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

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

#151

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #62

kumarvvr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a government elected through due process, with free and fair elections a "crony" govt. I can understand ones hate for the policies of a govt, but this is absurd.

crony for selling out public infrastructure to capitalists, for waiving loans for billion dollar scammers but farmers resort to suicide when they are unable to pay back their small loans, when "elected governments" act as the nazi party and "image" is worth more than lives of ordinary citizens, when they do as they wish, have people disappear as they like, when journalists are arrested and people killed for speaking…

> selling out public infrastructure to capitalists

Not sure what you mean. If there are any specific scandals you can point out to, I'd be really happy to know more.

Are you suggesting govt. should not contract out infrastructure projects?

> for waiving loans for billion dollar scammers

More than 80% of property/money of such defaulters has been taken back by the government.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/banks-cheated-by-m...

> farmers resort to suicide when they are unable to pay back their small loans

The govt. pays a lot of money to farmers. 21% of farm income is from govt. subsidies. (Subsidies that the US and other developed nations have been fighting to stop, so that they can compete in Indian markets).

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/economic-policy/fa...

Farmer suicides have been more or less constant for many decades now. Its a sad situation and the causes of suicides are many and varied.

The current govt. has brought in a lot of technology driven improvements to distribution of subsidies, eliminating middlemen, etc.

The current farmer protests are mostly by rich farmer middlemen from Punjab, who will see their commissions reduces significantly if farmers start selling in markets with real competition.

> when "elected governments" act as the nazi party and "image" is worth more than lives of ordinary citizens

This could potentially mean very many things. It would help if you could be specific. Just shouting Nazi and lives of ordinary citizens means nothing.

> have people disappear as they like

Not very knowledgeable on this subject. Would love to hear more.

> when journalists are arrested and people killed for speaking against this "Elected government"

Most incidents I have seen are for deliberate instances of mis-information and shoddy journalism, leading to tense situations. I would be glad to hear of any instances where journalists have been wrongfully arrested.

The example you cite is for a journalist who was arrested based on a complaint from a Woman's Union, and that was for his posts of FB rather.

I never support suppression of free speech and news media, but the North Eastern states of India have a unique situation because China is fomenting a lot of separatism within the states and it is internationally knows that it claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own.

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

#152

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #79

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…

> dont you think those who started the rumour be caught? Do you also want people who expose govt corruption or criticise the govt to be caught?

There are a number of tools available to many who want to securely send data to one another. A bit of internet search is enough to learn.

And those who plan to hurt India, would not use mass communication means in any case.

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

#153

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

xfer wrote: post #66

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…

The answer should be to educate the people. Judging the progress in the ML research, it is a lost battle trying to "protect" people from propaganda/misinformation. And i don't trust the indian authorities to do it right seeing how opaque the whole system is.

The most wealthiest and developed country in the world, the USA, could not educate its own citizens enough.

And you think a country of half a billion gullible folk need to be educated.

Do you know how much time that will take, and if at all it will be successful?

US politics and the Trump machine have shown that no matter how much you educate people, a small group of people, often available to the highest bidder, will be able to influence millions of people.

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

#154

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

kranner wrote: post #63

kumarvvr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because youtube has no mechanism to label content one way or other. It is not a massive distribution network. It is a content heavy site used for sharing videos. The actual sharing happens on other platforms.

So you're saying the moment YouTube begins to flag content as potentially manipulated, it could become a problem? And do none of the points in your previous comment matter at all?

Of course. If you put out a video expressing your views on a political situation, and YT labels your video as "manipulative video", won't you have a problem?

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

#155

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #65

kumarvvr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By removing user profile data as an input to the search query processing and result ranking.

So censoring a specific topic or viewpoint is fine as long as it's applied to everyone?

Did you even read what I said?

If you remove user related data as an input to the search query, the results will be purely based on algorithm efficiency, rather than feeding on the biases of the users.

Such feedback loops, of showing content that is suitable to the user, will lead to information silos and gradual radicalization of the user.

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

#156

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

eldaisfish wrote: post #86

kumarvvr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a government elected through due process, with free and fair elections a "crony" govt. I can understand ones hate for the policies of a govt, but this is absurd.

you are all over this thread making bad faith arguments. Just because a government is elected through the process of voting, does not mean that it is accountable to the people. Politics is a dirty business and that is as true in India as it is in the US. You would struggle to make the case that the duly elected president of the USA, one Mr Trump, was anything but a con-man whose primary aim was the enrichment of hims…

> Just because a government is elected through the process of voting, does not mean that it is accountable to the people

Isn't that true everywhere? in every democracy? Why do you think there are three equally powerful branches of govt., the legislation, the judiciary and the military?

Indian constitution has good measure of checks and balances.

If the ruling govt. passes a law, the opposition can always go to court and challenge the constitutionality of the law.

> robust democracy

Tell me what are the facets of a robust democracy and lets see if its applicable to Indian Constitution and political system.

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

#157

Post by bosswipe » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #140

bosswipe wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your story about Twitter banning skepticism about surface cleaning is true. I remember being involved in several long Twitter threads on that topic with no one being banned.

Just because you didn't see it happen, doesn't mean it didn't happen. If we accept your report at face value. all you've proven is that their algorithm isn't 100% comprehensive regardless of impact/number of followers of the people, etc. It seems far more reasonable to me that if POTUS or $randomCelebrity tweets something it will get more scrutiny from the moderation efforts at Twitter than I would if I tweeted the s…

My personal anecdote is more proof than what BuyMyBitcoins provided for his assertion.

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

#158

Post by alex_smart » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

kevinwang wrote: post #150

alex_smart wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I just told you that everybody was lying about the bill.

I see. I did some additional googling and I think you're basically right: the family exemption was already in the original bill, and it was merely kept, not introduced, in the amendment. Row 5 in this quite thorough article [0] shows the similarity/difference. So I'd wager the reason there was backlash against the bill was that it did not close the exemption, not (as mentioned in the article I posted originally) that…

>and it was merely kept

It was not merely kept, the scope of the sort of work allowed under that exemption was also reduced to non-hazardous work and that too was only allowed after school hours or during vacations.

>So I'd wager the reason there was backlash against the bill was that it did not close the exemption

I pretty much said the same thing in my original comment.

>>The only explanation I could think of is that perhaps the law didn't go as far enough or didn't include certain amendments as they wanted and this was their way of pressurizing the government to listen to them. But that still left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps this is something my brain, trained to value truth above everything else, isn't quite mature enough to understand.

>this quite thorough article [0] shows the similarity/difference

This article is definitely more thorough than most others I have read, and at least quotes you relevant passages from the laws and points out all the different ways in which the bill was an improvement. But in the end, even this article ultimately concludes by calling the bill "one step forward and two steps back", which is a lie. The introduction teases you with "Thirdly, the legislation actually reduces the scope and applicability of some of the earlier provisions on prohibition of child labour" but that claim is never substantiated within the article.

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

#159

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:52 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…

> 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.

Would love to see examples. Really curious. Eager to learn.

> This call for war against misinformation that you point to seems to be always targeted towards the government's opposition most times

In general, the media is very friendly to the current opposition, the Congress party. The opposition has lots of connections in established media and some of them are akin to the Fox channels in the US.

Here also, I would love to see specific examples.

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

#160

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

srean wrote: post #90

kumarvvr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is GST imllementation "pathetic"? Could you elaborate?

For one thing payment to state governments not ruled by the BJP the party at the center) have been indefinitely delayed. States have been complaining about this, they have lost significant revenue, and are practically held under ransom.

Sure, those sort of procedural things will be sorted out.

Overall, I see GST as a good thing.

And, for many years, investors from other countries complained about complicated business environment in India and wanted to reduce red tape.

Amalgamating the myriad of tax setups across various states, into one uniform tax code, I consider, is a good thing.