Live data from Hacker News

Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

reuters.com

161–170 of 221 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines that their is "clear evidence". Shouldn't a judge be involved?

>Who determines that their is "clear evidence". In this case, anyone with an eye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgSLaOMEzHY

That video is of such poor quality that it's hard to determine anything from it. Yes, a tractor hit a barrier, flipped, and caught fire. Unclear why it hit the barrier. Did the driver intentionally run it into the barrier? Did the police shoot him and then the tractor continued on into the barrier?

Not saying it wasn't the simple explanation, but that video is not really evidence of anything either way.

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

#162
post #50

Twitter is in an incredibly convoluted ideological war with the Indian Govt. Monetarily and by pure numbers, the Indian right wing benefited from a new megaphone in twitter in 2014. Twitter only took notice of this after what they saw as the victory of a 'fascist' govt. (This is before twitter erupted into complete ideological polarization in 2016) Looking at the readiness of getting blue check marks and twitter's ge…

Perhaps you should think of your tilt when you see ideology in fact checkers

I'll apologize in advance my response maybe a bit snarky. Your comment does not read like it comes from a place of good faith, so I find it hard to reciprocate.

> Perhaps you should think of your tilt when you see ideology in fact checkers

That's an awfully convenient way to disregard literally any and all scepticism.

Just over the last month the the lab leak theory has gone from conspiracy to a mainstream possibility and the facts in Assange case turned over their head. In any political matter, facts take ages to establish and sometimes facts themselves are no more than uneasy consensus.

When I'm personally invested, It takes me days to verify facts despite all the resources at my disposal and even then I leave some space to have my mind changed. In a world where all of NYT, CNN and Fox are doing their best to destroy public trust (some more than others), faith in reporting is rather hard to come by.

If you think underpaid faceless social media community fact checkers have either the ability or the moral purity to identify and report facts then, then I must regretfully refer to such an opinion as naive.

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

#163
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My line is pretty simple: if there's a clear purpose for the platform or even a part of it, then you have every right to remove content that deviates from that purpose. So I would say that your political platform should not be forced to host content supporting any other party. Of course it would still have to follow campaign finance laws and things like that, but that's a whole different ball of wax. Social media pla…

I disagree, in that I think any privately-owned platform that people voluntarily use, have easy alternatives to, and can leave without consequence has the right to moderate the content on their platform as they see fit. That being said, after having a political/ideological group I really liked removed off a major platform (that it followed the ToS of) without analogous opposite-side groups being removed, I'm at least…

> have easy alternatives to

Well that's always the million-dollar question, isn't it? Take Twitter for instance. Whether there's an easy alternative to Twitter depends entirely on your reference class.

The social aspect makes this so much harder as people are unique. It's completely reasonable for someone to need to be on the same platform as some other particular person. Say, Elon Musk. Or pre-ban Trump if you want the least convenient example from a civics perspective. How do you justify kicking someone off a platform for having the wrong views if that's where their elected representatives spend most of their time?

But this perspective completely defangs your position in all but principle. Any privately-owned platform with important[1] people using it is basically any platform that has any reasonable amount of success. Even if you restrict to public officials, well, there's a lot of public officials.

[1] Note important is in the eye of the user, and people will generally self-select into platforms that have users that are important to themselves.

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

#164
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, in that I think any privately-owned platform that people voluntarily use, have easy alternatives to, and can leave without consequence has the right to moderate the content on their platform as they see fit. That being said, after having a political/ideological group I really liked removed off a major platform (that it followed the ToS of) without analogous opposite-side groups being removed, I'm at least…

> have easy alternatives to Well that's always the million-dollar question, isn't it? Take Twitter for instance. Whether there's an easy alternative to Twitter depends entirely on your reference class. The social aspect makes this so much harder as people are unique. It's completely reasonable for someone to need to be on the same platform as some other particular person. Say, Elon Musk. Or pre-ban Trump if you want…

I don't need a Twitter account to read people's tweets, and I contact my representatives through phone/mail. If they decide to spend time in a private platform not everyone will be able to message them on (or spend a lot of time in a restricted physical location that only lets people with "correct" opinions in), that's fine. If a politician wants a consistent way for everyone to be able to read their writing and contact them, there's nothing stopping them from just... Using their own website for that.

Just because some "famous" person uses a platform shouldn't mean the platform has to fall over itself to make sure their every word is hear and everyone can contact them.

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

#166
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have easy alternatives to Well that's always the million-dollar question, isn't it? Take Twitter for instance. Whether there's an easy alternative to Twitter depends entirely on your reference class. The social aspect makes this so much harder as people are unique. It's completely reasonable for someone to need to be on the same platform as some other particular person. Say, Elon Musk. Or pre-ban Trump if you want…

I don't need a Twitter account to read people's tweets, and I contact my representatives through phone/mail. If they decide to spend time in a private platform not everyone will be able to message them on (or spend a lot of time in a restricted physical location that only lets people with "correct" opinions in), that's fine. If a politician wants a consistent way for everyone to be able to read their writing and cont…

In principle, sure. But in practice for many politicians, sending a letter will receive a copy-pasted reply while replying on twitter might get you a personal response. Similarly, getting kicked off Instagram will cause many businesses to die, despite there being another dozen sites where you can upload pictures. Social networks have an inherent tendency to monopolise niches, even if those niches are hard to articulate.

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

#167
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good. I disagree. Both are bad. When you grow to the size of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Removing content from your own platform allows you to spread propaganda that meets your own agenda.…

I mean, I disagree with (some of) platforms' content removal, but I don't disagree with their legal right to do so. If Twitter becomes a propaganda machine deleting any tweet it disagrees with, I think that's shitty and if I had an account I'd delete it to avoid participating, but I'm not sold on why the government should make that illegal . People and private organizations currently have the right to propagandize in…

> I don't disagree with their legal right to do so.

If the only thing that you care about is the legal requirements, then you are abdicating your ability to criticize these laws in India as well.

You need to think beyond what is literally required or not required by law, and think about what the actual effect of a decision or policy is, regardless of who is enforcing it.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Illegal is just whatever the law says is illegal. If you make a law making dissent illegal, then that content is illegal. So now you have to define 'real'-illegal and 'I do not like your opinion'-illegal in the law of some other country.

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

#169

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…

You get a waiver from legal persecution when you comply with the new IT law, something Twitter hasn't done yet.

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

#170
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…

Are there any benefits to this regulation I'm overlooking?

> Yep lots, A democratically elected government of a state is at least answerable to its constituents who can boot them out if the government doesn't do the right thing. These monopolistic social 'platforms' are not answerable to anyone but the whims of their management and advertisers.

They purposely allow lies and misinformation to propogate as it boosts engagement and are a cesspool of disharmony and conflict.

Just as well that they'll be now held responsible for the results of their actions.

Love it, high time many of them are broken down for having far too much power.

Post reply on HN