Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#21

Post by xxpor » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

OzyM wrote: post #7

vowelless wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit is complying with local laws. Not all countries have “first amendment style free speech”. Note the speech restrictions in the Indian constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_India The farmers protests were allegedly detrimental to the sovereignty and security of India and so it makes sense to ban those kinds of hastags. FWIW, the American government also requests removals from…

Super interesting Wikipedia article, thanks for the link! Some of the restrictions on free speech make me instinctually uncomfortable (i.e. restrictions for the sake of "decency and morality"), but I recognize these are hardly unique to India and countries such as the U.S. have censored plenty of books, etc. in the past. I'm not sure that I personally am in favor. However, you're clearly right in that it's hardly unp…

>countries such as the U.S. have censored plenty of books, etc. in the past.

The modern interpretation of the 1st amendment as being fairly absolute is only 50-100 years old. Don't forget the federal government had political prisoners for protesting against the US getting involved in WW 1, and the HUAC and McCarthy hearings were blatantly unconstitutional under modern jurisprudence.

We don't even need to talk about the Alien and Sedition acts, passed right after the 1st amendment was ratified!

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#22

Post by eldaisfish » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #13

Buried in the last paragraph: > "Police in two Indian states have named Twitter India boss Manish Maheshwari in complaints. The state of Uttar Pradesh has challenged in the Supreme Court a bar on police action against Maheshwari, after a lower court protected him against arrest over an accusation that the platform was used to spread hate." Really wondering why Twitter is continuing its presence in a country where its…

The answer to your final question is almost always money. The English-speaking upper echelons of Indian society are a significant presence on the internet.

What is intriguing is the fact that twitter in India is dominated by the elites or those at the top of the wealth pyramid i.e. the richest 5% of the population. These people have tremendous power in Indian society and hence their current right-wing regime is paranoid about this section being publicly critical of the government via twitter.

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#23

Post by Mountain_Skies » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #13

Buried in the last paragraph: > "Police in two Indian states have named Twitter India boss Manish Maheshwari in complaints. The state of Uttar Pradesh has challenged in the Supreme Court a bar on police action against Maheshwari, after a lower court protected him against arrest over an accusation that the platform was used to spread hate." Really wondering why Twitter is continuing its presence in a country where its…

Why wouldn't Twitter trade their employees for money? There's no shortage of potential employees in India to replace any that the police might arrest. As long as it's the employees suffering most of the consequences while Twitter receives most of the benefits, they're going to do what all profit first entities would do and let the employees suffer.

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#24

Post by Mountain_Skies » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

jatins wrote: post #19

Filling the Chief Compliance Officer role is going to be extremely tricky. Not just because you are now liable for any content government considers objectionable (and this government is considers _a lot_ objectionable -- they recently arrested people for putting posters questioning government's vaccine export when we had shortage inside the country itself) but also because this puts that person at tremendous mental/p…

India is a big country with many ambitious people. Doubt Twitter will ever have a problem finding someone to fill the role, even if they're little more than a designated patsy.

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#25

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

oneplane wrote: post #16

mullen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FWIW, the American government also requests removals from social media sites. No, they don't. Any American Government official requesting a removal of anything from social media sites would probably lose their job. That's saying a lot because American Government officials rarely ever lose their jobs.

Yes they do. Not personally, but they do. The amount of child exploitation that falls through the filters is not zero, and sometimes the government of the US intervenes and asks for the content to be removed.

Removing that kind of illegal content by the police is 100% different from political officials asking to have content critical of the gov't removed.

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#26

Post by rishav_sharan » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

xNeil wrote: post #18

rishav_sharan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The farmers protests were allegedly detrimental to the sovereignty and security of India and so it makes sense to ban those kinds of hastags. Thats a fairly nonsensical claim. Are you planning back it up with more details/sources? Because if we are just making sentences on the fly, IMO, this BJP regime has been allegedly detrimental to the sovereignty and security of India.

The hashtags insinuated the government was planning a farmer genocide. Source: https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/govt-se...

How is that a threat to India's sovereignty or security? Modi is infamous for having caused, by his actions or inactions, the Gujarat riots that killed 2000+ people. Hell, he was even banned from entering the US, till he became the Indian PM. There is blood on his hands and lots of it.

And to give some context on this hash tag, I believe it came after the gov't put across barricades and barbed wires to caroll the protesters leading many to believe that the regime was planning a major crackdown. The situation in the first week of Feb was very tense.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/others/iron-spikes-bar...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55899754

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#27

Post by arcturus17 » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

mullen wrote: post #10

vowelless wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit is complying with local laws. Not all countries have “first amendment style free speech”. Note the speech restrictions in the Indian constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_India The farmers protests were allegedly detrimental to the sovereignty and security of India and so it makes sense to ban those kinds of hastags. FWIW, the American government also requests removals from…

> FWIW, the American government also requests removals from social media sites. No, they don't. Any American Government official requesting a removal of anything from social media sites would probably lose their job. That's saying a lot because American Government officials rarely ever lose their jobs.

You don’t think the US can have things removed from social networks for “national security” reasons?

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#28

Post by jonahx » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #9

OzyM wrote: post #2

"The IT rules, which became effective end-May, are aimed at regulating content on social media and making firms act more swiftly on legal requests to remove posts and sharing details on the originators of messages. They also require the appointment of certain new executives." The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech. Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, g…

>They also require the appointment of certain new executives Ah so just like china? >Now a wide range of foreign companies in China, from the cosmetics giant L’Oréal to Walt Disney and Dow Chemicals, all have party committees and display the hammer and sickle on their premises. In 2017, Reuters published an article that quoted executives from one European company saying that party representatives had demanded to be b…

> L’Oréal to Walt Disney and Dow Chemicals... display the hammer and sickle on their premises.

Wow. Quoted just so others don't miss this.

It was news to me.

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#29

Post by echelon » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

arcturus17 wrote: post #27

mullen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FWIW, the American government also requests removals from social media sites. No, they don't. Any American Government official requesting a removal of anything from social media sites would probably lose their job. That's saying a lot because American Government officials rarely ever lose their jobs.

You don’t think the US can have things removed from social networks for “national security” reasons?

Probably not. First Amendment and Streisand Effect.

Re: Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

#30

Post by ConcernedCoder » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

oneplane wrote: post #16

mullen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FWIW, the American government also requests removals from social media sites. No, they don't. Any American Government official requesting a removal of anything from social media sites would probably lose their job. That's saying a lot because American Government officials rarely ever lose their jobs.

Yes they do. Not personally, but they do. The amount of child exploitation that falls through the filters is not zero, and sometimes the government of the US intervenes and asks for the content to be removed.

ok, so removal of obvious illegal content like child exploitation is not equivilent to removal of content like "I don't agree with your political view" -- which is basically IMHO what this hashtag thing in india amounts to...?