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Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

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Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#51
post #12

Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias. Twitter can not have the cake and eat it too. There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.

> You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral. But Google does manipulate search results, so ostensibly they should also be put on par with newspapers? examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13274753 edit: Also your comment misleads on what the article reports. Twitter has not lost safe harbor because "they do gatekeeping and…

> ...they should also be put on par with newspapers?

Correct.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#52
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what the traceability law is?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/why-indian-courts-shou...

The internet is an oversized megaphone. A couple of 1000 dedicated workers can spread rumours, panic and propaganda.

When you have a country of 1.3 billion people, a large portion of whom also have smartphones, who, unfortunately are also uneducated and gullible, you have the perfect environment to cause trouble.

Apps like WA and Telegram, enable this megaphone to reach every nook and corner of the country.

If tomorrow, there is a coordinated rumour mongering going on, leading to riots and deaths, dont you think those who started the rumour be caught?

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#53
post #35

Twitter is put on par with newspapers, because they do gatekeeping and have accepted bias. Twitter can not have the cake and eat it too. There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral.

Twitter is neither a news website nor a search engine. The only sinister thing here is that, as the article mentions, the Government wants Twitter to reveal the IP addresses of specific users and Twitter is refusing to do so. Also Twitter is marking fake news spread by Government ministers and functionaries as manipulated media. Another issue that the article doesn't mention is that the Government is pushing users to…

> Twitter is neither a news website nor a search engine.

Correct. Just a social contagion which profits from sabotaging both news and search.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. I’m not sure I understand how the fact that something is enshrined in law means it’s not sinister. In fact, the fact that anti democratic or government strengthening actions are enshrined in law makes it more worrisome rather than less.

> In a court filing on Monday, New Delhi said Twitter has lost its immunity in India after the American social network failed to comply with the new local IT rules, which were unveiled in February and went into effect in late May. This is even more worrying when the “laws kicking in” are laws the government passed unilaterally without discussion a couple of months ago precisely to prevent dissent on social media. Fur…

Liability for published content isn't unusual or unprecedented. Twitter et al enjoyed unprecedented liability protection for a little while; I don't see how holding them to the same standard other companies are held is worrying.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#55
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't want google manipulating search results and then claim to be neutral. But Google does manipulate search results, so ostensibly they should also be put on par with newspapers? examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13274753 edit: Also your comment misleads on what the article reports. Twitter has not lost safe harbor because "they do gatekeeping and…

how would one even sort search results without bias?

By removing user profile data as an input to the search query processing and result ranking.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#56
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is neither a news website nor a search engine. The only sinister thing here is that, as the article mentions, the Government wants Twitter to reveal the IP addresses of specific users and Twitter is refusing to do so. Also Twitter is marking fake news spread by Government ministers and functionaries as manipulated media. Another issue that the article doesn't mention is that the Government is pushing users to…

Unfortunately, it acts as both in many instances. User profiling and data mining, coupled with corporate interest to keep users on the site as long as possible, leads to slow but firm biasing. Search results are not objective, but subjective based on the user history and profile. On the flip end, it is not a news site, but a massive distributor of news items. So it does act as a newspaper, because people consume larg…

All your points apply to YouTube as well, and YouTube has more than 10x the users it has in India than Twitter does.

But then why is YouTube not being targeted by the Government? One salient difference I see is that Twitter is protecting its users by being identified and punished by the Government for being anti-Government.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#57

It boggles the mind that companies such as twitter would even own offices in corrupt countries such as india. Its a question of time until the government will want to grab some of the sweet sweet money from them, and such measures are only the beginning: bully them a bit until they "sponsor" the right politicians.

It is true that the corruption at lower levels that is seen in India is orders of magnitude higher than in developed societies.

But at the higher echelons, where politics and business and the arms industry meet, India is small potatoes when it comes to corruption. Americans don't have "bribes" ... they have sanitized words like "lobbyists", "power-tips", "pork-barrels" and so on. Rich societies fall over themselves selling arms to all factions in countries riven by war and poverty and starvation, while making pious pronouncements about freedom and right to exist.

The giver of the bribe is just as corrupt as the receiver.

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#58
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would one even sort search results without bias?

By returning the best match to a search first… second one second…

What makes the best match? Highest number of back links?

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing sinister just the laws kicking in. I’m not sure I understand how the fact that something is enshrined in law means it’s not sinister. In fact, the fact that anti democratic or government strengthening actions are enshrined in law makes it more worrisome rather than less.

> In a court filing on Monday, New Delhi said Twitter has lost its immunity in India after the American social network failed to comply with the new local IT rules, which were unveiled in February and went into effect in late May. This is even more worrying when the “laws kicking in” are laws the government passed unilaterally without discussion a couple of months ago precisely to prevent dissent on social media. Fur…

Why is GST imllementation "pathetic"? Could you elaborate?

Re: Twitter has lost liability protection in India, government says

#60
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it acts as both in many instances. User profiling and data mining, coupled with corporate interest to keep users on the site as long as possible, leads to slow but firm biasing. Search results are not objective, but subjective based on the user history and profile. On the flip end, it is not a news site, but a massive distributor of news items. So it does act as a newspaper, because people consume larg…

All your points apply to YouTube as well, and YouTube has more than 10x the users it has in India than Twitter does. But then why is YouTube not being targeted by the Government? One salient difference I see is that Twitter is protecting its users by being identified and punished by the Government for being anti-Government.

Because youtube has no mechanism to label content one way or other.

It is not a massive distribution network. It is a content heavy site used for sharing videos. The actual sharing happens on other platforms.

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