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Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

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Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#71

Post by actuator »

Judgmentality wrote: post #44
actuator wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read through it and it says part of the document has been admitted to be true. > You can then question the fact-checking organization, and eventually nobody can say anything. If I am a citizen of the said country, is a private fact checking organisation answerable to me? I am not saying they are lying, but what are the checks and balances on them. > Should government be the arbiter of truth? About it's own politica…

I find your stance slightly bizarre. You don't trust twitter to be the arbiter of truth (which is fair), but you think the Indian government which is widely credited to be falsifying data (I can point you to sources on this, I even personally know a journalist there) will be held accountable to its people? Sure, it'd be nice to hold your government accountable. But when your ruler is effectively a tyrant in a governm…

> but you think the Indian government which is widely credited to be falsifying data will be held accountable to its people?

Isn't this what elections are there for?

Didn't the ruling party lose a major election just few weeks back? It was widely covered as a victory against them even in international press.

> Nobody is forcing you to trust twitter any more than they're forcing you to trust the government.

It seems you strongly oppose the current establishment. Would you have been fine if Twitter would have marked content against them the same way? It might have been true but it might also have been pressure by the establishment.

It is not like anyone is asking anyone to trust Twitter. My main issue with that is the sheer power a private company not answerable to the citizens holds.

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#72

Post by dang »

nindalf wrote: post #49
skavi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is up with the comments in this thread? How are people seeing this as the Indian government taking a stand against censorship or whatever? The same government is upset that Twitter reinstated several accounts critical of the administration.

In general, Indians living abroad are highly supportive of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Not his party, or his government, or his policies ... just him personally. Hacker News contains many such people. They are responsible for the bizarre comments you've read on this thread. On a related note, this thread will soon be flagged, like all threads that are even mildly, indirectly critical of Narendra Modi. En…

This generalization comes up in every polarized thread about every polarized topic. Literally every side that feels passionately on such a topic feels like the community is outrageously biased against their side. For every sarcastic and aggrieved "anything that supports $X will get downvoted and flagged" or "anything even mildly critical will get $Y", there are isomorphic comments from the opposing side which are just as sarcastic and aggrieved, only with the obvious bit flipped.

In reality, the community is divided similarly to how society at large is divided. But the actual experience of this is extremely difficult to bear when we're all bumping into each other in one big Brownian room. I wrote about this at length here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

Each side is so upset by the manifestations of the other side that they come to see them as utterly dominating the community. This is out of proportion numerically, but that's because it's not a numerical experience but an emotional one.

We humans place a much greater emphasis on what we dislike than what we like—the bad (e.g. what you disagree with) stands out more than the good (what you agree with), and you are much more likely to notice it and weight it more heavily [1]. This is what leads to false feelings of generality [2]. Unfortunately it also leads to the feeling of being surrounded by enemies or, as I sometimes put it, demons [3]. This dynamic encourages flamewars, because each side feels like it is the righteous underdog in an unfairly biased situation, and anyone who feels that way will feel justified in lashing out in "defense".

If the combatants in such a situation could really see how closely they are mirroring each other, it would surely change something somehow.

I definitely don't mean to pick on you personally, nor the theme of Indian politics in particular; it's just one of many, and this dynamic seems to be universal. I think the next big phase of work we need to do as a community is to develop more awareness of it, and that's work that we all need to contribute to.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#73

Post by sharadov »

renewiltord wrote: post #63
max_hammer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone having a different opinion than me is wrong ?

No, that’s not true. But in this case, the grandparent comment is correct. The current Indian Prime Minister is very popular among Bay Area Indians and techies and so they will defend him nearly always.

Also India leads the way in shutting down the internet at the smallest sign of dissent, under Modi it has slowly but surely devolved into an authoritarian state

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50819905

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/asia/india-internet-cut-farme...

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#74

Post by sharadov »

renewiltord wrote: post #63
max_hammer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone having a different opinion than me is wrong ?

No, that’s not true. But in this case, the grandparent comment is correct. The current Indian Prime Minister is very popular among Bay Area Indians and techies and so they will defend him nearly always.

Oh yeah they love him to death, try having a rational conversation with them and it quickly devolves into personal attacks.

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#75

Post by dang »

alert0 wrote: post #35

Title does not match article. >Delhi Police raids Twitter offices over manipulated label >Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

We've updated the title above. As others pointed out, it's possible that the publication changed their own headline. This case smells like that to me. Btw, one trick is to look at the URL, since those are harder to change after publication. In this case the URL includes the word "raids".

Edit: yep: https://web.archive.org/web/20210524155244/https://techcrunc.... It would be interesting to know why they rolled it back. I haven't read the article, but I bet there was something excessive about the original claim, because they've softened it in two ways: changing "raided" to "visited" and putting scare quotes around "manipulated".

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#76

Post by Judgmentality »

actuator wrote: post #71
Judgmentality wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your stance slightly bizarre. You don't trust twitter to be the arbiter of truth (which is fair), but you think the Indian government which is widely credited to be falsifying data (I can point you to sources on this, I even personally know a journalist there) will be held accountable to its people? Sure, it'd be nice to hold your government accountable. But when your ruler is effectively a tyrant in a governm…

> but you think the Indian government which is widely credited to be falsifying data will be held accountable to its people? Isn't this what elections are there for? Didn't the ruling party lose a major election just few weeks back? It was widely covered as a victory against them even in international press. > Nobody is forcing you to trust twitter any more than they're forcing you to trust the government. It seems y…

> Would you have been fine if Twitter would have marked content against them the same way?

100%. My stance is that twitter can add its opinion just the same as anyone. The government trying to censor an opinion is what I consider to be the problem. Even if that opinion is "covid is fake" I think people should be allowed to say it because I believe in free speech.

> My main issue with that is the sheer power a private company not answerable to the citizens holds.

Then you must really hate (almost) every news organization in the world. They literally make it their business to do the very thing you seem to oppose. And as far as I'm concerned they have no more credibility, but that's entirely subjective.

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#77

Post by testplzignore »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #4
senthilnayagam wrote: post #2

Delhi Police served a legal notice to Twitter India, it was not a raid https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/toolkit...

> Delhi Police, controlled by India’s central government, on Monday evening searched two offices of Twitter — in the national capital state of Delhi and Gurgaon, in neighboring state of Haryana — to seek more information about Twitter’s rationale to label one of the tweets by ruling partly BJP spokesperson as “manipulated media.” > An hour into the search process, Delhi Police Special Cell team, which investigates te…

I'm so confused. The reporting on this sucks.

Did they stand at the front door knocking for an hour waiting for someone to come out? Did they physically break into the office? Does "closed" mean the office was physically closed/locked? Does "no Twitter employees" mean there were no humans physically present at the office, or does it mean there were no people directly employed by Twitter at the office? E.g., are they not counting security and other 24/7 staff that would normally be at an office building?

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#78

Post by actuator »

Judgmentality wrote: post #76
actuator wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you think the Indian government which is widely credited to be falsifying data will be held accountable to its people? Isn't this what elections are there for? Didn't the ruling party lose a major election just few weeks back? It was widely covered as a victory against them even in international press. > Nobody is forcing you to trust twitter any more than they're forcing you to trust the government. It seems y…

> Would you have been fine if Twitter would have marked content against them the same way? 100%. My stance is that twitter can add its opinion just the same as anyone. The government trying to censor an opinion is what I consider to be the problem. Even if that opinion is "covid is fake" I think people should be allowed to say it because I believe in free speech. > My main issue with that is the sheer power a private…

> I think people should be allowed to say it because I believe in free speech.

I do too, but this is the exact problem here. Twitter colored that free speech with what they thought was right.

> Then you must really hate (almost) every news organization in the world. They literally make it their business to do the very thing you seem to oppose

Oh, I do hate them. Passing commentary from high pedestals and this false sense of intellectual rigour about their work, pretending they don't have any biases at all.

This is why when they complain about social media companies eating their lunch, I have no sympathy for them. They just hate the fact that the power that was reserved to just them has been just given away to everyone.

All one needs to understand how good most journalism is to just watch coverage of news about a field they understand well.

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#79

Post by Judgmentality »

actuator wrote: post #78
Judgmentality wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you have been fine if Twitter would have marked content against them the same way? 100%. My stance is that twitter can add its opinion just the same as anyone. The government trying to censor an opinion is what I consider to be the problem. Even if that opinion is "covid is fake" I think people should be allowed to say it because I believe in free speech. > My main issue with that is the sheer power a private…

> I think people should be allowed to say it because I believe in free speech. I do too, but this is the exact problem here. Twitter colored that free speech with what they thought was right. > Then you must really hate (almost) every news organization in the world. They literally make it their business to do the very thing you seem to oppose Oh, I do hate them. Passing commentary from high pedestals and this false s…

> I do too, but this is the exact problem here. Twitter colored that free speech with what they thought was right.

I think this is where we disagree. Yes, twitter added their own opinion, but as far as I'm concerned why is that worse than anyone adding their own opinion to it? My point is twitter adding their opinion should be as inconsequential as a random person with 6 followers replying to the tweet saying "this is fake news." The only difference is because people give twitter more credibility than a random stranger, which is the fundamental problem of trust in society. No amount of laws can fix this if you truly advocate for free speech. People just need to educate themselves better about what to believe.

Re: Police in India visited Twitter offices over ‘manipulated media’ label

#80

Post by knolax »

Maybe some random American social media company whose politics aren't even liked by most Americans shouldn't meddle in the affairs of India. I hope this ends with Twitter being banned. I'm tired of Silicon Valley techies grandstanding about "disinformation" when their entire platforms are nothing but disinformation.
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