India ruling party's IT cell used AI to show smile on arrested protesters' faces

They also include analysis comparing the smiling photo to other existing photos of those people smiling and note that in the smiling photo some people are depicted with dimples that the person doesn't actually have.

You could of course fake green checkmark in CSS but this is already an issue with faking other browser UI elements, including address bar–it’s a known problem.

One way to solve this is having a browser picker, that is a button you click in trusted area of browser UI that lets you inspect any image on the page. Similar thing is possible with smartphone UI, you go to app overview/carousel and long press on an image in app, this launches photo inspection portal.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

As much as you're entirely right that HN's readership decides what succeeds or not, pretty much every example you've furnished is defined clearly as "off topic" submissions. The Wuhan lab leak theory, regardless of how we view it in hindsight, was paraded as a sensational event up and down party lines. It never had a chance on this site, like Donald Trump drama or "Ask HN: What did you think of Kardashians last night?". Maybe it is relevant - but framing it sensationally is like toxic waste to this site's readers.

> the orthodoxy was that you shall not talk about everyday causes of depression or ADD

> So now we have a lot of taboos to talk about overdiagnosis of ADHD and gender dysphoria, talking about the DSM V criteria

They're not taboo. They're just not appropriate conversation topics for a hacking/finance website. The few times that it has become a big discussion topic has been through the lens of engineering lifestyles and personal experience. Even that is arguably too sappy for a non-Reddit website.

> Now it's OK to talk about it

> So yes.. right now the thing is to hate on Web3

Very subtle foreshadowing - you almost make it sound like Web3 has a second chance or something.

Truth is, like I said at the beginning - HN chooses what they want to hear. Most websites that give their users any degree of control over their experience let this happen (see Twitter, where users block the verified users). If you demand engagement on a topic nobody cares about, it stands to reason that you'll feel repeatedly disappointed by this website.

Edit: Literally took 5 minutes for the first downvote, despite not mentioning a single "issue". What's that old phrase? QED?

When social and political norms can vary within individual states, let alone the entire country, it causes people to feel reporting about very negative or very positive news is propaganda one way or the other.

A lot of this is then further inflamed by IT Cells from parties across the board, especially because most NRIs are getting news about India via the internet plus social media.

Add to that the fact that most Western media isn't biased (I've worked with them), but might write articles using a broad brush that pisses other NRIs off and then we all devolve into regionalist or casteist bickering.

Eg. When the Unnao tragedy happened (which was horrible), it was reported in some western media that it was in India and broad brushed as an Indian issue. A number of Tamil and Malayali friends too offense to that and began saying "oh, it's actually Uttar Pradesh. Bhaiyyas are always like that" and regionalist shit like that, which obviously pissed off the UP+Bihari wale in my office.

On the side, you can see propagandists like Agnihotri inflaming Hindu-Muslim tensions by bringing up the Kerala Story as if every single Malayali Muslim is a future Jihadi and inflaming Hindi-Southern tensions by making a number of idiots assume Malayalis are a 5th column, which is an extremely horrible broad brushed assertation

And finally, a lot of people say that BJP voters are illiterate and illiteracy is pushing back India. As someone with family from small town India who has known illiterate people, they are smart as you and I. Just because they didn't get the opportunity to learn to read+write doesn't mean they can't think rationally and logically. So for NRIs from lower middle and working class (as a lot of NRIs increasingly are now), it feels very classist and insulting.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that we use our prior experiences and background to understand a country, but when you are dealing with a country as large and diverse as India it automatically falls apart.