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Comment by vishnugupta | Hacker News Reader

It is worth noting that the IT mister resigned[1] just a day back in a massive cabinet reshuffling (if you could call that).

Twitter attracted the ruling government's wrath when it didn't censor/takedown Tweets supporting farmers' protests and those critical of government's handling of COVID's 2nd wave.

[1] https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/india/breaking-ravi-shankar...

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This is just FUD.. there has been no report whatsoever that the resignation was due to ongoing tussle with social media companies… do you have any sources explicitly stating that?

If not then please stop dumping random articles to support your viewpoint.

That doesn't seem true. Popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter still have a lot of "pro-farmer" posts and at least the former two are not exactly in a tussle with the Government. The government's relationship Twitter took a wrong turn when Twitter displayed lethargy in removing content that propagated fake news and celebrated terrorists(as per india)

https://www.news18.com/news/india/remove-tweets-accounts-rel...

https://m.timesofindia.com/india/govt-defends-twitter-ban-sa...

The new regulations do seem to be a stretch. It's like using an artillery to destroy a skirmisher.

Let's be specific. The Government requested the takedown of the hashtag, #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide

This seems reasonable.

It seems reasonable to silence your political opponents on a 3rd party media with a force of law?

Is it? I don't know the particulars of India's constitution but suppressing speech like this is generally frowned upon by democracies.

What's the difference between #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide and #StopTheSteal from a free speech perspective?

My question exactly - I'd love to hear someone's take on this. Both are misinformation campaigns, and both result in violence.

I don't see why Trump should be banned but accounts tweeting that the government is planning a genocide should not (be banned). I'd say both bans were fair.

I think people are wary about a government making an official demand that content be removed. Trump's ban was entirely Twitter's own decision; by contrast, the Indian government seeks to compel removal of material.

I don't have a problem, per se, with governments having the ability to remove content from public platforms on public safety or security grounds. But the Modi government has also sought to remove content that's much less plausibly likely to inflame public violence, in particular related to its handling of COVID.

Plenty of democracies have stricter stances on libel, which such a hashtag could be argued to be

India might be an exception in that case. India has strong hate speech laws which are routinely used against journalists.

Both Japan and South Korea made more legal demands for takedown of tweets than India (with Japan making 8 times more takedown requests than India). Are they also not democracies?

Source: https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/removal-requests...

Given the fact that the LDP has been ruling Japan nationally for essentially 50 years uninterrupted and every single South Korean president resigned in disgrace, it's a better question that one would think.

Reasonable in fascist Germany sure, on a democratic platform? Not so much. US companies need start saying "screw you" to more countries (the US included) when asked to violate their values. We need to be telling China to pound sand every day in every way we can.

World war 2 ended last century around the world, and in some ways a little bit in the US as well, but, interestingly the majority of the population still is quite unaware of this trivia.

Germany currently has many laws restricting free speech, I am not sure what WW2 has to do with this debate today?

So by fascist Germany you mean the current govt. Wow I'm falling behind on my current affairs. Did they really abandon democracy again?

Democratic platform? Do I get to vote on Twitter's content rules?

Democratic as in protected by free speech laws as it is incorporated in a democracy. Not socialist as in no you don't get a say on how a private company operates as it also gets the right to freedom of speech and association.

It seems that you are not quite clear about the meaning of those terms.

> Socialism and democracy cannot be compared because it would just be like comparing apples to oranges since socialism is an economic system while democracy is a political ideology. An economic system defines the manner of producing and distributing the goods and services of society while a political system refers to the institutions that will comprise a government and how the system will work.

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/diff...

Ok this is tedious, socialized typically implies a higher level of government involvement (benefits, regulation, subsidies etc.) and often nationalization (like that socialist mexican oil platform that just lit the gulf on fire) than say a more free market economy democracy. Yes, technically you can have a socialist democracy. (Depending on how you stretch the word “democracy” you could have a democratic anything) However, in socialist democracies it is rare for companies to enjoy similar protections from government interference as the individuals do (and often the individuals are interfered with more as well). So a democratic company is a company in a nation whose democratic politics result in protections of the companies as well as the people. All political systems are fundamentally economic systems, lets not be naive.

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