Live data from Hacker News

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

restofworld.org

81–90 of 213 posts

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

#81
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.

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?

> If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?

The fact that people are irrational is why we do not have a direct democracy. Representative democracy, and the existence of constraints in the form of constitution-type documents and term limits, are designed to limit the impact of temporal individual stupidity and crowd stupidity on global outcomes, by constraining the scope of immediate democracy.

> people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information.

This is overly flippant and strawman-like (conflating government censorship with private company moderation, for example) to what is a massive problem in the age of social media. Vaccine hesitancy, leading to hundreds of thousands of additional dead people, is due to misinformation. There are literal dead people as the end result of this misinformation. Now I for one would prefer that private companies do not censor misinformation, and instead focused on altering the viral dynamics. But this is not a topic to brush under the rug with denialism that misinformation is an actual thing.

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

#82
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> They constantly lie to the indian people to promote a possible genocide against the muslim minority. What evidence do you have for that?

Ironically fearmongering that there's an imminent genocide is one of the justifications used by the the Government for internet shutdowns and censorship. Law and order is precarious in most parts of the country and anybody can spark an unrest by sparking rumors and it spreads like forest fire causing riots and loss of life.

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

#83

Yesterday I learned that Canada is the fourth oldest ongoing democracy, measured as beginning in 1867. I think given our short lifespans, anything that our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents enjoyed is really easy to perceive as a steady state. Something to take for granted as being invariant. But it’s really not. While it’s possible to debate the specifics and semantics, this really brought into focus, fo…

It's even younger than that; women couldn't nationally until 1920 in the US. And in practice, many black people couldn't vote until the voting acts right of 1965.

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

#84
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You got sources for this claim? If he has done anything wrong, why is he not in jail for that?

It’s the usual protocol of astroturfing. Accuse the whistleblower of something vague and discard them with name calling. Straight out of playbook of authoritarian governments. Nothing new.

I searched the name Nupur Sharma and it gave me this article which explains everything.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61716241.amp

It says that the fact checker shared a video of what she said.

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

#85
post #65
post #27

Ill admit I don't know a ton about India's constitution. Do they have freedom of speech? How is it phrased?

Only majority community (Upper caste - hindi speaking - hindus have freedom of speech). Infact they are so free that they can call for genocide on live television, and get away with it. If you're minority (especially a journalist), you'd be Jailed without trial for years (UAPA and NSA). Think of it as a modern day Gulag.

[deleted]

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Their current leader, Modi, is extremely divisive and has been accused of very actively fanning the long-running ethnic/religious conflict in the country. The BBC documentary on him is not unbiased but still very revealing. So you should view this action using the same lens you would as any other divisive leader, eg Trump.

Is this the documentary where he attacks the journalist who was calmly interviewing him about his political record and changes the subject and blames the media for his own shortcomings? I don’t frighten easily, but that was truly scary.

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

#87
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.

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?

> If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?

I'm afraid that people are looking around, asking themselves that same question, and concluding that democracy has failed.

The problem is that democracy depends on an educated populace and there have been active efforts to dumb people down so that they can be more easily lied to and manipulated. The American people, on average, have the math skills of a 6th grader and their reading skills are worse (https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/). They lack the critical thinking skills to compete with sophisticated disinformation campaigns. The solution requires education, training, and time. Until the population catches up, we're going to continue to see some very bad choices made by voters while scammers and charlatans will continue to be very successful.

I don't blame people for losing some faith in the American people, but I hope we don't lose faith in democracy because clawing it back after we've given up what few freedoms we still have will not be easy. As long as we have democracy we can still make things better.

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Democracy is a hedge against worse outcomes, not a guarantor of future outcomes. You might get your heart’s desires in the service of a King, but he’ll still be King and you’ll now be his subject.

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

#89
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.

"Throughout history".

I doubt all the Soviet Union and other authoritarian communist regimes censored for decades was hate speech.

Sure, at the moment the left seems to largely align with social liberalism, at least in the west. Maybe authoritarianism is generally more correlated with conservatism, and conservatism with right-wing politics. But left vs. right and authoritarian vs. liberal aren't really the same axis, and it would seem historically quite myopic to think left-wing views somehow confer immunity to abuse of power.

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

#90
post #27

Ill admit I don't know a ton about India's constitution. Do they have freedom of speech? How is it phrased?

There is freedom of speech, but the first amendment[0] ironically added measures to restrict free speech. Even aside from that, it's a minefield of colonial era Sedition laws, blasphemy laws, anti-terrorism laws etc. The state can also make it pretty miserable for you even if you didn't break the laws just by arresting you and denying swift justice (since the court cases can take decades). You could also be "made to disappear" if you sufficiently piss off a powerful non-state entity. So yeah it's pretty bleak.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_of_the_Constit...

Post reply on HN