Elon Musk caves to pressure from India to remove BBC doc critical of Modi | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk caves to pressure from India to remove BBC doc critical of Modi

theintercept.com

72 pointsnickthegreek11 comments

Didn't he just tweet about freedom of press?

I am from India. Though I am not a fan (or hater) of Modi, he has been scrutinized on these accusations by the Supreme Court of India. As far as I am concerned that settles the matter. I should also add that Modi was given a clean chit years before he became Prime Minister of India. I would rather trust the Supreme court of India than the agenda of media produced by anyone, especially foreign media.

According to the article, it is not just the video, but links to the video that Modi's government tries to take down. However, no idea how this could be confirmed outside India.

Not sure what options Musk has in his cards - not cave in, take a risk to get Twitter banned or just follow the local censorship laws - which obiviously here might being abused.

Not commenting the quality of the document, as BBC has produced some bad quality content now and then before, but the journalists seem to stand behind this. Even bad criticism should be tolerated in a democratic country and BBC is still faraway from the worst trolls and trash what you could see e.g. with Trump's legions. Is this finally how the democracy dies and only the opinion of Modi becomes the right truth? Looks like Indian opposition agrees.

Let's wait and see if Streisand Effect kicks in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

It kicked in. I had not heard of the documentary until after India banned it.

For it to kick in, you'd have to also watched it, not just heard of it. Alas I can't seem to find any copies of it.

If you think about it, the documentary would have gone viral either way - either parts of the documentary as video clips on social media, or the news about banning of it. Imagine if there was a documentary about Canada's PM - irrespective of the topic, it would have gone famous. So looks like the government chose the option which was less bad for them.

> Even bad criticism should be tolerated in a democratic country

It can lead to movements like the "birther" conspiracy where some people would refuse to change their minds after getting exposed to some information (also similar to anti-vax movement or people still thinking one of the famous dictator in the past being short when he was not actually short). Whether that is good or bad is a very complex topic, and most modern democracies want to let criticism flow through. Ironically, the censorship law used here were introduced by the opposition when they were in power. So this is a true case of "both sides" being complicit in censorship.

Oh yes, the Jack Straw documentary. We need to see more from this trustworthy source.

Imagine what he'll do when Xi comes calling

What makes you think Xi isn't already calling?

He'll probably obey Chinese law in China like he obeys Indian law in India and US law in US (mostly).

Title is ragebait.

only in india I hope?

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