Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#101

Post by firebaze » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

hunter-2 wrote: post #22

galtwho wrote: post #3

Few of the tweets removed are detailed here https://www.opindia.com/2021/04/covid-pandemic-hoax-to-shari... Ps : the usual propaganda site or govt mouthpiece claims are bound to come out now. Read the article and make up your mind

The list of tweets removed are here: https://thewire.in/tech/as-covid-19-crisis-deepens-twitter-t... Anybody with a VPN or is outside India can indeed read and make their mind up. Edit: Every propaganda has an inkling of truth to it. That's why people believe it. And that's how everyone from Goebbels to the current Indian administration operate. Cherrypicking just the obviously fake ones to make your point is silly.

Sadly, any side, not just India and Goebbels, employs this tactic (admittedly to varying degrees). It is apparently to effective to ignore, even if its message is factually correct.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#102

Post by vishnugupta » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

Leary wrote: post #44

Can anyone comment on the legality of these orders. Are they codified or arbitrary

I could find out but let me just say it’s all moot because at this point almost every public institution is sleeping with the government. Any semblance of independent or counterbalancing institution disappeared long ago. CBI (FBI equivalent), news, courts, election commission, police etc all take direct orders from the central government and don’t operate independently. They are tools to be used whichever way the government pleases.

Some of them were on the path of losing independence. The present government just accelerated the process since they were democratically elected twice in succession by stupendous majority.

So what’s left now for people to raise their voice are these private social media platforms. Ironically Twitter is perhaps the most independent channel in India now.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#103

Post by gonehome » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #72

gonehome wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should expect better: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html This is a disappointing outcome of our community (software engineers, hackers, builders) and our technology - the web as we've built it. The promise of decentralized communications empowering people. We should expect more, those in a position to do the right thing at Twitter should try to do so. I hope long term something like urbit wi…

> What's the point of being a free western country if the people that need the support most are the most ignored? Unfortunately enlightenment / classically liberal values (different from leftist liberal values) have been on the decline in the US, particularly with younger generations. Free speech is one of those values under attack. Even the ACLU, under different leadership than in the past, is wavering on free speec…

> Although the US government is bound by the first amendment, we have effectively outsourced that right to private monopolies that aggressively censor views that don’t fit progressive perspectives.

Private companies being able to do this is a form of speech. I think it's problematic, but ultimately they should be able to moderate their users/choose who they allow on their platform (outside of a few protected characteristics). I think it'd be a worse speech violation if the government forced them to do otherwise.

I think we should be using tools that make this irrelevant by making decentralized communication tools actually work. I agree with Moxie that in the current system this is basically impossible. That's why urbit gives me hope.

> The West (as nations, corporations, citizens, etc) is not in a position to proselytize on this front any longer.

I don't mean to proselytize - I mean to say we have a responsibility to do better since we live in a freer society. Nobody at Twitter is going to be killed for doing the right thing here, and while liberal (little L) values are under threat in the west, there is still a massive gulf between the west and countries like China.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#104

Post by ttt0 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

completelylegit wrote: post #33

colordrops wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning certain tweets related to the Hunter Biden scandal.

Thank god that laptop didn’t get elected president.

Thank god someone's tax returns didn't get elected president either lol.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#105

Post by gregjor » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

villgax wrote: post #56

It is not the governments duty to maintain an image, citizens or foreign parties are always free to criticise or praise any government. If the government feels something is factually wrong then it can present statements from its press agency but not suppress criticism. This is the difference between an authoritative regime & a democracy. Whenever we are done with dealing with the pandemic who ever is responsible for…

In too many countries citizens are not free to criticize their government. Foreigners can get into trouble too if they criticize while in the country. Thailand, for example, has strict laws about criticizing the monarchy. Some of us take our right to freely criticize our government without penalty for granted and imagine it applies everywhere, but that isn’t the case.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#106

Post by manub22 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

galtwho wrote: post #3

Few of the tweets removed are detailed here https://www.opindia.com/2021/04/covid-pandemic-hoax-to-shari... Ps : the usual propaganda site or govt mouthpiece claims are bound to come out now. Read the article and make up your mind

The article clearly gives proof to the tweets and images posted were from old incidents, like a tweet posted by Dr. Kafeel Khan, a controversial doctor who is an accused in the Gorakhpur tragedy, shared an unrelated image of funeral pyres as well. But when it came out that the image was from 2017 he appears to have deleted his tweet. Please check !!!

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#107

Post by oooooooooooow » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

nsood wrote: post #34

cigaser wrote: post #12

It is 2021, we should have decentralised authenticated version of text board by now. All the bs about crypto disruption, but nothing for such simple case.

Unmoderated social media (which I'm guessing is your goal with decentralization) tends to accumulate people who have been kicked off all moderated social media - see stuff like Parler, Ruqqus, etc. I don't think removing all ability for moderation is a good idea, more of a balance is necessary.

I think this kind of rebuttal is a bit narrowly-scoped. It's not like we made social media centralized and controlled by a few people BECAUSE other systems were unmanageable/impossible to moderate. We never even got to see a world were users own their social media. In such a world I imagine moderation to be in the hands of the users, evolving into a crowdsourced effort in which anyone can implement off-the-shelf blacklists/whitelists. This way no single node can get mass silenced by decree of a CEO or government entity (thus requiring to "run off" somewhere else). You could see it as free market for information exchange.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#108

Post by timeslip1523 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

MperorM wrote: post #78

mrtksn wrote: post #49

The expectation that a corporation operating in India will not obey Indian laws but American ones is appalling. EU, Canada, China, Turkey or North Korea - if you want to do business there you have to respect their laws. “For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” is a deeply flawed idea. If Indians believe that they need wider free speech rights or other protections, they need to change their p…

If India requires twitter murder a child every time someone tweets, I sure hope they don't just say: "Well, I guess that's just their way of life" and continue operating. Obviously India is requiring no such thing, but what about when China wants google to build them a censored search engine?

Google will roll up their sleeves and get the IOT guillotine ready, happily running all their american leftie-progressive marketing back home while they do so. Why not? Apple did it!

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#109

Post by op03 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #70

op03 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this is built on the terrible assumption that Social Media is critical to solving complex problems of society. All they do is dump waste amounts of shit on the plates of decision makers and then crucify them for problems no one can solve or have capacities to solve only badly. People think this is a great way to take out buffons like Modi or Trump. But the truth is such systems will take out anyone propped up esp…

I don't think social media is inherently bad. It's just easy to weaponize it given enough resources. If people continue to believe that public posts on Twitter and Facebook accurately reflect reality, and it's possible for governments to silently (or not silently!) censor those platforms, then social media becomes an incredibly effective tool for propaganda. My personal solution is not to use any public social medium…

Its lose-lose for everyone working on complex stuff.

Leaders of all stripes will lose no matter what position they take on anything Complex, as social media enables the mob to immediately point out flaws and crucify them.

No one can lead in those conditions. Only the crazy or totally stupid will end up getting propped into leadership roles.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#110

Post by gregjor » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

reallymental wrote: post #9

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

India is actually a democracy. For better or worse, I think India has the right to determine censorship policies for its citizens. Foreign Western corporations deciding that they know better than the Indian government and using their platform to spread dissent against the elected government is not a good look for a Western corporation given the history of British East India company.

Yeah I think "democracy" means the exact opposite of what you've said there. The people have asked for free speech, not censorship. And dragging the British East India Company into every argument about India sheds more light into the inadequacy of us Indians to move past it. We're supposed to be healing ourselves by constructively criticizing our behavior towards others and ourselves...not by endlessly blaming the pa…

Democracy and free speech do not necessarily go together. Democracy is a system of government “by the people,” usually in the form of voting for representatives. Censorship and free speech do not necessarily follow from that political system, being more in the realm of basic human rights. Around the world democracy takes many forms. So do cultural and political notions of free speech, and government’s role regulating and censoring speech.

If the majority of Indian people want free speech, but their government does not honor that, then their democracy is dysfunctional and unrepresentative in that regard. A majority of Americans support stricter gun control, but our government does not honor that, so American democracy has its own dysfunctions.