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You got sources for this claim? If he has done anything wrong, why is he not in jail for that?
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
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The fact that you have to search for the name shows you are not enough clued in about what is happening in India. Wish you take some time out and get the facts straight from some Indian friends to understand both side of the story.
It will become a long comment, all I can say , BBC, NyTimes etc has some axe to grind with the current dispensation.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
But most people do not think critically. Even if we try we do not have access to perfect information. You read a news article. Is it fact? Is it a tilted spin? Is it truth that omits strategic nuances? No matter how critically I approach it, I will not be able derive objective truth from biased and fuzzy information. At some point you will need to trust someone to curate.
You're absolutely correct. Curation is the ethical answer, not censorship. Gigantic difference.
>No matter how critically I approach it, I will not be able derive objective truth from biased and fuzzy information.
That will always be true no matter the source. There are no truth fairies. There limits of mediums (TV vs Article vs Book vs Movie vs Stream vs etc.) before you even get to individual biases.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#94Ill 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…
Its all too common for states to have soft free speech. I wonder why Indians haven't pushed more for nailing that down.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#95I'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?
> 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?
In the early 2010s there was a rash of "pranks" in India where people would forward accusations accusing men pictured with children of pedophilia to rile up mobs to assault and kill them. These accusations were basically always false and done to settle scores, basically as a form of stochastic murder. It was bad enough that WhatsApp had to introduce some UX patterns to slow down forwards of accusations and put warning disclaimers on things forwarded too often. (And I'm sure there were other measures around moderation put in on the back end, including collaboration with state law enforcement entities).
Democracy generally operates through a series of institutions that are held accountable to the public, but doesn't directly fly according to every passing whim of the public.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 chec…
That doesn't really work, though. You picked some examples of obviously-false things that someone might say about the US government (one would hope, at least), and, sure, the US government is in a decent position to refute those claims. But let's take something we now know to be true: the NSA collecting data on US citizens. Pre-Snowden, someone could post something asserting that the NSA is spying on us. The governme…
That's why misinformation labels aren't really a problem. If Snowden posts that they NSA is spying the government could flag the claim as misinformation, but flagging Snowden's post doesn't make it go away and Snowden came with evidence which the public could review. Once the public saw that spying was happening, they'd know the government lied and the next time they saw something flagged by the government as misinformation they'd be less willing to assume that to be accurate, and eventually might even start to assume that things flagged as "disinformation" by the government we're more likely to be true than not.
As long as the fact checking is transparent, there will be an incentive for the fact checker to stay honest and when they fail we should adjust our understanding of what the flag actually means.
I've gone through that already with popular fact checkers like snopes. I still consider it to be a valuable resource, but I've become aware that they allow bias to influence their findings and that they can't be trusted blindly. Really no one source should be blindly trusted and that's something we should be trying to let people know, but warning labels can still be helpful and also revealing about how adversarial our government has become. A government that can't be trusted not to repeatedly mislead the public is one that should be voted out and replaced.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#97Interesting, 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...
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Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#98One of the more bizarre parts of the Musk-Twitter saga has been Musk's unyielding support for censorship of tweets critical of Modi. [1] I don't really understand why someone who claims to be dedicated to free speech would ever take such a position? Does he intend for his "Everything App" to dominate South Asia rather than North America? [1] https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punja...
Because generally the right isn’t for free speech, just the free speech that supports their perspective. They’re literally defunding public libraries as we speak.
I know tons of people from both political spectrums who are pro-free-speech. I also know people who support free-speech that only supports their views. Nonetheless, you are correct in that there are right-wingers who are hypocrites by claiming to be pro-free-speech but then defunding libraries. Many on the left do this too, unfortunately. They claim to be for freedom but then advocate for the censorship of "misinformation" - a term that is currently being twisted to fit different political agendas.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#99Interesting, 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 politi…
Ok, perhaps. What about the original contention:
> because Indian Government recently jailed an independent fact checker for a tweet he made 4 years ago.
Are you contending the fact that a 4 year old tweet was used to suppress an Altnews? This ad-hominem attack may have basis, but the assertion that there is very filthy gross things being used to suppress doesn't seem to have been addressed.
And it seems like gross government indecency from where I stand. You're talking about ethics in journalism, but this seemingly is a case of government jailing & taking away someone's right, which seems like an act that requires a much much higher standard of conduct than antagonistic-left journalism.
Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts
#10015 years from now there will be no distinction between India and China in terms of freedom. There will be single party rule by BJP. The opposition is being coerced to join in with the BJP or be thrown in to jail for random offenses. BJP simply buys the legislators where it can't win elections.
In terms of economics, India will not be in the same league, of course.