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Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#61

Post by ameen »

majjgepolja wrote: post #22
baybal2 wrote: post #6

With this finally being mentioned, it also needs to be said that they are quite enthusiastic about mowing down Congress on FB, and IG. And that very much unlike other far more on the fringe parties. This was going on for far longer before Facebook's political engagement became known in the West. It feels to me, Zuckerberg wants INC dead, and buried. Wouldn't be against that myself. INC, is for all reasons, synonymic…

I dislike BJP propaganda as much as next educated person, but could it be just that if facebook stops sensoring BJP bots, they might provoke mobs to physically attack Facebook in India, and their employee's safety is important for them?

Facebook has hired BJP aligned individuals to run top country posts for a while now.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/27/21536149/ankhi-das-faceb...

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#62

Post by ameen »

screye wrote: post #48

Does Facebook have lower standards towards politicians or BJP politicians ? I've seen Facebook and esp. Twitter take an active stance on censorship that goes far beyond banning spam. While this is a cut&dry case, the HN discussion is clearly centered around 'special treatment of those in power' at large. As I see it, fake news is a good 50-50 mix of actual fake news and a political perspective that is inconvenient to…

Facebook has literally hired BJP aligned individuals: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/27/21536149/ankhi-das-faceb...

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#63

Post by anxiety554 »

gigatexal wrote: post #36

Ugh. The BJP are Hindu nationalists that should be labeled as extremists — a bunch of Napoleon-complex-having-authoritarians... But India is the next big thing so all companies from Apple to Facebook and everyone in between will likely pander to the government. I’m East Indian but born in America (lucky me I guess) living in Berlin. I mean no disrespect to my fellow Indians just to convey my utter contempt for Modi a…

> The BJP are Hindu nationalists that should be labeled as extremists

The core root of all the evil in India is the Vedas and its preaching on varna system(modern caste system). BJP is just another by product. Without educating the people on these text books its very hard to find a solution.

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#65

Post by revendell_elf »

gigatexal wrote: post #36

Ugh. The BJP are Hindu nationalists that should be labeled as extremists — a bunch of Napoleon-complex-having-authoritarians... But India is the next big thing so all companies from Apple to Facebook and everyone in between will likely pander to the government. I’m East Indian but born in America (lucky me I guess) living in Berlin. I mean no disrespect to my fellow Indians just to convey my utter contempt for Modi a…

They should be labelled as extremists just like many other Islamic organizations in India who have been giving threats to make India an Islamic nation by killing all the Kafirs, right?

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#66

Post by shillforhumanty »

ajkjk wrote: post #19
zpeti wrote: post #9

It seems to me on this topic almost everyone (including myself) is in a completely hypocritical position. We want facebook to take action in countries where we disagree, but not take action in areas/countries where we agree. Here is a perfect example. I imagine most people criticising Facebook here were in favour of facebook wiping the hunter biden story from everywhere. Because one is a conservative government, the…

I don't buy the "argument from hypocrisy" at all. The situations are not symmetric because there is a right answer on each side and they give different results. Google should filter information when it's the right thing to do. It should not filter information when it's the wrong thing to do. The superficial symmetry of the two situations is completely irrelevant to which course of action is right and acceptable.

Out of curiousity, how many Marvel movies have you seen? Star Wars? All of them? Real world is a lot greyer.

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#67

Post by akudha »

qwytw wrote: post #45
Griffinsauce wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made this pretty explicit for the former president of the US: anybody "newsworthy" (ie. has enough power to hurt the platform) has near free play around the rules. In contrast my personal opinion is that we should hold people in power to a higher standard.

I don't think content posted by elected officials should be moderated (except maybe in the most extreme cases). The society should have the right too see it and make their own conclusions about it. I bet a quite a few people would have had a better opinion of Trump, if Twitter actually removed his tweets where he made various untruthful and inciteful claims.

quite a few people would have had a better opinion of Trump, if Twitter actually removed his tweets where he made various untruthful

This is a double edged sword. A lot of people will (and do) blindly believe anything their leader (Trump or someone else) says, no matter how stupid/wrong/evil it is. I guess you are assuming people are rational and that people have time/patience to carefully analyze the content they are consuming and separate truth from hysteria. The reality is that most people (left or right, religious or non-religious... doesn't matter) have already made up their minds and simply look for people who think alike, to rationalize the bubble they are in. Which the tech companies and media are happy to serve, as that is where the money is.

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#68

Post by reactspa »

revendell_elf wrote: post #65
gigatexal wrote: post #36

Ugh. The BJP are Hindu nationalists that should be labeled as extremists — a bunch of Napoleon-complex-having-authoritarians... But India is the next big thing so all companies from Apple to Facebook and everyone in between will likely pander to the government. I’m East Indian but born in America (lucky me I guess) living in Berlin. I mean no disrespect to my fellow Indians just to convey my utter contempt for Modi a…

They should be labelled as extremists just like many other Islamic organizations in India who have been giving threats to make India an Islamic nation by killing all the Kafirs, right?

Every single political party in Pakistan is an islamic-nationalist party. Yet the Western media never describes them so. Yet the BJP is always suffixed with "hindu-nationalist".

Israel has preferential citizenship for Jews. Yet, somehow India is not allowed to have CAA (per western media).

Double standards, I suppose.

Re: Facebook removed fake accounts in India until it saw BJP politician was involved

#70

Post by ballenf »

Why do we expect tech companies to stand up to the people in charge of the countries where they operate?

Is it because we hope and think that tech companies are somehow a new UN of sorts and we get disappointed when they don't live up to their ideals?

I think part of it is that we've all bought into these companies PR departments' promulgation of values and core beliefs. Not realizing that those statements are little more than the ad campaigns that help them sell the most widgets and get the most engagement and hire the most idealistic employees.

How many extra hours a week would you work for the company that professes to "share" your values?

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