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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

#71

Post by wolverine876 »

lockhouse wrote: post #31
jutrewag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm not sure that definition is relevant; it's too extreme to apply to the situation.

By that definition the US censors speech such as incitement to violence, fraud, slander, and intellectual property. No place has ever been uncensored.

Like everything in life, there's a matter of degree to it and a question of what is censored.

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

#72

Post by throwaway_9120 »

honkler wrote: post #55
throwaway_9120 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

lol what? There have been plenty of Hindutva terror incidents, one as recent as the day before yesterday, when 3 men killed a couple of undertrials in front of live camera and then went on to scream the terror warcry of "Jai Sree Ram". > If this is “fascism” as you say, majority of the Indians are happy living under it. Do you have a sense of irony? Majority is always happy under fascism. It is the minority who matte…

The 2 brothers who were killed were notorious gangsters involved in 100+ cases of murders, loot, kidnapping etc. At least read-up before trying to win with your ignorance.

India has Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, Zoroastrian as “true” minorities. They don’t have any problems in India. In fact they are among the most prosperous folks. Why is that only Muslims have problem everywhere on the globe? France, US, UK, Israel and the list goes on.

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

#73

Post by singleshot_ »

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…

There is a bright line between the town square (which is a public space) and social media (which is private property). Pointing to this line and claiming that it is dissolving is counterfactual and seems, to me, to be an unsubtle yearning for government control of private property, which is very close to an unmitigated evil.

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

#74

Post by kelnos »

jen20 wrote: post #19
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 is not going to die because people spread false information. That is exactly what is going to happen. People do not have the tools to discern truth given plausible misinformation. > you are free to have an open debate and correct the record. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law > The government having the power to decide who can say what and what is "true" or "false"... Indeed, that is a risk, b…

> People do not have the tools to discern truth given plausible misinformation.

Then give them the tools.

> Indeed, that is a risk, but not the only risk.

It's not really a risk, it's a fact. Governments routinely lie about plenty of things, and deny things that we later find out to be true.

I would much rather have a bunch of people believe the wrong thing, than have true things labeled as misinformation, or worse, censored.

The onus is on us, as citizens of a free society, to set the record straight, and constantly work to educate people. That's just the responsibility we have to accept. "Freedom isn't free" and all that.

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

#75

Post by ryandrake »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #48
demindiro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information. If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?

I mean, have you seen the common folk?

Short, glib comments get dunked on here, but you've got a point. As the saying goes, “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” The judgement of the common folk is not unassailable, and is frequently wrong, which is why Democracy needs numerous checks and balances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYTQ7__NNDI

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

#76

Post by nsenifty »

mrcheesebreeze wrote: post #23
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]

> the current ruling party is straight up unironically fascist and descends from the same political party that inspired the german nationalist socialist party.

This is false. There is no link between the German Nazi party and BJP. If you are talking about RSS, the link comes from a quote in a book published in 1939 (well before the world found about the holocaust) by the RSS founder [0]. Admiration for Hitler and his Nazi party in the 30s wasn't unique to the RSS founder [1][2].

Golwalkar was also supportive of allies in their war against Nazis and supported the formation of Israel.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Golwalkar

[1] https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/britain-ado...

[2] https://time.com/5414055/american-nazi-sympathy-book/

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

#77

Post by honkler »

throwaway_9120 wrote: post #72
honkler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol what? There have been plenty of Hindutva terror incidents, one as recent as the day before yesterday, when 3 men killed a couple of undertrials in front of live camera and then went on to scream the terror warcry of "Jai Sree Ram". > If this is “fascism” as you say, majority of the Indians are happy living under it. Do you have a sense of irony? Majority is always happy under fascism. It is the minority who matte…

The 2 brothers who were killed were notorious gangsters involved in 100+ cases of murders, loot, kidnapping etc. At least read-up before trying to win with your ignorance. India has Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, Zoroastrian as “true” minorities. They don’t have any problems in India. In fact they are among the most prosperous folks. Why is that only Muslims have problem everywhere on the globe? France, US, UK, Israel and…

Great that you poured your heart out for others to read. Made my job much easier.

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

#79

Post by screye »

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...

Altnews the left wing version of Tucker Carlson. I'd go as far as to say that if Alt-news told me there was no Earthquake in my house, my first instinct would be to find cover.

Local and politicized news in India is notoriously biased. But the direction of the bias varies from news org to news org. Somehow, American & British news orgs are notorious for giving megaphones to the worst faith actors within Indian politics.

I've found that ThePrint is the closest thing to centrist-neutral reporting in India. They are pretty open about leaning left*[1] on social issues and leaning right [2] on economic issues.

[1] The left-right division doesn't work as cleanly in India, but left for the Print means separation of church & state, live-n-let-live, individual freedoms, LGBT support, a kind of French secularism.

[2] which in an Indian context means left of Biden, but right of pre-1991 socialist India. ie. Welfare-ist, but not isolationist.

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