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Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

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Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#31

Post by lockhouse »

jutrewag wrote: post #25
indy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why label this 'rightward'? Plenty of left-leaning governments throughout history have used censorship.

Banning hate speech is not censorship.

Censorship:

the action of preventing part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censorsh...

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#32

Post by throwaway_9120 »

shasts wrote: post #17

Interesting, because Indian Government recently jailed an independent fact checker for a tweet he made 4 years ago. This new body seems to be a tool to suppress dissent and promote the fake news machinery Government and the ruling party is notorious for. https://www.cnbctv18.com/india/alt-news-pratik-sinha-mohamma...

[flagged]

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#33

Post by whatwhaaaaat »

jutrewag wrote: post #20
imperio59 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Democracy is not going to die because people spread false information. Newspapers have had the monopoly on spreading whatever information they deemed correct (whether it turned out to be or not) for decades and have now lost that and they are pissed. This is why there is a rise in apparent outcry that all of a sudden anyone and everyone can spread their message broadly where only a handful of org…

Democracy will definitely die if you spread false information because everyone is making decisions based on falsehoods.

[flagged]

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#34

Post by diegoholiveira »

yutijke wrote: post #18

Unchecked Censorship by the government can be a problem, but I find it hard to take voices in this space on face value since they are often the most vocal cheerleaders when a government or political party they like is doing the censorship since it's "Human rights" not politics. Given the dissolving line between Social media and the Town square, who should be the arbiters of speech on Social media? A committee appoint…

IMO, create a policy constraint one person, one account and One company, one account would help a lot about this because it will be much easy to identify and punish those who spread fake news. Anonymous accounts are, IMO, the biggest problem of social networks.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#35

Post by [deleted] »

yutijke wrote: post #18

Unchecked Censorship by the government can be a problem, but I find it hard to take voices in this space on face value since they are often the most vocal cheerleaders when a government or political party they like is doing the censorship since it's "Human rights" not politics. Given the dissolving line between Social media and the Town square, who should be the arbiters of speech on Social media? A committee appoint…

[deleted]

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#36

Post by autoexec »

johndhi wrote: post #10
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago I would have agreed. Today? I'm not sure you're right about which is the greater threat. Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today . Right now. I'm not sure what the real answer should be. If "the market" manages to get the propaganda farms' misinformation under control, then great. If they don't , the only answer I can see is for government t…

Why is the government well suited to declare what it and isn't misinformation though? Shouldn't we farm that out to a third party?

> Why is the government well suited to declare what it and isn't misinformation though?

Presumably because much of the lies and disinformation going around involves them to start with. When some nutjob starts posting about something like millions of American citizens being locked up in FEMA camps, or claiming that a proposed healthcare bill calls for the formation of a government death panel any respectable fact checking org is going to end up asking the lawmakers and FEMA about it anyway so government certainly has a role here.

Ideally, each social media platform would have their own people catching and flagging the worst examples of disinformation and that might also involve enlisting the services of both governments and vetted independent third parties.

In my limited experience on social media where I don't see any official flags for misinformation I've seen plenty of cases where it's other users stepping in and correcting outright lies and common misconceptions complete with sources. That probably works better in some spaces than others though.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#37

Post by standardUser »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #9
autoexec wrote: post #4

I'm not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.

Ten years ago I would have agreed. Today? I'm not sure you're right about which is the greater threat. Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today . Right now. I'm not sure what the real answer should be. If "the market" manages to get the propaganda farms' misinformation under control, then great. If they don't , the only answer I can see is for government t…

> Yes, state censorship can be abused.

Correction, state censorship will be abused. What happens when India elects their version of Trump? Suddenly, what might seem like half-decent system under better leadership becomes a weapon to completely obliterate the news media and target individuals to pursue personal vendettas.

EDIT: If you don't like my comparison, choose any other politician who has documented history of threatening suppression and violence against the free press.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#38

Post by rektide »

yutijke wrote: post #18

Unchecked Censorship by the government can be a problem, but I find it hard to take voices in this space on face value since they are often the most vocal cheerleaders when a government or political party they like is doing the censorship since it's "Human rights" not politics. Given the dissolving line between Social media and the Town square, who should be the arbiters of speech on Social media? A committee appoint…

I dont know. But the idea that we pick a group never sits well with me. The election to that group becomes highly political, & eventually the group will fall out of grace.

There's the idea of forming digital juries to hear cases. http://digitaljuries.com/ In the case of censorship it's less about moderating a person, so I think a more fitting flow would be to have the censor build a small case, say why they think there's an issue, then let a jury vote.

I do think we'd need some meta-moderation of a sort. The jury system itself should be broadly open access, but it needs some checks too.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#39

Post by CommanderData »

shasts wrote: post #17

Interesting, because Indian Government recently jailed an independent fact checker for a tweet he made 4 years ago. This new body seems to be a tool to suppress dissent and promote the fake news machinery Government and the ruling party is notorious for. https://www.cnbctv18.com/india/alt-news-pratik-sinha-mohamma...

India has one of the most robust Internet trolling, astroturfing apparatus in the world.

You will not be treated well if you criticise the government.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#40

Post by corbulo »

yutijke wrote: post #18

Unchecked Censorship by the government can be a problem, but I find it hard to take voices in this space on face value since they are often the most vocal cheerleaders when a government or political party they like is doing the censorship since it's "Human rights" not politics. Given the dissolving line between Social media and the Town square, who should be the arbiters of speech on Social media? A committee appoint…

Democracies cannot function if the people are shielded from all the evil things that necessitate thinking critically. Bad information is a fact of life, not social media.

The only way you get someone to think critically is putting them in a situation where they have to. If you constantly censor and baby them, they won't make better decisions they will make worse ones.

The idea that censorship has to happen in order to protect democracy really fulfills horseshoe theory.

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