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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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Usually yes, but Indian government’a propaganda machine is strong. Heck, if you open Twitter’s COVID timeline (which they feature heavily), it only shows official tweets from the Government on COVID.

All of them downplaying the pandemic, praising the handling, and painting a rosy picture.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#242
post #127
post #114

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> ...to be the arbiter of what you should or should not see instead. I can understand the tendency if there's a business behind it, maybe they don't want the homepage to be filled with polarizing, divisive, or nsfw content etc. But I do like the idea of letting users decide what they'd like to see other than on the homepage, where I would be Ok with some default filters. Maybe they can be disabled for the inclined.

Twitter doesn't have a homepage. It's just log in / sign up.

I wonder if that's by design? without careful curation it could be an abomination

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#243
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>skewed interpretation of a British Era law for which the Indian government is twisting the definition of treason.

There you have it. It’s not up to the companies to police, enforce or interpret laws. That’s the states job and if that’s how they interpret it then that’s how the law is. There are other tools to change laws or interpretations.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point. Murdering children is an unequicoval act of heinous evil, deleting posts from your website is a shady business decision.

Where do you draw the line? Lots of people would say that heavily silencing government criticism is evil. Not heinous evil, but can't we be mad at boring evil?

But this isn't "heavily silencing government criticism". Only 50ish tweets were blocked, for containing misinformation that was intended to cause a panic. That's illegal per Indian laws. Criticizing the government is not illegal, and is allowed. If the government were really "heavily silencing government criticism", we would be seeing millions of tweets and accounts being blocked and censored. Instead, it's a narrow targeted set that did things like use images from other circumstances to make it seem like they were part of the COVID situation.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw the line? Lots of people would say that heavily silencing government criticism is evil. Not heinous evil, but can't we be mad at boring evil?

But this isn't "heavily silencing government criticism". Only 50ish tweets were blocked, for containing misinformation that was intended to cause a panic. That's illegal per Indian laws. Criticizing the government is not illegal, and is allowed. If the government were really "heavily silencing government criticism", we would be seeing millions of tweets and accounts being blocked and censored. Instead, it's a narrow…

I'm not really focused on this incident, but the idea that it can be a serious issue for major platforms to control speech.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#246
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>skewed interpretation of a British Era law for which the Indian government is twisting the definition of treason. There you have it. It’s not up to the companies to police, enforce or interpret laws. That’s the states job and if that’s how they interpret it then that’s how the law is. There are other tools to change laws or interpretations.

Last time I checked, it's the court's job to interpret laws, not the legislature's. And from recent past precedent, we know that the courts haven't interpreted the sedition law the way the government has, yet the Modi government does not give a rats ass and continues to trample over them.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#247
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cultu…

[flagged]

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#248

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Because people are idiots and would be swayed by hannity sound bites even though the story has nothing to do with Joe?

If that's what you really think, I guess it's an indication of how well the story was suppressed. Does the part where Hunter explained that the long-standing arrangement was for Joe to get half of the loot ring a bell?

I've noticed that the people who disagree with me are much better at clicking the downvote button than they are at clicking reply and explaining why they disagree.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people are idiots and would be swayed by hannity sound bites even though the story has nothing to do with Joe?

If that's what you really think, I guess it's an indication of how well the story was suppressed. Does the part where Hunter explained that the long-standing arrangement was for Joe to get half of the loot ring a bell?

>Does the part where Hunter explained that the long-standing arrangement was for Joe to get half of the loot ring a bell?

Again, it doesn't matter? Joe ultimately decided remove the corrupt prosecutor that was helping Burisma. He fucked over Burisma, and their "investment" into Hunter.

Burisma may have tried to pull some nepotism by hiring Hunter, Joe ultimately said "no thanks, Jack", and fucked over Hunter. So the story is... Joe Biden doesn't take bribes?

Given how inconsequential, or rather how the whole story paints Joe in a good light, the media suppression probably has to do more with the fact that the contents of Hunter's laptop were so obviously hacked and Giuliani painted an incredibly elaborate story to try and prove how he "legitimately" got these documents.

Re: Twitter is blocking tweets that criticize the Indian government

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's what you really think, I guess it's an indication of how well the story was suppressed. Does the part where Hunter explained that the long-standing arrangement was for Joe to get half of the loot ring a bell?

> Does the part where Hunter explained that the long-standing arrangement was for Joe to get half of the loot ring a bell? Again, it doesn't matter? Joe ultimately decided remove the corrupt prosecutor that was helping Burisma. He fucked over Burisma, and their "investment" into Hunter. Burisma may have tried to pull some nepotism by hiring Hunter, Joe ultimately said "no thanks, Jack", and fucked over Hunter. So the…

> Hunter's laptop were so obviously hacked

It wasn't hacked, that crackhead left his laptop in a repair shop and just forgot about it.

> Joe Biden doesn't take bribes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_xXx0yUvSw

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