last decades, re education camps for everyone, etc…).
I read you as postulating these facts:
- 10-40ish years ago, Hui, Christians, Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Mongols, pro-reform Han, and various other groups were subject to various repressive measures.
- Today, Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and other ethnic Tibetan groups are still subject to similar measures.
- Hui and Christians are not, today, subject to similar measures.
These facts do not support the idea the the repression of Uyghurs and Tibetans is due to religion. They very much do support the idea that their repression is due to dissidence. Uyghurs and Hui avow the same religion, but the treatment of one of those groups diverged from the treatment of the other. Why? College professors may have avowed no religion at all, but were sent to reeducation camps en masse. (Granted, more than 40 years ago.) Why?
Again, not illegal to make fun of dead people.
In India? Who knows? Probably not NSA worthy, but I wouldn't bet against anything being illegal in India.
I certainly know one person who was kept in jail for years for mocking one dead person (PBUH). That person did eventually get out on bail only to soon have his throat cut. But I guess that case ties into mocking religious feelings of a community (but then, so does this case).
Also, I think you probably missed the part where I began and ended my comment by emphasizing that I think this is government misusing the laws to punish dissent.
India seems to have completely given up on any attempt to genuinely implement common law principles that judicial systems worldwide are based on. Instead of conviction and eventual prison being the goal (along with the presumption of innocence until conviction), our system seems to rely mainly on pre-conviction detention as a deterrent for criminal activities.
All relevant participants in the system (namely the police, the judiciary, the criminals and the citizens) have given in and accepted the fact that convictions are hard and extremely rare to come by. Instead, the process itself is the punishment. The goal of the police is to keep everyone in jail for as long as they can. Judges also regularly deny bail to the accused when they think that there is some preliminary evidence. And the citizens also join in this game by asking for ever stringend laws that make getting bails difficult for more and more cases. (I think most people in India don't even realize that "non-bailable" is just supposed to mean that bail is not automatic, but to be given on the consideration of a magistrate.)
The one sentence post was a PSA that cow dung cures covid19. Nobody was mocked. If you want to see mocking in a free country go here https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/ . India is not a free country.
Source?
>The one sentence post was a PSA that cow dung cures covid19. Nobody was mocked
Now that is just dishonest. Both the posts are available on this link https://theprint.in/india/journalist-activist-jailed-under-n...
How is saying "Cow dung, cow urine didn’t work, oh!!! RIP" after someone's death not mocking them?
“The cure for Corona is not cow dung & cow urine. The cure is science & common sense. Professor ji RIP,” Leichombam had written
This is mocking? And mocking should lead to many months of nonbailabe arrest without trial? This is one of the most egregious examples of clamping down on free speech. The statement is true and helps educate citizens who are being misinformed nonstop by hindutva affiliates about cow urine.
In a free country we can have forums like this https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/
The 37-year-old was held under the stringent National Security Act for saying "cow dung and cow urine don't work." While Solicitor General Tushar Mehta sought time and wanted the case to be adjourned till tomorrow, the judges ordered his immediate release.
"We are of the view that the continued detention of the petitioner would amount to violation of right to life and personal liberty under Article 21. We direct him to be released today by 5 pm with a personal bond of ₹ 1,000," a two-judge bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah said.
> Erendro wrote on his Facebook wall: “The cure for Corona is not cow dung & cow urine. The cure is science & commons sense. Professor ji RIP”
and
> Wangkhem wrote: “Santhi Sanyung na yadrabo, oh!!! RIP #Rashikang_Kangyet Hayeng nga chaani.” (Rough translation: Cow dung cow urine didn’t work. Groundless argument. Tomorrow I will eat fish.)
And yeah the world is steering towards china like totalitarian censorship, but canadians think that since we are a western liberal democracy (tm) it's all fine because we just couldn't be the baddies. Like when we do it it's fine and justified, because why should we even care about muh rights and muh freedumbz in a free country?? The cognitive dissonance is just maddening at this point.
1. The escalation intensified after tweets by prominent ministers and fucntionaries of the ruling government were marked as "manipulated media" 2. The IT Ministers and opposition partys accounts were locked for copyright infringement. 3. The govt wants twitter to comply on removing content and users critical of govt policies.
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipulated-media-de...
[2] https://www.news18.com/news/india/copyright-infringement-twi...
[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8pzp/india-wants-more-cont... https://restofworld.org/2021/how-india-fell-in-then-out-of-l...
This feels so, so wrong.
What happens in India is actually the opposite, it's the government requiring the censuring.
I'm always on the side of free speech. It shouldn't be up to Twitter to decide if coronavirus came from the lab, or if "mail in ballot fraud is very rare, as few as 0.001%" (a completely bonkers notion that was also later debunked, but served to prevent any discussion before the election despite it's absurdity).
The key takeaway is, if you are comfortable with Twitter taking such actions with potential ‘misinformation’ then you must also accept that what is considered correct at any point in time is subject to a potential reversal. The staff at Twitter is just as fallible as the rest of us.
It seems far more reasonable to me that if POTUS or $randomCelebrity tweets something it will get more scrutiny from the moderation efforts at Twitter than I would if I tweeted the same thing.
read these posts. india government calls anything critical of its actions on social media as "misuse" because it breaks the image of "worlds largest democracy".
Twitter is being assholes. they should just patch up like facebook which fully complies with government meaning facebook becomes the best monitoring and investigation portal for them. like the last time facebook had found some political influence on their software but once they found the ruling party was involved, they dropped the investigation
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/15/facebook-...
https://scroll.in/article/954711/in-kashmir-a-spree-of-arres...
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...
the narcissist in chief demands his photo be plastered everywhere. anyone against that image is mowed down.
Nah. I like the increased scrutiny against Social Media companies that has come up.
The provisions of sub-section (1) [the liability shield] shall apply if— ... (b) the intermediary does not— ... (iii) select or modify the information contained in the transmission;
Also, more recently, Twitter has refused to remove clearly manipulated media intended to inflame Hindu-Muslim communal riots.
It is unfortunate that what is true and false has devolved into the hands of global corporates, whose interests and ideology is often different from the environment it operates in.
It registers fine. What you may be glossing over is that Twitter itself has free speech - so it is free to do this, unless you have something akin to a fairness doctrine.
Also, I would like to point out that the laws should be very different for peer-to-peer encrypted tools like WhatsApp and Signal vs laws for "content-discovery" platforms like twitter and google search. While the government should not concern itself what we speak to each other about as in the former case, for the latter there should be some moderation, just that the government should have some form of moderation along with the actual companies. Anyways I don't care much for the latter group as what I see / discover is already being manipulated by someone. We all want an unaltered version of the news / content but I believe it's an impossible problem to solve.
Vote and encourage others to do the same, call out fake narratives in discussions with friends and family
FB, Google have appointed the chief compliant officer, but why Twitter doesn’t want to do it?
A very appropriately worded title
When you have a country of 1.3 billion people, a large portion of whom also have smartphones, who, unfortunately are also uneducated and gullible, you have the perfect environment to cause trouble.
Apps like WA and Telegram, enable this megaphone to reach every nook and corner of the country.
If tomorrow, there is a coordinated rumour mongering going on, leading to riots and deaths, dont you think those who started the rumour be caught?
And you think a country of half a billion gullible folk need to be educated.
Do you know how much time that will take, and if at all it will be successful?
US politics and the Trump machine have shown that no matter how much you educate people, a small group of people, often available to the highest bidder, will be able to influence millions of people.
There is a constant stream of misinformation spread via government sources in the country. The Indian government over the last 7 years have steadily weaponized social media to dehumanize opponents and carve away rights from a very large section of the dissidents.
This call for war against misinformation that you point to seems to be always targeted towards the government's opposition most times. Can you clarify why twitter should be on the line for this and not most other entities including news channels & politicians who directly preach to '1.3 billion people, a large portion of whom also have smartphones, who, unfortunately are also uneducated and gullible, you have the perfect environment to cause trouble.'
Would love to see examples. Really curious. Eager to learn.
> This call for war against misinformation that you point to seems to be always targeted towards the government's opposition most times
In general, the media is very friendly to the current opposition, the Congress party. The opposition has lots of connections in established media and some of them are akin to the Fox channels in the US.
Here also, I would love to see specific examples.
You are either posing this in deliberate bad faith or you live under a rock. WhatsApp is flooded with antimuslim fake videos, lynching, burning, killing of purportedly Hindu people by Muslims. Many of these have been traced to BJP's IT cell.
In fact the IT cell head himself tweeted the identity of the gangrape victim of Hathras although that is a crime to do so according to criminal law.
So it is quite clear where the government's interest lies -- not in stopping government sponsored hate speech and fakenews but as an instrument to suppress criticism.
Given your stance I am beginning to suspect you may be one of those paid shills yourself.
Do you also want people who expose govt corruption or criticise the govt to be caught?
And those who plan to hurt India, would not use mass communication means in any case.
Also, it is rather hard to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer considering that this person can get arrested easily. The last interim hire that twitter did quit in a month due to continual gov't harassment;
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/twitter-interim-grie...
This is a bigger issue than it appears and both sides can lose big based on the outcome.
History of machine learning at Square 13:09:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60KJz1BVTyU&t=789s
https://podcastnotes.org/artificial-intelligence-podcast/jac...
Square is the anti-Twitter. Square profits from doing good, Twitter from doing bad. Square uses AI for verification, authentication, fighting fraud. Twitter uses AI to signal boost lies.
I always wondered if Twitter was clueless, oblivious, incompetent, or what.
Jack knew. He always knew.
Imagine if Twitter had been run like Square. Imagine that world.
What's not clear to me is who will be held responsible on the part of Twitter for any complaints. Earlier, Twitter had provided a local contact, which was that of a lawyer, as the contact for complaints and grievance redressal. That wasn't sufficient since the lawyer was not an employee of Twitter (as required by the new rules). He also left that position soon after. Twitter India has a managing director (MD), Manish Maheshwari, who claimed recently that he was only managing the marketing side and is not responsible for content moderation or anything else that happens on the platform. He was also granted a stay by the Karnataka High Court (which is where Bengaluru/Bangalore is) from arrest in a case filed in another state in the north (UP, i.e., Uttar Pradesh). [1]
I personally don't think Twitter India will find people taking up the positions of Resident Grievance Officer, Nodal Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. These are currently open positions on the Twitter careers page. [2] Whoever takes these up could end up in jail, which could really be bad with a draconian law like UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) that allows people to be (arbitrarily) detained without recourse for very long durations. [3]
The new IT rules have also been challenged in court on a few different fronts. "Two of the government’s own legal advisers warned it that the new Information Technology (IT) Rules were beyond the scope of the law and required parliamentary approval." [4]
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/twitter-india-chief-wins...
[2]: https://careers.twitter.com/en/roles.html#location=careers-t...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Activities_(Preventio...
Jack Dorsey should stop acting like he is the sole flag bearer of the free speech in the entire world. Blocking Trump because he made calls for violence makes total sense, but passively liking and expressing your political likings and stance as CEO of twitter is is not cool & ethical. If you are publicly expressing your ideologies, god knows what goes behind the scenes at Twitter. I am just wondering what I will do as an employee of Twitter, if I doesn't agree with with the ideologies of my CEO and expressing otherwise. I am not sure ideologies is the right word, but I hope I get my point across.
I always give benefit of doubt where it's due, but Twitter has definitely something sinister going with their Indian Operations. If Indian companies goes abroad they are expected to follow local laws, and if Twitter wants to operate in India it must give way to the law of the land.
Additional Context: Twitter user of 12 years, NRI with no political leanings at all.
One of Twitters recent mishaps: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/twitter-drops-removes-...
EDIT for clarity
>but passively liking and expressing your political likings and stance as CEO of twitter is is not cool & ethical.
Let's flip the script for a second here. Is a CEO allowed to like a positive story about the Indian leader? Can he retweet a cause he might care about (which many others might not)? Does this mean that CEOs abstain from taking part in public discourse or be called as not 'neutral'?
>Jack Dorsey should stop acting like he is the sole flag bearer of the free speech in the entire world.
Can this argument not be pointed to anybody who argues for free speech? Who is allowed to be a flag bearer for free speech?
Well, you missed very important piece of context from my argument, 'at the peak of farmer's protest' . You already know the sentiments are running high, there is lot of misinformation, wide disconnect between ground reality and digital narrative. A little act of nudge or sign can trigger violence and get people killed on the street. Well, then I am looking at the CEO of the company that is carrying all of this information wether it is true or false, and how he behaves and if chooses sides wether correct or wrong.
> Who is allowed to be a flag bearer for free speech?
In my opinion, anyone who understand that free speech has its limitations, I am allowed to say whatever I want in certain context and situation but staying within reason.
Anyone who understands, the difference between shouting 'Hey, I got little firecracker on me' on an Airplane vs someone at a child's birthday party. Some things under different context trigger different reactions. It's not very hard to understand. Now imagine Jack Dorsey liking tweets of a person supporting the group that supports the ideology of those who attacked Capital Hill. Not sure about how other Indian Citizens feel about it, being an NRI of 15+ years I took hoisting of religious flag on Red Fort as an attack on democracy and also akin to attack on Capitol Hill as well.
Do you believe the Indian government's policies are sinister as well? If not I don't see how this is anything other than apologia dressed up as neutrality.
Coming back to my argument, Twitter should follow land of the law and if not should cease Indian operations. I'd love to hear your counter argument to this.
edit: fixed typos.
In this particular case, these are IT Rules that fall under an existing Act (the IT Act). It’s not a new law, which is a problem because these rules fall afoul of what’s allowed in the parent law.
This set of new rules did not undergo legislative scrutiny at all. In fact, this is the main objection of multiple legal petitions about its constitutionality. Search for "IT rules 2021 ultra vires".
Two departments specifically advised the government that a new law was necessary. They were ignored. https://themorningcontext.com/chaos/did-pmo-get-its-way-on-i...
Apple complied to investigating Members of Congress when asked by the Justice Department.
When you provide your services in a country you are governed by the laws of the country, e.g. DMCA is applicable in US but not recognised in other countries.
If certain set of laws in a country are incompatible with the principles of your company, you may fall on the sword not offer your services in that particular country. I feel certain that Twitter withdrawing from India will do more good as it may bring increased focus on these amendments and expedite the judicial scrutiny.
Twitter is straddling the fence, trying to malign the government but more often than not governments don’t blink against corporations.
It is almost like they wanted this to be a public fight. Is that a good strategy? Fighting the govt is rarely productive, but they probably know something to do this crazy in-your-face stuff.
It is different though, when they have a physical presence in India.
Depends on your definition of productive, I suppose.
I can understand ones hate for the policies of a govt, but this is absurd.
yeah, that crony elected government.
edit; https://theprint.in/india/journalist-activist-jailed-under-n...
like these journalists. imagine an elected government can arrest anyone over cow posts? either these people have committed such heinous crimes against cows that their incarceration is necessary to protect law and order in cow community or the government has a vendetta against them. I'd go with the latter and with that, your elected government nonsense just flies away
Not sure what you mean. If there are any specific scandals you can point out to, I'd be really happy to know more.
Are you suggesting govt. should not contract out infrastructure projects?
> for waiving loans for billion dollar scammers
More than 80% of property/money of such defaulters has been taken back by the government.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/banks-cheated-by-m...
> farmers resort to suicide when they are unable to pay back their small loans
The govt. pays a lot of money to farmers. 21% of farm income is from govt. subsidies. (Subsidies that the US and other developed nations have been fighting to stop, so that they can compete in Indian markets).
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/economic-policy/fa...
Farmer suicides have been more or less constant for many decades now. Its a sad situation and the causes of suicides are many and varied.
The current govt. has brought in a lot of technology driven improvements to distribution of subsidies, eliminating middlemen, etc.
The current farmer protests are mostly by rich farmer middlemen from Punjab, who will see their commissions reduces significantly if farmers start selling in markets with real competition.
> when "elected governments" act as the nazi party and "image" is worth more than lives of ordinary citizens
This could potentially mean very many things. It would help if you could be specific. Just shouting Nazi and lives of ordinary citizens means nothing.
> have people disappear as they like
Not very knowledgeable on this subject. Would love to hear more.
> when journalists are arrested and people killed for speaking against this "Elected government"
Most incidents I have seen are for deliberate instances of mis-information and shoddy journalism, leading to tense situations. I would be glad to hear of any instances where journalists have been wrongfully arrested.
The example you cite is for a journalist who was arrested based on a complaint from a Woman's Union, and that was for his posts of FB rather.
I never support suppression of free speech and news media, but the North Eastern states of India have a unique situation because China is fomenting a lot of separatism within the states and it is internationally knows that it claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own.
Just because a government is elected through the process of voting, does not mean that it is accountable to the people. Politics is a dirty business and that is as true in India as it is in the US. You would struggle to make the case that the duly elected president of the USA, one Mr Trump, was anything but a con-man whose primary aim was the enrichment of himself and those in his circle.
A voting system is just that - a voting system. Don't confuse it with a robust democracy.
they murdered an 88 year old activist in jail by prolonging his stay. next hearing, next hearing, next hearing and yesterday he fell to covid.
not to talk about thousands of political prisoners. their anti-terror law recently was found to have 2% conviction rate. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/2/india-terror-law-uap...
essentially they book everyone and anyone and years later they are found not guilty. justice won but the years lost for that person? no compensation for that
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/kashmiri-man-walks-free-af...
12 years this guy was imprisoned.
Isn't that true everywhere? in every democracy? Why do you think there are three equally powerful branches of govt., the legislation, the judiciary and the military?
Indian constitution has good measure of checks and balances.
If the ruling govt. passes a law, the opposition can always go to court and challenge the constitutionality of the law.
> robust democracy
Tell me what are the facets of a robust democracy and lets see if its applicable to Indian Constitution and political system.
Occasionally these institutions are manned by people with a spine to stand up to the government. Most of the time they aren't and are at best stooges.
Arnab Goswami (think a cheap Bill O'rielly wannabe) gets bail via a specially expedited hearing by the supreme court, jumping the queue of cases whereas students, reporters languish in jail for trumped up terror charges pressed by these stooge organizations.
Even if it did, that in no way prevents crony governance. The way modern democracies work, once in power governments have little interest in representing those they purportedly represent. Most of the time they are making good of the 5 years they have to enrich themselves and their party.
Twitter can not have the cake and eat it too.
There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in.
You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.
But Google does manipulate search results, so ostensibly they should also be put on par with newspapers?
examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477797
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13274753
edit: Also your comment misleads on what the article reports. Twitter has not lost safe harbor because "they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias", but because they haven't met the staffing requirements imposed by India on large social media companies:
> The move comes as tension escalates between the Indian government and Twitter. Google, Facebook, and several other firms have partially or fully complied with the IT rules, which among other things, requires any significant social media firm (any firm with over 5 million users in India) to appoint a chief compliant officer, a resident grievance officer, and a so-called nodal contact person to address on-ground concerns.
> Twitter has not complied with any of these requirements, the court filing said. Twitter had no comment on Monday’s filing, but has said in the past that it intends to comply with the IT rules.
Of course Twitter somehow managed to implement the worst of both worlds, with a sorting algorithm that promotes controversial content (without bias regarding the actual content), but then does biased moderation on that content.
I disagree: the point of the original Pagerank algorithm was its bias. In particular, its use of link weights gave the algorithm a strong bias for (a proxy for) relevance.
An "unbiased" search algorithm would need to return results based on simple criteria, readily explained and presented to the searcher, such as "date first crawled" or "number of keyword appearances."
Please attempt a simple implementation with the methods you describe and see how it performs over even a non trivial amount of data and you will see the difference in results.
And I'm not even considering malicious results gaming the whole system.
I disagree. If anything, I think I give this research more credit, because I appreciate it as imposing a normative view on what makes search results "good."
This is more than just "how do we sort a list containing billions of keys" or "how do we grab data from a distributed database;" it's also "how do we understand relevance or quality based on machine-interpretable signals?" The latter is a judgment call.
Each is ultimately an expression of will, since there is no objective ranking of what makes something relevant or engaging. Everyone will agree on the order of names in a phone book, but nobody will agree on the "relevance" order of search results.
You see this every day in news-adjacent search topics, where popularity, relevance, and factual correctness can all give different "proper" orderings.
Ultimately, people dislike stances that give disagreeable results, but they think benign stances to be invisible. I don't believe a coherent, legal argument can work this way.
I think the essential disagreement isn’t so much about the choice of bias as it is about the exercise of power, specifically on who’s behalf do you exercise power? Do you do it for your users or for the greater good? Or for your customers? Or maybe your investors? Or maybe your ideals?
So Google favoring low latency responses is saying latency (cost) matters when people browsing may not care.
But when those people got their respectable reputation by the same means you could have an entirely circular self-praising reputation machine that seems to work wonderfully but operates without reviewing any work.
At some stage of google the Nr 1 result for both "France" and "Paris" belonged to a blogger from NYC who had a single highly optimized page about France and one about Paris.
Similarly a high page rank page about cars shouldn't be an authority on anything else but if they link to your article about flowers it gains a lot of points. So much it would be attractive to pay them for it.
Back links were fabulous when the internet started then increasingly became a self serving loop.
If you remove user related data as an input to the search query, the results will be purely based on algorithm efficiency, rather than feeding on the biases of the users.
Such feedback loops, of showing content that is suitable to the user, will lead to information silos and gradual radicalization of the user.
With much respect for those who have to hammer them out: The algorithms are full of bias, they have to be. They are essentially just a pile of hacks. Machines cant understand articles. Even if they could they would have the same problem a human reviewer would have when asked if article A is better than B. You cant switch off your own bias. Even if we could do all that you may end up with a category dominated by the writings of [say] 50-51 year old Caucasian males which forces you to ponder corrections that may or may not be terrible ideas if or if not applied. And then you have to chose which bias to apply and we are back to biased search results.
People are the sum of their experiences, if you remove that nothing is left.
Is Google allowed to filter results on any internal criteria they can come up with? It includes all avenues like political, censorship, fake news, low quality, competitor results etc.
If you are a global MNC with multi billion dollar valuation, and want to operate in a market that has a billion potential users, it is only fair that the company has a local presence.
What if you're none of those?
Is it still fair to require a local presence for every single site / app / network to have access to a population?
Correct.
Why should the attempt to remove some harmful content from their platform create a requirement to be absolutely perfect at doing so? Was there any doubt that twitter had the technical capabilities to remove some tweets?
If you ever help a person, are you then required to help any other person in the same situation?
What's the outcome you want? Do you believe it's possible to moderate billions of tweets without a mistake? If not, what's so great about social media that is overrun with swastikas and porn after the toxicity scared away all normal people? How does that help?
Do twitter employees maybe have the free speech right of not being involved in the distribution of stuff they find horrible? What's worse, your tweets being deleted by twitter or being forced to make statements you know to be wrong and harmful (i. e. coerced speech)?
Do you realise the standard for newspapers in the US is "actual malice", meaning the editors must know something they are publishing is false and harmful, and they must act with the intent to cause some harm. Is that how you'd describe "lost liability protection"?
The dichotomy between neutrality and manipulation is artificial, although I do see the underlying assumption that the output of any algorithm would be "neutral" whereas manual interference with its results would be "manipulation".
In reality, however, the boundary is fluid. Would an algorithm that automatically excludes certain sites be neutral, while excluding the same sites manually is considered manipulation? Is "apply keyword search, then apply blacklist" an algorithm or manual manipulation? On the other side, is an algorithm that automatically penalizes SEO-optimized (spam) sites neutral, even though a search term occurs much more frequently on that given site?
Twitter's admins arbitrarily remove content that they disagree with, while allowing content they do agree with, regardless of whether said content is illegal or not.
So the crux of the whole thing is not the censorship but the entity censoring the content. And obviously the government wants to wield this power.
You take it away and you take away more "free press" from the citizens of India.
Isn't ranking a manipulation? Not sure what you mean by this.
The only sinister thing here is that, as the article mentions, the Government wants Twitter to reveal the IP addresses of specific users and Twitter is refusing to do so. Also Twitter is marking fake news spread by Government ministers and functionaries as manipulated media.
Another issue that the article doesn't mention is that the Government is pushing users towards Koo, a private alternative to Twitter that is by all accounts extremely aligned with the Government's political and religious views.
It's another step towards replicating the Great Firewall.
Edit: corrected "fake users" to "fake news"
User profiling and data mining, coupled with corporate interest to keep users on the site as long as possible, leads to slow but firm biasing. Search results are not objective, but subjective based on the user history and profile.
On the flip end, it is not a news site, but a massive distributor of news items. So it does act as a newspaper, because people consume large amounts of news from it.
Is it a news site, yes. Does it have mechanisms of editorial policy or checks and balances? Not that I can see.
Is it a search engine. Yes. Is it unbiased as a search engine, no.
But then why is YouTube not being targeted by the Government? One salient difference I see is that Twitter is protecting its users by being identified and punished by the Government for being anti-Government.
It is not a massive distribution network. It is a content heavy site used for sharing videos. The actual sharing happens on other platforms.
And do none of the points in your previous comment matter at all?
So you’re admitting this looks like an act of retribution by the Government then?
Correct. Just a social contagion which profits from sabotaging both news and search.
You do not sign T&C with your newspapers do you?
It is extremely sinister that you think a govt has any business curating & culling criticism of its policies or fallacies. That's literally a civil liberty which most politicians in India are rarely aware of unless taught a lesson by the courts.
I’m not sure I understand how the fact that something is enshrined in law means it’s not sinister. In fact, the fact that anti democratic or government strengthening actions are enshrined in law makes it more worrisome rather than less.
This is even more worrying when the “laws kicking in” are laws the government passed unilaterally without discussion a couple of months ago precisely to prevent dissent on social media.
Further, let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. This is a government that has been absolutely pathetic when it comes to competent law making, whether you’re talking about demonetization, GST, or article 370 (which even if you may agree with the action on principle, the execution of which is an absolute sad joke, where the government has unnecessarily imprisoned the people of a state in their own homes for almost 2 years because they had absolutely no plan, and are now looking for a face saving way of backtracking from their actions).
Overall, I see GST as a good thing.
And, for many years, investors from other countries complained about complicated business environment in India and wanted to reduce red tape.
Amalgamating the myriad of tax setups across various states, into one uniform tax code, I consider, is a good thing.
You challenged the notion that GST is a pathetically flawed implementation. So I gave you one. Rest is your call.
GST is a mix of a miserably poor implementation and crass political arm twisting by the party that holds sway in the center to force state governments run by opposing parties to fail.
> Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias.
Twitter does some minimal moderation, and everything& everyone has bias. calling them a newspaper though? no. that's absurd. there's no pretense here that this is truth, that people are reporting. one's entering a bazaar of voices.
I don't get the impulse to be cruel & constraining & mean to these democratic emerging mediums. demanding that they fulfill certain roles we want them to have is unjust, a horrible constraint against creativity & liberty.
It is absolutely naive to think that companies like twitter don't use that power to advance the political/social agendas their most powerful employees care about and it's even more naive to think that governments will see this power and not want to control it for themselves, but instead let it operate unchecked in their own borders, influencing their own elections. They will either block these companies from operating via firewalls or demand that they use their power to share the political and cultural values they want to push, systematically deplatforming any company that they view as a threat to their agenda. China was ahead of the curve.
If Twitter decides to manipulate/cancel/promote content in an unethical way it can be taken to the court.
If the government makes unreasonable take down requests, Twitter can take it to court.
That way the pros and cons of censorship by either party is transparent and available for public scrutiny.
This podcast is a nice observation of how different India is from a developed western country.
A must watch especially if you are looking for an alternative view
But at the higher echelons, where politics and business and the arms industry meet, India is small potatoes when it comes to corruption. Americans don't have "bribes" ... they have sanitized words like "lobbyists", "power-tips", "pork-barrels" and so on. Rich societies fall over themselves selling arms to all factions in countries riven by war and poverty and starvation, while making pious pronouncements about freedom and right to exist.
The giver of the bribe is just as corrupt as the receiver.
I also find it funny that Americans who have raised so much noise over last few years about Russians "hacking" their elections consider another country's government trying to limit or regulate an American company's attempts to influence domestic politics as an authoritarian attack on free speech.
I can smell the irony. These tech companies don't care about the liberties of the citizens of the America. Now they want to lecture the government of India and Nigeria (last month) about "freedom of expression"? What a pathetic joke. They took away the speech of mine and many others I know. I hope they suffer.