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Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

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Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#41
post #26

It's a little hard over the translation gap to understand why the account was locked... Am I understanding correctly that Twitter interpreted sharing detailed information about a murder victim as doxxing? https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...

Yep. According to Indian laws, publishing the identities or pictures of rape victims (or their families) is illegal. Twitter really doesn't have a choice here.

Well, sort of. That's why I'm trying to figure out if they decided it was doxxing or if they decided it was illegal in India.

There are separate procedures for those... Their policies for doxxing are global. But for content illegal in a region, Twitter will hide tweets that are illegal within that jurisdiction, but not globally (cross reference handling of Nazi support messages and imagery in France and Germany... Which, as a side note, creates the funny side effect that if you grab that channel of data for a specific tweet or account, you can tell if Twitter thinks a user is a Nazi sympathizer).

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly. If I start the "Election Fraud Party", I don't get to complain that enforcing free and fair elections is an attack on me.

Do you feel your logical extreme is a good rebuttal here?

The article indicates the party account got locked for doxxing a nine year old rape victim. If there's an extreme here, it's not my position.

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#43
Motus in fine velocior. Big changes are happening as a rapid succession of incremental acts. The culmination is not pretty.

Somehow I expect that even some of those who have most fully internalized the commands of their oppressors are beginning to experience a bit of cognitive dissonance from the rapid pace of oligarchic usurpation and expanding totalitarian control. At least one hopes. But there are always those who will live out their lives in the cocoon of Stockholm syndrome.

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#44

11 comments on HN so far, discussing politics and complaints about Twitter, and so far not one has responded to the content of the article, in which Twitter claims to have locked every account that posted a picture of a rape victim's family, violating its policy on doxxing.

It's a photo-op, not doxxing. This is tantamount to accusing the family of doxxing themselves considering they invited him to meet with them.

> Sharing a picture of his meeting with the girl's family on Wednesday, Rahul Gandhi had tweeted in Hindi, “Parents' tears are saying only one thing -- their daughter, the daughter of this country, deserves justice. And I am with them on this path to justice.”

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/dalit-rape-murder-rahu...

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#45
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. According to Indian laws, publishing the identities or pictures of rape victims (or their families) is illegal. Twitter really doesn't have a choice here.

Well, sort of. That's why I'm trying to figure out if they decided it was doxxing or if they decided it was illegal in India. There are separate procedures for those... Their policies for doxxing are global. But for content illegal in a region, Twitter will hide tweets that are illegal within that jurisdiction, but not globally (cross reference handling of Nazi support messages and imagery in France and Germany... Wh…

It looks like there is confusion in the way this is being reported. In some news articles they wrote accounts were locked. In one article it was mentioned that the tweets were made invisible.

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#46

11 comments on HN so far, discussing politics and complaints about Twitter, and so far not one has responded to the content of the article, in which Twitter claims to have locked every account that posted a picture of a rape victim's family, violating its policy on doxxing.

This article has more details. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/12/tech/twitter-india-congre... The opposition party clearly had the permission of the parents to post the photo. The Indian government appears to have requested of Twitter to remove the photo since it was used for political purposes by the opposition.

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#47
post #5
post #2

How can Twitter seriously make the statement that they are not taking sides in a political issue by banning one party in a country? By any objective measure this is suppressing political speech and runs contrary to Twitter's stated goal of being on online Town Square, a place for discourse and the exchange of ideas. It would be one thing if an account was closed for obviously criminal reasons but I doubt that's the c…

What if the party’s account violated Twitter’s ToS?

International law supersedes Twitter's ToS and Twitter's actions are entangling the United States into international political conflicts that we don't need to be dumped into.

The core question as far as international law is concerned is whether or not Twitter's actions in these instances are those of a state or if it is a private actor. Twitter would say it's a private actor, but considering the close historical coordination between Twitter, the State Department, and the intelligence octopus, one would have to be somewhere between clueless, brain damaged, and a stooge to argue that Twitter is wholly a private actor and completely uncontaminated from American state pressure.

I'm not an Indian, not ethnically Indian, don't care about India, but India should accordingly treat Twitter as if it is an American state actor and seek restitution and remediation under the exact same reasoning that the United States uses to blame the Russian state for election interference among other miscellaneous "cyber" things.

We do use this exact reasoning against the Russians with even less evidence. Our economic policy of attempting to digitally dominate and interfere with foreign powers is also screwing up our diplomacy (not that American diplomacy can really get any more twisted, but still, I'm speaking in terms of the principle here). India's at an inflection point now in its own foreign policy, and it is not helpful to the American interest to have quasi-private frothing algorithmic dogs causing needless diplomatic incidents continuously for no discernable benefit to anyone but Twitter's feckless shareholders.

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#48

11 comments on HN so far, discussing politics and complaints about Twitter, and so far not one has responded to the content of the article, in which Twitter claims to have locked every account that posted a picture of a rape victim's family, violating its policy on doxxing.

Could they not have deleted the tweet or the picture and posted in its place an explanation citing the precise policy that's being enforced?

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#49

11 comments on HN so far, discussing politics and complaints about Twitter, and so far not one has responded to the content of the article, in which Twitter claims to have locked every account that posted a picture of a rape victim's family, violating its policy on doxxing.

I don't think I (or probably most others here) have enough information to intelligently comment on that.

Is the family of the rape victim consenting to their image being used, or not? Is the picture and/or identity of the family widely broadcast in the media, or not? Is the picture portraying things in a particularly unique and politically important light (like the napalm girl picture), or not?

Edit: I see other people starting to bring in this sort of information now, but I don't think it's surprising that early comments are on the content of the article.

Re: Twitter locks account of India’s largest opposition party

#50
post #37

Sadly, this is not the first time American tech giants have contributed to suppressing free speech. At the behest of Israel, Facebook has blocked the accounts of Palestinian activists and most recently of Gaza's Shebab News Agency. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-facebook-blocks... The rationale is, as always, "violating our community standards". Exactly what those community standards or the specific inf…

In this case the reason is made explicitly clear. Furthermore, after they took the action against Rahul Gandhi, his party leaders shared the same image in protest.
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