Live data from Hacker News

Twitter begins hiring to comply with India’s new rules

reuters.com

191–200 of 221 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech. Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. Strongly disagree. This is how China does it: they won’t tell companies what exactly to censor, but the companies will be punished if they don’t censor what the government wants to be censored in retrospect. It is much worse than governments forcing censorship explicitly, because othe…

This is also how America does it, except it happens more subtly, and few recognize it, let alone call it out. It goes something like this: “Hey tech companies, can you censor that app or these views? We’re soon going to be discussing anti-trust, taxation, privacy, right to repair, gig economy, and other topics in this session of Congress but first let’s discuss what you’re doing about our political adversaries on you…

No, really it’s not. Yes, some American governments have tried that, but they’ve always failed because the courts don’t take a sympathetic stance with the government’s intentions. This is what separates a country with some notion of rule of law and an independent judiciary to one where all power is concentrated centrally.

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

#192
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Erm, you are requiring the kind of rigor that is needed to establish someone's guilt for establishing someone's innocence. Innocence is the null hypothesis.

The quality of evidence supporting the rumor that the person had been shot by the police was extremely sketchy and the evidence that is available points to the incident being an accident.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also how America does it, except it happens more subtly, and few recognize it, let alone call it out. It goes something like this: “Hey tech companies, can you censor that app or these views? We’re soon going to be discussing anti-trust, taxation, privacy, right to repair, gig economy, and other topics in this session of Congress but first let’s discuss what you’re doing about our political adversaries on you…

No, really it’s not. Yes, some American governments have tried that, but they’ve always failed because the courts don’t take a sympathetic stance with the government’s intentions. This is what separates a country with some notion of rule of law and an independent judiciary to one where all power is concentrated centrally.

To me it seems like America is increasingly the land of pushing boundaries and abusing technicalities from a position of power, such that politicians approximate those other countries you’re othering. Can we prove a link between congressional pressure for private companies to censor and the censorship performed by those same private companies? Not very easily. That’s exactly why members of the government shouldn’t even be allowed to suggest it - I view that itself as a violation of the first amendment (at least in spirit). It amounts to government coercion, and we shouldn’t be forced to accept the indefensible murk of not behind able to prove a link. As an example, AOC - as an elected, serving member of the federal government - should absolutely not be permitted to demand that Google and Apple censor Parler.

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

#194
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…

[deleted]

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

#196

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.…

Platforms need to moderate content or it will be 90% spam.

This is not moderation, this is Hindutwa nationalism trying to shut everybody down.

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

#197
post #157

As a saying goes here tongue has no bones which means people can and will lie eaily. That being said as son of a farmer i will support the government actions. period. A company's solo responsibity is making money for its shareholders so no thanks corporations, please take your business elsewhere if you dont like our laws.

[flagged]

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

#198
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without explicitly calling for violent uprisings, etc So that's the problem in this context. Twitter WAS being used to call for a violent uprising in the name of a blatantly false non-existent "genocide": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27773994 To repeat, a farmer rammed a tractor into a barricade causing the tractor to overturn and was killed. The whole thing was clearly caught on camera[1][2]. Within minute…

Twitter did take down tweets and suspended accounts. They were reinstated.

No, they did not take them down immediately (or even the same day) when it mattered. They took them down some 2 or 3 days or so after the incident, after the government cried foul and there was a big brouhaha about the whole thing. The new IT rules mandate a time-bound takedown for lawful requests. Hence the need for a compliance officer.

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

#199
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…

What is the ideology of twitter? There are all kinds of people on twitter. Indians might be paltry sum, but I bet at least significant majority is government sponsored IT cells, they can shut down local activists account but they can't really do anything about people outside and that is what the fight is about. A case in point is my professor Audrey Truschke, who on regular basis get threatened with rape and death by the fascist hordes.

Anywho, I don't know what is your definition of fascism, but Indian government is a poster child of fascism and without the quotes.

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

#200
post #180
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> without explicitly calling for violent uprisings, etc So that's the problem in this context. Twitter WAS being used to call for a violent uprising in the name of a blatantly false non-existent "genocide": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27773994 To repeat, a farmer rammed a tractor into a barricade causing the tractor to overturn and was killed. The whole thing was clearly caught on camera[1][2]. Within minute…

>Twitter refused to take down such blatantly false and deliberately incendiary tweets.

The problem of applying censorship to counter fake news is that the same thing can be applied to counter legit news as well.

So such a precedent should never be set.

Post reply on HN