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Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

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Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#231

Post by 0xmohit »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #222
0xmohit wrote: post #66

The government believes that hiding data is the answer to the problem. > “It’s a complete massacre of data,” said Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has been following India closely. “From all the modeling we’ve done, we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported.” [0] A related comment [1] on censorship in India. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/…

Or maybe their model is wrong. To say that reality is wrong when the reality doesn't match somebody's model is peak absurdity

Seems pretty likely that the model underestimates the causalities.

https://twitter.com/ARUNSHARMAJI/status/1385439504136237067

https://twitter.com/ahmermkhan/status/1386614534748590083

https://twitter.com/NicolaCareem/status/1386357371652526082

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#232

Post by uh-quan »

ferros wrote: post #4

Have there been any other known cases of similar action around the world?

Sure: in the United States, social media companies have been diligently removing content critical of government COVID policies and recommendations, even criticism from scientists and doctors who are speaking as professionals.

The US government hasn't requested that social media companies do this, but the result is the same.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#233

Post by nsood »

instagraham wrote: post #134
nsood wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the free speech of posting coronavirus facts is far more important than the danger of dealing with the parler crowd. For people in authoritarian countries like India or Myanmar or anywhere else, it's the government that is the main obstacle to having free speech—not groups of hat-wearing nitwits. Anyone posting something outright illegal on a social platform is making themselves a target for law enforcement a…

As an Indian, I can assure you we have plenty of hat-wearing nitwits as well, and there's more in common in the ways Trump and Modi got elected than you think.

In case of unmoderated social media, just because law enforcement goes after them doesn't mean the content doesn't need to be taken down sometimes. Think non-consensual nudes, calls to extremism, etc. These things are filtered out because at some point even Parler and Ruqqus and all will delete them. But completely unmoderated social media will not allow for that.

I also never said that free speech was less important than dealing with the Parler crowd. I'm just saying it's a harder problem than it's made out to be.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#234

Post by fakedang »

mrtksn wrote: post #190
fakedang wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, hello? By law India is a democracy, where it has always been OK to criticize the government - at least up until 2014, when the current government began abusing the British Era sedition laws. I think every Indian on this site is old enough to remember who the protests against the Delhi Rape Crisis and the government response were effectively coordinated on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter wouldn't have been breaking…

Okay, what's the expectation here? Twitter fixing the "wrong choice" the Indians made in 2014? That doesn't sound like a democracy to me either. IMHO, if that's the case Indians need to get a new government and fight their own wars. Why would Twitter be liberating the Indian people? If anything, that "liberation" would come at a cost just as with the USSR liberating Germany from the Nazis, US liberating Iraqi people…

Because Twitter wasn't breaking any laws. Twitter should not be policing content because none of the people posting on it were breaking any laws either. The only laws Twitter was breaking was a skewed interpretation of a British Era law for which the Indian government is twisting the definition of treason.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#235

Post by fakedang »

sinyug wrote: post #230
fakedang wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, hello? By law India is a democracy, where it has always been OK to criticize the government - at least up until 2014, when the current government began abusing the British Era sedition laws. I think every Indian on this site is old enough to remember who the protests against the Delhi Rape Crisis and the government response were effectively coordinated on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter wouldn't have been breaking…

> India is a democracy, where it has always been OK to criticize the government - at least up until 2014, 1. 1975-77: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India) 2. 2011: https://www.telegraphindia.com/7-days/when-net-is-gross/cid/... 3. 2008: https://www.theregister.com/2008/05/19/google_india_gandhi/ No Indian politician or government _likes_ criticism. Modi is almost unique in the staggering amount of abus…

Modi is also unique in the staggering lengths he goes to maintain a sanitized image of himself and his party online.

You forget how much attack Manmohan Singh and Congress came under during the rape crisis, or 2G scam or CWG scam. Did Manmohan Singh lose it like Modi? Did he force Twitter and Facebook to police their posts and groups? If that had happened, I should have been banned on both platforms by now.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#236

Post by colinmhayes »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #223
colinmhayes wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of Indians approve of Modi's premiership. Everyone is aware that it's an authoritarian regime, they don't mind. He has complete control over the courts, so I don't see how a trial could accomplish anything other than further cement his regime.

Ah "the government that I don't like is authoritarian" logic. This government originally asked everyone to impose self lockdowns before real lockdowns became necessary. Surely what an authoritarian government would do.

Yea and the martial law in muslim states surely is what a non-authoritarian government would do.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#237

Post by hansvm »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #158
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…

I expect Twitter to do exactly the same thing they would do if the US authorities were issuing a legally questionable censorship order. Fight it in the courts. Fight it in the public arena. Indian Twitter users and Indian civil society should have just the same expectation of receiving support from Twitter's lawyers as U.S users and U.S citizens get. That's what it means to be a global corporation. >If Indians believ…

> You act as if an order issued by some bureaucrat was itself the law and the will of the poeple.

I mean, we kind of do act that way. If a given thing has regulations then there almost certainly exists a small office whose sole purpose is to be the button pushers for those regulations, and their word is effectively law unless you're wealthy enough to fight it.

As a comparatively minor example, there's just some guy behind a desk in the MN department of public safety who can unilaterally revoke drivers' licenses without any court's approval or any available appeal's process. The police and the rest of the system are more than happy to enforce that guy's decisions.

*In case there's any ambiguity, the "wealth" mentioned above doesn't just refer to your legal fees, but also to things like being able to afford to repeatedly take a day off work to wait on hold or in a line for yet another round of red tape. It adds up, especially with more than half of people living paycheck to paycheck.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#238

Post by panarky »

captn3m0 wrote: post #73
wtmt wrote: post #2

Note that these tweets are only hidden for anyone in India (not removed from Twitter) since these do not violate Twitter’s terms but are being forced off the platform by a government order. I wish Twitter would put up a better fight on this, but Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook have been on the receiving end of criticism and threats by the central government, and it looks like Twitter chooses its battles to ensure its…

Twitter fought a court battle on this in India just a few months ago[a], [b]. The government even threatened Twitter Execs with jail time[0], [1]. Making this worse are the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (the “Intermediary Rules”)[3]. Among the many issues, they increase obligations on large social media platforms (above 5e5 users), enforce government ta…

If Twitter obeys the government's order and censors tweets critical of the government, while tweets about the censorship are still visible, then the Streisand Effect will amplify the message that the government is trying to suppress.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#239

Post by true_religion »

fighterpilot wrote: post #173
forks34 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The U.S. 300 million citizen don’t have the monopoly on morals when 1 billion Indians have a different idea about them. So don’t be pretentious, adapt to local laws and let people figure out their own ideas about life. Maybe, just maybe, the U.S. has the wrong laws.

1 billion Indians aren't all supporters of government censorship of criticism. If the US government enacted some ridiculous law, you would hope that US corporations would try to push back a bit, at least rhetorically, because you recognize that the state isn't its people. Why suddenly the different tone for India?

With India’s population size, it’s possible more people support the government than exist people in the entirety of the United States.

Why are they wrong and Americans right?

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#240

Post by skinkestek »

sinyug wrote: post #213
fighterpilot wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adapt to local laws and culture instead of pretending that a couple of thousand of unelected dudes in Silicon Valley should have any say I think we might both agree there's a line beyond which even you would abandon this view. We may just disagree on where that line should exist. If the Indian state was forcing Twitter to delete the profiles of anyone who is a homosexual, would you agree that Twitter should just ad…

> If the Indian state was forcing Twitter to delete the profiles of anyone who is a homosexual, would you agree that Twitter should just adapt to local laws and not at least say something? You might want to pick another example to make your point. Persecution of homosexuals is a Christian (and, to an extent, Islamic) phenomenon. Historically, Hindus haven't really cared[1] about homosexual behavior till the British c…

> Persecution of homosexuals is a Christian (and, to an extent, Islamic) phenomenon.

Can we please stop pretending that Christianity is worse than other religions?

As already mentioned by another numerous well known examples of other groups of people exist who punish homosexuality by death today (leaving out names as I'm not trying to not continue a flame war here, I'm not out to criticize any other religion or culture here). On the other hand I'm not aware of any current Christian groups who kill or beat anyone for that.

> Hindus haven't really cared[1] about homosexual behavior till the British came in and brought their anti-buggery laws with them.

You know what else the English brought?

They brought an end to burning young widows in their "husbands" funerals.

History isn't black and white and while I know it is extremely trendy to blame white Christian guys for everything we should strive for a better standard here.

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