Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

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It's hard to re-create your following when the new platform goes out of its way to exclude you during its launch (Reels was launched in India days after tiktok was banned), heavily promoting upper caste creators. It's sort of like CEOs who got where they were because of their social networks from private schools and prestigious colleges - and seed money from daddy.

> But rather than court the same creators who had driven the Chinese company’s success, Facebook, Reels’ owner, kick-started its launch campaign by courting a set of influencers from upper-class backgrounds, including Komal Pandey, Kusha Kapila, and Ammy Virk: “A catalog of aspiring lifestyle [examples] for middle-class and upper-middle-class Indians,” was how Dr. Rahul Advani, a research fellow at the University College London, described the launch to Rest of World.

Facebook didn't know about popular tiktokers like the Mahtos, didn't care, or knew full well and specifically wanted to cater "rich lifestyle" content because it's better for selling ads, especially ads for expensive, high-profit-margin stuff.

You seem to be conflating rich lifestyle with castes.

Sure, there are many wealthy individuals whobare from upper castes.

There are also equally wealthy people from castes across the spectrum.

Influencers are basically rich, urban, 90s gen people. Some of them are from upper castes, some are not.

Is it not true that majority of rich people are upper caste though?

It depends, merchants are pretty rich and wouldn’t be considered upper caste.

You are mistaking caste for class. They are not the same. And Facebook and Instagram don't individually go around skimming every reel and asking people to be on their platform and denying others; it's open to all. Instagram Reels just puts video quality as a factor in recommending videos in people's feed, and it just so happens that the less privileged creators don't often manage to rise to those guidelines but those with better phones (with high-quality cameras) and internet do.

>specifically wanted to cater "rich lifestyle" content because it's better for selling ads, especially ads for expensive, high-profit-margin stuff

They don't have to choose between rich and poor audiences for ads. They have more than enough resources to push targeted ads to all kinds of demographics. They have no pragmatic advantage in filtering content for "lifestyle", since every individual user anyway has his own customized feed attuned to his interests. Even if they wanted to only cater to the rich, they won't gain much by cutting down on "poor" content that won't show up on their feed anyway.

> You are mistaking caste for class. They are not the same.

While foreigners may confuse between caste and class, everyone in India knows that there is a high co-relation between caste and class (mobility), and that invariably higher castes are higher on the class hierarchy, among Hindus (the majority population in India). The rigidness of the caste hierarchy that prevented mobility in it (rising up in the caste), has had a modern spillover effect on India's class system too. Many caste supremacist believe that class equality is an attack on the caste system, and thus use this reasoning as a basis to attack the economic and consumerist aspirations of the lower caste.

E.g. Incidents of attack by upper castes on lower caste Hindus when they try to imitate Bollywood types wedding to highlight their better social status:

> “They told us that we had to take birth as upper caste people if we wanted to ride a horse. I pleaded with them that Aakash is an orphan and they allow the marriage procession to pass off peacefully, but they did not budge from their stand,” Khema told Gadh police in the complaint.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/dalit-groom-...

There are many other such examples, where a lower caste is prevented from enjoying the benefits his economic class can afford him, by his castiest upper caste brethren.

You're divulging into a different area altogether. It's apparent the person I replied to genuinely wanted to refer to the overall less privileged demographic in his post in the context of Reels and its creators, not specifically to caste.

And they are not the same, however close and correlated you may feel they are.

I was pointing out why it is so easy to confuse caste and class. You are thinking of the theory of caste system as per the religious texts, while I am talking about how it practically exists in India - it is an undeniable fact that the large majority of the poor in India are from the lower caste among Hindus, while those of the middle and upper class are majorly from the Hindu upper caste. While they are not the same, the actual incidents of class discrimination show how caste and class are unfortunately tied together in India, simply because caste supremacist (wrongly) believe class mobility upsets the legitimacy of the caste system in modern India. For them, the social aspiration of a lower caste to accumulate wealth and increase their social status, somehow de-legitimizes their own caste status in the rigidly enforced system where caste mobility is no longer practiced by today's Hindus.

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