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Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

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Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#21
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral. But Google does manipulate search results, so ostensibly they should also be put on par with newspapers? examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13274753 edit: Also your comment misleads on what the article reports. Twitter has not lost safe harbor because "they do gatekeeping and…

how would one even sort search results without bias?

I think most would call the original pagerank algorithm unbiased. Sure, any algorithm will have a bias towards a certain content length, or towards pages that contain the search terms at a particular density. But by doing that you don't arrive at algorithms that have an opinion on the holocaust or Tiananmen Square [1].

Of course Twitter somehow managed to implement the worst of both worlds, with a sorting algorithm that promotes controversial content (without bias regarding the actual content), but then does biased moderation on that content.

1: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57367100

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#22
post #12

Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias. Twitter can not have the cake and eat it too. There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.

> You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral. But Google does manipulate search results, so ostensibly they should also be put on par with newspapers? examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13274753 edit: Also your comment misleads on what the article reports. Twitter has not lost safe harbor because "they do gatekeeping and…

Google's time will come

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#23
post #17

The article misses some more context. 1. The escalation intensified after tweets by prominent ministers and fucntionaries of the ruling government were marked as "manipulated media" 2. The IT Ministers and opposition partys accounts were locked for copyright infringement. 3. The govt wants twitter to comply on removing content and users critical of govt policies. [1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipulate…

Can you imagine the Department of Justice declaring Twitter to be no longer protected under section 230, after flagging Trump's tweets?

This feels so, so wrong.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#24
in india at least there is a saying "you are doing this on your own responsibility". and this relates to an employee going for a job or doing something weird or students applying for college. what this means is, twitter is supposed to be responsible for their inability to cooperate with the crony government and any action they would be taking.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#25

Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias. Twitter can not have the cake and eat it too. There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.

> You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.

Isn't ranking a manipulation? Not sure what you mean by this.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#26

Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias. Twitter can not have the cake and eat it too. There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#27
post #17

The article misses some more context. 1. The escalation intensified after tweets by prominent ministers and fucntionaries of the ruling government were marked as "manipulated media" 2. The IT Ministers and opposition partys accounts were locked for copyright infringement. 3. The govt wants twitter to comply on removing content and users critical of govt policies. [1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipulate…

Can you imagine the Department of Justice declaring Twitter to be no longer protected under section 230, after flagging Trump's tweets? This feels so, so wrong.

Yes. It feels pretty right that you can't claim you're not editorializing if you decide to censure the leader of the country because of arbitrary reasons, like claiming coronavirus came from a lab is a conspiracy theory.

What happens in India is actually the opposite, it's the government requiring the censuring.

I'm always on the side of free speech. It shouldn't be up to Twitter to decide if coronavirus came from the lab, or if "mail in ballot fraud is very rare, as few as 0.001%" (a completely bonkers notion that was also later debunked, but served to prevent any discussion before the election despite it's absurdity).

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#28
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral. But Google does manipulate search results, so ostensibly they should also be put on par with newspapers? examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13274753 edit: Also your comment misleads on what the article reports. Twitter has not lost safe harbor because "they do gatekeeping and…

how would one even sort search results without bias?

By returning the best match to a search first… second one second…

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#29
post #17

The article misses some more context. 1. The escalation intensified after tweets by prominent ministers and fucntionaries of the ruling government were marked as "manipulated media" 2. The IT Ministers and opposition partys accounts were locked for copyright infringement. 3. The govt wants twitter to comply on removing content and users critical of govt policies. [1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipulate…

Can you imagine the Department of Justice declaring Twitter to be no longer protected under section 230, after flagging Trump's tweets? This feels so, so wrong.

eh. in india the government sets the boogeyman and the national media as well as the government troll factory just lap it up.

read these posts. india government calls anything critical of its actions on social media as "misuse" because it breaks the image of "worlds largest democracy".

Twitter is being assholes. they should just patch up like facebook which fully complies with government meaning facebook becomes the best monitoring and investigation portal for them. like the last time facebook had found some political influence on their software but once they found the ruling party was involved, they dropped the investigation

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/15/facebook-...

https://scroll.in/article/954711/in-kashmir-a-spree-of-arres...

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#30
post #17

The article misses some more context. 1. The escalation intensified after tweets by prominent ministers and fucntionaries of the ruling government were marked as "manipulated media" 2. The IT Ministers and opposition partys accounts were locked for copyright infringement. 3. The govt wants twitter to comply on removing content and users critical of govt policies. [1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipulate…

There is also the context that Twitter refused to remove blatantly false and deliberately incendiary tweets during the farmers' protests in which the Red Fort was breached similar to the Capitol Hill riots.

Also, more recently, Twitter has refused to remove clearly manipulated media intended to inflame Hindu-Muslim communal riots.

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