Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by wtmt » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

thoughty wrote: post #77

I wanted to give a little context on how laws in India work. It has to be passed in the lower house (Lok Sabha) and the upper house (Rajya Sabha). While the ruling party (BJP) has majority in Lok Sabha is does not have so in Rajya Sabha. Also note that the members of the 2 houses are elected independently in different elections are at different times. For a Bill to become an Act, it has to pass in both houses and the…

Have to disagree with your claims. It’s a gross oversimplification of how laws can be passed or enacted in India. Not all laws require both houses to pass them (the infamous Aadhaar Act was passed as a money bill, a case that’s still pending hearing in the Supreme Court — money bills passed by the Lok Sabha are out of the ambit of the Rajya Sabha to do anything impactful).

In this particular case, these are IT Rules that fall under an existing Act (the IT Act). It’s not a new law, which is a problem because these rules fall afoul of what’s allowed in the parent law.

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

#92

Post by CountDrewku » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

mshroyer wrote: post #45

I would much prefer Twitter to ignore the Indian government. American companies should never cave to authoritarians.

They'll cave to whatever gets them more money. Which is why you see them bow down to China while pushing left wing ideology in the US. They're openly hypocritical and people still think they're altruistic for some reason.

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

#93

Post by mlnj » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

worker_thread wrote: post #83

There is definitely something going on with Indian Govt and Twitter. When the farmer's protest was on its peak, on my timeline I saw Jack Dorsey's activity liking tweets critical and mocking the current govt. I was totally shocked by Jack Dorsey's passive behaviour - you need to model and exhibit non neutral stance especially when you are the messenger of the information. Needless to say, with great power comes great…

>I saw Jack Dorsey's activity liking tweets critical and mocking the current govt.

>but passively liking and expressing your political likings and stance as CEO of twitter is is not cool & ethical.

Let's flip the script for a second here. Is a CEO allowed to like a positive story about the Indian leader? Can he retweet a cause he might care about (which many others might not)? Does this mean that CEOs abstain from taking part in public discourse or be called as not 'neutral'?

>Jack Dorsey should stop acting like he is the sole flag bearer of the free speech in the entire world.

Can this argument not be pointed to anybody who argues for free speech? Who is allowed to be a flag bearer for free speech?

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

#94

Post by mlnj » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

alex_smart wrote: post #70

potamic wrote: post #37

I don't know if many people realize, but this is a pivotal moment for freedom of speech in India. The archaic IT act and National Security Act are already being severely abused to arrest journalists and activists, and the new 2021 rules take this to a completely new level. What they are essentially going for is unrestricted authority on content takedown and traceability of originator of content which will force compa…

>Today, saying that cow dung does not cure covid, can land you in jail because it goes against the government's narrative. I overall agree with the point that many indian authorities have been using laws to punish dissent, but that is a little disingenuous. The specific context in that case was that those comments were made about the death of a BJP leader. So, those people were jailed for mocking the death of a polit…

>So, those people were jailed for mocking the death of a politician, not for merely saying that cowdung does not cure covid.

Again, not illegal to make fun of dead people.

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

#95

Post by ridiculous_leke » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

sidjor wrote: post #2

They should just shut their dev center in India and ask staff to relocate. The government can easily block them, but the optics of that would not look right. So this whole play around law and regulations.

They could blacklist the entire country but they would miss on a good chunk of ad revenue.

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

#96

Post by ridiculous_leke » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

potamic wrote: post #37

I don't know if many people realize, but this is a pivotal moment for freedom of speech in India. The archaic IT act and National Security Act are already being severely abused to arrest journalists and activists, and the new 2021 rules take this to a completely new level. What they are essentially going for is unrestricted authority on content takedown and traceability of originator of content which will force compa…

The government being the arbitrator of free speech is definitely a bad thing but that doesn't mean Social media companies deserve a free reign. The local newspaper and TV company in my city are responsible for what they show and print. That's not been the case with SM companies. The result is a massive misuse of Social media by trolls and anti-social elements. Whatever moderation they have in place is clearly not enough.

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

#97

Post by mlnj » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #73

wongarsu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> I think most would call the original pagerank algorithm unbiased. I disagree: the point of the original Pagerank algorithm was its bias. In particular, its use of link weights gave the algorithm a strong bias for (a proxy for) relevance. An "unbiased" search algorithm would need to return results based on simple criteria, readily explained and presented to the searcher, such as "date first crawled" or "number of ke…

You are trivializing every bit of research and advancement gone into improving search engines in the last 20 years.

Please attempt a simple implementation with the methods you describe and see how it performs over even a non trivial amount of data and you will see the difference in results.

And I'm not even considering malicious results gaming the whole system.

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

#98

Post by rektide » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

naruvimama wrote: post #8

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.

unlike newspapers Twitter is a crucial tool for everday citizens to share themselves with the world. unlike newspapers

> Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias.

Twitter does some minimal moderation, and everything& everyone has bias. calling them a newspaper though? no. that's absurd. there's no pretense here that this is truth, that people are reporting. one's entering a bazaar of voices.

I don't get the impulse to be cruel & constraining & mean to these democratic emerging mediums. demanding that they fulfill certain roles we want them to have is unjust, a horrible constraint against creativity & liberty.

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

#99

Post by ridiculous_leke » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

mlnj wrote: post #76

kumarvvr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is an oversized megaphone. A couple of 1000 dedicated workers can spread rumours, panic and propaganda. When you have a country of 1.3 billion people, a large portion of whom also have smartphones, who, unfortunately are also uneducated and gullible, you have the perfect environment to cause trouble. Apps like WA and Telegram, enable this megaphone to reach every nook and corner of the country. If tomorr…

> If tomorrow, there is a coordinated rumour mongering going on, leading to riots and deaths, dont you think those who started the rumour be caught? There is a constant stream of misinformation spread via government sources in the country. The Indian government over the last 7 years have steadily weaponized social media to dehumanize opponents and carve away rights from a very large section of the dissidents. This ca…

News channels have been on the line for a while. Defamation cases against them are not that uncommon.

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

#100

Post by alex_smart » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

mlnj wrote: post #94

alex_smart wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Today, saying that cow dung does not cure covid, can land you in jail because it goes against the government's narrative. I overall agree with the point that many indian authorities have been using laws to punish dissent, but that is a little disingenuous. The specific context in that case was that those comments were made about the death of a BJP leader. So, those people were jailed for mocking the death of a polit…

>So, those people were jailed for mocking the death of a politician, not for merely saying that cowdung does not cure covid. Again, not illegal to make fun of dead people.

>Again, not illegal to make fun of dead people.

In India? Who knows? Probably not NSA worthy, but I wouldn't bet against anything being illegal in India.

I certainly know one person who was kept in jail for years for mocking one dead person (PBUH). That person did eventually get out on bail only to soon have his throat cut. But I guess that case ties into mocking religious feelings of a community (but then, so does this case).

Also, I think you probably missed the part where I began and ended my comment by emphasizing that I think this is government misusing the laws to punish dissent.