This is a reaction to opposing voices that wants to quell those quickly anytime they arise. There hasn’t been, and there won’t be, any action taken against supporters of the government or even government authorities even when they incite murder in prepared and recorded public speeches (search online for “shoot the traitors” remark).
This is also one more of those “all encryption should have backdoors so that the government alone can snoop” (as if the government is always trustworthy, responsible, and is one single, uniform and dedicated being). This playbook has been seen in other countries too, even the developed ones.
The government and authorities don’t even provide any information about random website blocking orders or any way to get incorrectly implemented orders resolved quickly.
It’s one sided to aid those in power and take power from those who are already on the other side of the scale. We don’t need more of this.
...Which is hypocritical when us based tech companies extend the same privileges to us govt, no questions asked.
If you are a growing company vying to capture one of the biggest internet markets in the world, do you think the govt in that market is just going to sit by and let things happen without some of the afore mentioned privileges coming their way? Thats not going to happen. At all.
I think over the next few years every govt is going to have some laws along same the lines.
The only positive I see in this is that these kind of government actions on social media giants can push decentralised web more. By it's nature peer-to-peer systems will be beyond control of government. Internet was not supposed to be just twitter/facebook combo which it has now become. A lot of news nowadays are coming just from twitter trends on indian tv channels which is not right all the time. Mostly it's celebrity or big boss gossip but we can't rule out that twitter can start a war inside any country if it wants.
I am not sure these laws will solve any problems with the current internet. Some problems which I would like to see solved would be:
1. Tracing people who morph images real people and ruin their normal life. If this is a criminal offence and what's the point if people can easily get away with this. Internet by and large can have a mechanism to trace and banish such bad actors.
2. Too much dependence on twitter/facebook/google. It's fucked up. Why CEO of these companies have so much power over our planet. Twitter can literally cause world war by sending misinformation if it wants. It's scary to just imagine how much power Dorsey has. May be he is a good man, but is it worth to trust one man over the stability of this planet?
3. Manipulation with bots. There should be certain amount of weightage given to verified accounts as well as posts with links to verified articles. I want to see the real votes of real people - not the trends of automated bot armies.
My suggestion to Indian government on these laws would be - Applying hammers won't solve anything in long term. What will be better is to make people question what is right and wrong for internet themselves; Bring this discussion internationally and use the international platform to tell what problems are spread on internet - and tell the options people can choose in long term. Have a vote internationally may be.
I will be more than happy if decentralised web emerges. However, I am not ok with likes of Jack Dorosy calling the shots over Countries and elected Goverments.
Agreed. Although it's the concentration of power that is harmful in long term than who is holding that power.
Moreover, I am not sure how much manipulation humans are able to detect ; a small misinformation injected into twitter timeline or a small bias in facebook can cause ripples across the world's outlook over time that we can't even notice when it's happening. Social media companies which provide these feeds always get away by saying it's by the algorithm recommendation but who is tuning those parameters? Only a small amount of human population asks 'why' type of question and rest of them just absorb the content and it shapes their mind. I watched the movie Social Dilemma sometime back and slowly this has been dawning on me - wtf we are witnessing. World is falling in hands of these social media companies, they are storing our data, they profile us, they manipulate what we see, they tell us what they want us to see ; it's mind-boggling that the world is sleeping on this much centralisation of power happening in broad daylight.
Please ignore the trolls, ramblings, and especially the newly created accounts. The current ruling party in India has an IT cell that tries to shape opinions online irrespective of the platform.
You're underestimating how conservative people are in general.
There is a fear of Islam propagation in general populace of India, and there are valid reasons for it.
When you have uninformed general populace, it's easy to portray yourselves as protector of the culture and they will become fans of you, and defend every action of you. It doesn't matter you make their lives bad, corruption becomes rampant or economy goes shit. All that matters is creating a common enemy for all people.
It has worked well for BJP, because the opposition party was full of nepotism and old tactics such as minority appeasement. They came late to this propaganda game, and as long as they are nepotistic and have this muslim party image they can't do shit.
I don't think all people defending modi here are paid to do that. Let's be real, they are emotionally connected. And the problem cannot be solved by dismissing more than half of the population.
I do not disagree with a single sentence in your comment, except what is implied but not stated in the last one.
I am willing to be convinced with data that about half of the Indian population support the current events, but haven't encountered any such. Note, only around 60% voted. I will happily agree that at the time of elections around 50% of the 60% that voted was in favor of the BJP led coalition.
A person with a conservative belief system and a IT cell operation coordinator are different things altogether. I have spotted the latter on HN. If you look at their comment stream you will see them claiming that they are hindu in one that they are muslim in another. Yes its possible they converted in the middle but the prior for that is low.
Half of them are true. The rest is exaggerated. Both sides hold extreme opinions about this matter.
To be clear I don't hate muslims / christians but the expansionist attitude of few religions. I believe Savarkar's Hindu Atheist ideology, for all his faults, is the way forward for India.
The problem as seen by many right-leaning people is that girls of other faiths (Hindu/Christian) date with low-status-but-high-pretention Muslims, and marry them or if there's opposition by family, elope with them. They also generally get converted into Islam. But the opposite happening (Muslim/Christian getting converted to Hinduism, especially) is very rare in comparison. Also, (non-urban or previous generation mostly) Muslims have multiple wives and have many more children than others. There are anecdotes these women are pressured to have more children by those Muslim families, I don't know how pervasive that is. We can't disagree Islam has some extremist attitudes. (Sadly Hindu leaders also calling their followers to have more children, this doesn't solve the problem)
Due to minority appeasement politics played in last 70 years by Indian National Congress, Muslims also enjoy some more privilege than Hindu counterparts. This despite most of them being ruler/trader class in past (so unlike Scheduled castes). Now the game is majority appeasement and Congress has not caught up. Thus BJP is only player in the town.
A COVID19 superspreader event was an Islam religious event which also villain-ized them more in the eyes of majority.
Lastly, there are always communal fights in many parts of India and each side sees the other as enemies that must be extinguished. (There are statistically exceptional states like Kerala, but again Kerala is very educated state).
Doesn't help some of the practices of Muslim citizens irritate everyone else, like high sounds in mosques and "atther" or whatever that's called smell in public transport.
All this can be used to create a common enemy for majority of youth and boomers today.
Modi is a lot like Trump, but also intelligent enough.
> A COVID19 superspreader event was an Islam religious event which also villain-ized them more in the eyes of majority.
This has been called very strongly by the supreme court as malicious and politically motivated and government supported propaganda.
> like high sounds in mosques
Those last 2 to 3 minutes each and aren't on in the night. Hindu celebration pandals violate noise norms for weeks at stretch playing loud Bollywood songs and drums incessantly through out the night. Complaints result in Hindu right wing goons sent to rough up the one who complained. Its hard to take your reasonings in good faith if you make those one sided.
Many of the appeasement complains are also I'm bad faith. Many economic programs target those that are badly off. Turns out there is a significant overlap with that population and Muslim and lower caste Hindu population - which is not to claim all Muslims or all lower caste are economically backwards.
What is offensive about itar ? Its a traditional perfume/deodorant. Eberyone can see wjat this is - just institutionsl Muslim hatred of the hindu right. What's the logic here ? Gajra perfume is good itar perfume is some sort of a national politics issue.
The guy who used to grovel in apologies to the Brits is a hero now. Golwalkar the fountainhead of Hindu right wrote that Muslims are the real problem and it'd them who have to be fought not the colonizing British forces yet its Nehru who is branded Brit loyalist.
The contention is whether India should be modeled with values of liberalism and plurarism or insular right wing and fascist ideas
Not hiding. I expected this to be common enough knowledge that it did not require further elaboration.
I am bothered more by the pandal loudspeakers because they disrupt night sleep for multiple stretches of a week at a time. Ajaans are not aired during my sleeping hours so they don't bother me (except for the 5 am one at times). Neither do church bells. There are many mosques around where I stay, thankfully they seem to obey noise ordinances that pandals do not.
In contrast there is always some festival every month with a pandal and there goes my sleep for a week.
Totally agree that noise ordinances should be uniformly applied. Same applies to construction noise.
Interreligious marriage is a very tiny fraction of indian marriages, and actually works in both directions. This concern is a recently invented bogey man that has no basis in reality. The real demographic challenge for India is the backward northern states reproducing at a rate higher than the progressive southern states. However, there is absolutely no media focus on this issue. It is hilarious to watch north Indian hindus bully some Muslim from kerala (pakistani, child producing machines, Somali etc), when north Indian Hindus have a much higher fertility than them.
Attar is a fragrance, that several Hindus also use. Maybe you should check if the person applying it is hindu or Muslim before generalizing .
The so called super spreader event was organized before the lockdown, at about the same time as modi Trump rally involving more than 100K people. Instead of locking down the mosque, the administration forced everyone out of the mosque to help spread covid outside the mosque all over India! The media is absolutely silent about various hindu temple superspreader events being held such as the khumbu mela. Nobody is clutching their pearls.
The land owning muslims moved to Pakistan and the Indian muslims primarily occupy a lower socio economic class. The so called appeasement that one hears about all the time is never actually spelt out in clear detail. It is taken as an article of faith. Congress appeasement of Hindus, such as in the case of ram mandir or hindu joint family tax exemptions are conveniently ignored.
Seconding the statement that attar/itar is a traditionally made fragrance, usually essential oils from various sources. Before perfume and deo industries penetrated the Indian market they were used universally by those who could afford it - they are and were quite expensive.
Displeasure with attar is just a thinly veiled feelings of hatred towards members of another religion.
No hate / disrespect intended. When there are many Muslim citizens in public transport etc.. the smell is pretty strong and intolerable. Not so much in urban areas but many times in rural areas. That said we both love in different places of India so have different exposures to reality. And I don't like bajrang dal stuff / loud music during festivals either. I was just explaining the parent commenter the general attitude towards muslims.
> The so called super spreader event was organized before the lockdown, at about the same time as modi Trump rally involving more than 100K people. Instead of locking down the mosque, the administration forced everyone out of the mosque to help spread covid outside the mosque all over India! The media is absolutely silent about various hindu temple superspreader events being held such as the khumbu mela. Nobody is clutching their pearls.
Indeed. I was just explaining general attitude against muslims.
And the guy in charge got a cricket stadium named after him. Think about it for a second - an active politician having a stadium named after him. It’s like Obama getting O’Hare renamed after himself while he was still President.
Hey there. I have been a lurker on HN. I made this account just to comment on this thread. I am an Indian and live in India and I'm glad that international media is paying attention to what is going on here.
I used tor to create this account because I'm afraid of this govt. This govt is a classic fascist one. On the same lines of NSDP of Germany. Those who are dissing Mozilla for shining the light on what is obviously an attempt to censor critical voices on internet, should also point out that India has enacted laws which allow Police to incarcerate people without trial, without bail for years. So many of our intellectuals are in jail and they have not faced a single day of trial.
There is so much to talk about what is going on in India. Let me just lay out a few points:
1. We have enacted a set of laws which will lead to loss of citizenship for Muslims.
2. We have enacted laws prohibiting marriage between interfaith couples (Nuremberg laws anyone).
3. Thugs of ruling party are roaming the streets catching couples belonging to different faiths, especially if the boy is muslim and girl is hindu. A young muslim boy is still in jail because he attended the birthday party of a hindu girl.
4. A hindu girls pregnancy from her muslim husband was forcibly aborted.
Shame on Indian diaspora for supporting all of this. You guys should know that the endgame is wholesale genocide of muslims here
Only the largest social media companies will be able to comply with these laws. Assuming the summary isn't incorrect, these requirements are incredibly difficult to implement for small companies.
Automated Filtering, Social Media User Verification, Traceability of Encrypted Content are all complex on both a technical & practical level. As I understand, setting up a basic mastodon instance or even just an IRC server could be in violation of these rules. (IRC might not count itself but hosting IRC and a web IRC gateway probably is).
Some interesting parts (scroll down in the PDF to get the English version):
> `social media intermediary‘ means an intermediary which primarily or solely enables online interaction between two or more users and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify or access information using its services;
This means that a lot of this law applies to basically any communication platform. Not just the big ones.
> Provided also that where the first originator of any information on the computer resource of an intermediary is located outside the territory of India, the first originator of that information within the territory of India shall be deemed to be the first originator of the information for the purpose of this clause.
This puts enormous liability on tons of services & businesses. Running a tor relay and many other 'network over a network' type technologies will become problematic. Forget about running a tor exit node - unless you can just say that this IP is the originator.
> where an intermediary collects information from a user for registration on the computer resource, it shall retain his information for a period of one hundred and eighty days after any cancellation or withdrawal of his registration, as the case may be;
So now you have to wait 180 days for your information to really be removed. So much for privacy. It's also a bit weird in that it is exactly 180 days and not up to or at least which makes it a bit confusing in what its goal is.
> The intermediary shall prominently publish on its website,mobile based application or both, as the case may be, the name of the Grievance Officer and his contact details as well as mechanism by which a user or a victim may make complaint against violation of the provisions of this rule or any other matters pertaining to the computer resources made available by it, and the Grievance Officer shall [...]
So you'll need about 3-5 employees just for hosting a image board, etc.
> [Section 4] [...] appoint a nodal contact person for 24x7 coordination with law enforcement agencies and officers to ensure compliance to their orders or requisitions made in accordance with the provisions of law or rules made thereunder.
> [Section 6] The Ministry may by order, for reasons to be recorded in writing, require any intermediary, which is not a significant social media intermediary, to comply with all or any of the obligations mentioned under rule 4, if the services of that intermediary permits the publication or transmission of information in a manner that may create a material risk of harm to the sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order.
So the government can basically force any communication platform/service to have a 24/7 contact/staff for cooperating with law enforcement. Essentially, any low moderation platform could be forced overnight to higher additional staff or more likely; shut down since it would be no longer economical or worthwhile to operate.
> So now you have to wait 180 days for your information to really be removed. So much for privacy. It's also a bit weird in that it is exactly 180 days and not up to or at least which makes it a bit confusing in what its goal is.
"Up to 180 days" can result in data being deleted sooner. If data retention is a cost centre rather than a profit centre, the data will be deleted immediately.
"At least 180 days" can result in data never being deleted, for the same reasons as above.
180 days exactly gives the appearance that there's a balance that has been struck between data retention and privacy. Determining whether or not this is actually meaningful is dependent on what the data is used for, etc. and I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to make an educated guess.
E.g. under GDPR (yes, I know that law likely doesn't apply to this), you need to have a legitimate interest or consent to collect/retain personal information.
You don't have to instantly scrub it from your storage, but this 180 day rule would force you to delete it shortly after the 180 days are up, probably within a couple weeks.
People who see some good in this are naive, its no a blow to the social media giants, the big players can always afford to be an exception to regulation ....
Of course. Google for this: over regulation benefits the incumbent. I quote one of the results
> More generally, however, a higher overall level of regulation in a country can benefit larger incumbent firms that have the resources to shoulder compliance costs while their smaller competitors falter in the face of an increasing regulatory burden.
Does no one in Indian govt think that of where India should go in the long-term (30-50 years). Sure few large Indian companies are with them now. What happens then?
Seems to me this will be a lost opportunity to be a leader (equal leader) in BRICS.
Or do they think that they can be self-sufficient?
This law is clearly made by people who know what they're demanding: instead of China's closed wall garden of internet, the ruling BJP party realizes they can have their cake and eat it as well.
They want to allow multi-national corporations to exist in the country because removing them in the near future is going to cause a dent in their own operational policy. But rather, they clearly want to control these companies so they peddle only their own approved messaging.
The approved messaging however is not to toe to any standards of tolerance or deceny. The ruling party has an active social media campaign with tens of thousands of people actively spreading hate and lies through WhatsApp and Facebook.
This government is not shy about their right-wing communal leaning. They want to create a country that is hospitable to only one majority religion, and within that they do not allow free expression that goes against their wishes.
This is just another step in the direction, and the times are dark indeed.
There's clearly a trend: the more people live in a country, the more paranoidal and authoritarian its rulers. They are afraid of their people and want more control. That's understandable.
This prompts the next question... what can those of us who don’t want this slide towards authoritarianism to continue, do about it?
Regardless of political/social viewpoints, I don’t think it matters if you consider your political views left, right, up, down, a, b or start... for the most part these views are compatible with free expression and “lowercase l” liberal democracy. Notwithstanding notable exceptions such as capital F Fascism or capital N Nazism, where being authoritarian is literally part of the political philosophy.
So how do we resist this trend? I’m not talking about rallies and counter-protesting, that won’t help shit when it’s happening in other countries. How do we make liberty and democracy better so that people want it enough to say no to the continuing pressure towards alternatives... ?
I doubt you can make a free country out of a pile of greedy people who also want to control others. It's not just India, it's like that almost everywhere today: a bunch of sociopaths at the top, the clueless crowd in the middle who will support anything and anyone, and a minority of freedom seekers at the bottom. Eventually, the stream of evolution will wash the greedy and lazy out, but that will take tens of thousands of years.
> the stream of evolution will wash the greedy and lazy out
Are there ways to speed up this tens of thousands of years of evolution? I can think of some things
On the other hand, is there a risk that instead this species gets stuck for millions of years, in a "local maximum" with somewhat bright sociopath dictators, and a huge crowd of clueless people (if there's evolutionary pressure against being a bright person? Are there such tendencies?, e.g. bright women just working, working, no babies, or political dissidents disappearing in prison?), with regularly occurring massacres of minorities, so that eventually anyone who looks slightly different is at risk? ... Well, until a 3rd world war with nukes, mostly puts an end to all of it
Looks like the so called (by you) dark times are just right for people of your ilk to exit the very country who's ruling government (BJP) is providing for your every need and most of the time luxuries, like the Internet access to allow you to post such derogatory comments and get away with it.
There is an odd trend in pieces submitted about india that spawns new accounts in support of whatever it is the india government is doing.
I'm in the west so probably better to updoot someone from india that has better insight. This is just my observation.
If what mozilla is saying is true this is a very obvious power grab that only applies to law abiding people. Internet protocols don't care about laws, you can try to enforce origin IP's and ban E2E encryption but bad actors can use these regardless of the law. It's all simply math and basic network packets.
Any software cryptographer or experienced programmer can tell you that. Meaning the intentions of this legislation cannot be honest, and therefore it's not for good.
As for social media regulation - by creating special regulations you lock in the current market. For example the reason why you can't compete with youtube in western markets is because youtube has to have very advanced processing heavy algorithms for content detection because copyright infringement, illigal material, etc. But japan has all their own ecosystem of social media and video.
The government also isn't somehow the good guys when trying to regulate big social media. If you give them the power to do that then they can also be the ones to shut down alternative social media with fines, police, and guns.
I have personally faced the full brunt of Indian governments maniacal control over the internet. Since 5 August 2019 till February 2020 I had 0 internet. Then after that, only "whitelisted" websites of around 300. That number was gradually increased. High speed mobile internet was only started like last month so from March 2020 till say February 2021, around 8 million people had to endure 2g internet speeds. Why? Because they dont want dissent be heard. If noone cries wolf, "assume the wolf didnt come ".
For the last 2-3 years, WhatsApp news groups have been forced to get themselves "registered" with police. Aim being to stop flow of any news that does not work with the narrative of the government and punish those involved.
I can show you people on twitter who after being humiliated and tortured by police for "instigating anti national sentiments" aka criticising the govt. I can share posts by journalists who have been harrassed and tortured because of their anti govt news just because they wrote ground reports.
Look up last years Pulitzer prize winning photo. That was from this place, a hooded guy, in the air with a stone in his hand in front of a police truck, David vs Goliath in real life. I have not seen anything more raw in a long time. Read about it how it was literally "smuggled out" because the govt does not want its crimes to be known.
Why am I boring you with these details? Well if I am forced to "verify" my identity everywhere, this means the govt has immediate access to this handle and my physical body because my phone is actively pinging my location. This means I can write a keyword the govt finds problematic and I will be picked up. This is not even an issue on WhatsApp or telegram or signal because your mobile number is the unique key and it works on that and I personally know people who have been picked up for sharing anti govt stuff on WhatsApp.
My hand is being forced to set up private invite only network of activitypub compatible services because then I will be sort of in control but even then its a problem because Indian ISPs like Jio have been using DPI for a long time to filter and control people but I have to try to stay alive
you can most definitely not buy a sim card for cash without kyc unless you know someone who is willing to take a shit load of risk. its not like buying commodity products.
I do not know about m2m but it probably is the same thing.
If it's all about using a disclosed identity to help law enforcement solve a crime, law-abiding citizens would have nothing to cry foul over.
On the other hand, if you are required to disclose your identity when your anonymity clashes with the policies and procedures of governments, this is unfair since it stands in the way of freedom of expression and hints at fascistic intimidation tactics.
This "environmental activist" is supporting an agitation demanding freedom to burn stubble and cause pollution choking 20 million people of Delhi[1].
Having said that India have some actual activists responsible for creating forests single handedly with their own money[2][3]. Incidentally present "fasist" government honoured them while previous liberal progressive government fail to notice them. These life long activists get no coverage while faker like Greta and Disha rules the headlines.
Even if that were to be true (that which is not) that does not justify intimidating a person by arresting them in one state moving her to another overnight and remanding to custody over claims that cannot stand the scrutiny even of a favorably disposed court -- all because of their need to gag dissent.
The point is not about who is a true activist but using federal bodies to put people under arrest under trumped up charges for political agenda. This as weaponized use of federal bodies that India has witnessed in 50 years.
Disha's toolkit gets an arrest but toolkits by bjp activists openly calling for violence against muslims get a wink wink nod nod
I think you know that there are people blocking highways for months blocking entrance to Capital. If people don't have right to protest how this is hapenning.
> Disha's toolkit gets an arrest but toolkits by bjp activists openly calling for violence against muslims get a wink wink nod nod
BJP worker doesn't habe a toolkit. He runs a telegram group with open membership. You can join it too.
Disha Ravi had to retract and replace the toolkit with a sanitized version because toolkit is more about disrupting the "chai and yoga" image of India than protest against policies of the Government.
And ofcourse we can't forget Muslims. They are the proverbial victims with no extremism. Be it France, Sweden, UK, Banglore or Delhi. Across time and place, all the rioting is someone else's fault across time wink wink nod nod
> I think you know that there are people blocking highways for months blocking entrance to Capital.
It's the police that has barricaded the borders to stop them from entering Delhi. Protesting is not a crime. This is how we won our independence by peaceful protests and noncooperation movement. These are perfectly legitimate political actions.
By not calling it a toolkit you are playing semantic games. Disha's 'toolkit' was a document that instructed volunteers how to get more visibility and how to make #tags trend. It was a sketch of a plan for an entirely peaceful protest with absolutely 0 call for violence. This called for multiple arrests and many are still languishing in jail in spite of no shred of evidence linking them to violence.
On the other hand anyone can search for Kapil Mishra, and Ragini Tiwari on youtube to find recordings of their hate speech asking for killing and riots. Even inciting the rioters while they are rioting -- all captured on camera.
That’s highly questionable depending on the level of the judiciary being discussed. The highest court (Supreme Court) has sided more often with the executive and takes years to start hearing cases of national importance. Some of the High Courts are better.
Yet another regressive move from a repressive party trying to have the cake and eat it too, with free market policies where it makes sense and a China style control with a single party where convenient.
These laws are likely to be enforced against Big Tech but the real losers are going to be users.
Your argument will hold true if social media companies act as a platform and don't censor or intervene.
In reality they take sides and push their agenda so this is bound to happen. Companies coming together to de-platform Trump and Twitter CEO admitting that twitter employees are left leaning are very good examples of why this would happen.
We saw what happens when employees are right leaning in the US. Their CEO gets kicked out and has his stock options stripped.
In the US if you have a non left leaning company that’s a bad thing because in the US the center is so far right that the majority of left leaning people look wildly right wing from a European perspective (which is where the right left view of politics comes from), and the majority of the people on the right are either delusional or scamming.
But those are the "experts" from the West. They believe that censoring Trump was correct but a country who wants to save it's sovereignty is incorrect and should not happen. It goes against their narrative.
Champions of free expression wants to grant more power to Jack and his cohort than to the democratically elected Government because Governments are corrupt but Jack is not. How Ironic?
India's government is only nominally democratic and rapidly falling in freedom parameters looked at from any perspective. They are charging climate activists with sedition, holding protestors without charge for months, increase in extrajudicial killings and rapidly falling Human Development Indicators.
Their manifesto did not say that they'll regulate social media and try to limit internet freedoms. They were not elected for that. Can any future election be truly democratic if those in power get to issue content takedowns?
Yes, I want Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, to have more control over Twitter than the government.
> the democratically elected Government
The democratically elected government was elected for a million different reasons, but their proficiency at managing social media networks was not one of them. And, you know, controlling every single social network is just a bit more dangerous than controlling one.
Be a bit more generous in your interpretation of others' comments. Looking at the commenter's post history, it's pretty clear that they're talking about the Indian government.
As someone who understands Hindi, yeah I have to concur it's a authoritarian and stupid law. It will only be selectively enforced and seeing the track record of this regime, it will be used to suppress dissent.
As someone who understands English as well, yeah, I have to concur that social media giants like Twitter have gotten more powerful than necessary.
The law is just right, and at the right time, nothing stupid about it.
Except the law does nothing to restrict social media companies and everything to restrict people on social media.
Someone upstream made a ridiculous comparison to Donald Trump, whose Twitter was shut down because he had just incited violence.
Well that was the extent of what was or could be done to him.
With this law, and the way the current Indian government acts, your Twitter shutting down would be the least of your worries. The government would send its goons in uniform to arrest you, probably illegally (the way the 20 year old activist was illegally arrested, then illegally transported to a different state by the police so she could be denied bail in a friendlier jurisdiction), denied bail for months at end, unless they are the lucky few whose bail application reaches a higher court, which hasn’t been as ridiculous as the lower courts yet, beaten up, have the internet cut off, etc.
The current Indian government deserves absolutely no benefit of doubt because they continue to enact anti democratic measures, while destroying the economy, even though they were lectured solely on promises of improving the economy (their destruction of the economy began well before the pandemic...Dec 2016 to be precise...just look at a GDP growth chart and it peaks in Dec 2016 and makes an abrupt turn going from increasing growth to decreasing growth right then. Anyone with a passing knowledge of India knows which disastrous, and completely politically motivated decision ruined the futures of hundreds of millions of people).
Not really. The law is not about restricting anyone, but rather about making media houses more accountable by making them store information (for a limited time) regarding the content publishers and furnishing it when requested within that time frame.
That 20 year old activist (Disha Ravi) you refer was arrested because she was clearly involved (via the document shared by Greta Thunberg) in seditious activity towards the sovereign state of India, nothing illegal or unethical about that I guess!
She was carted off to a different state because the outcome of her illicit activities could have led to more violence in that other state hence it would be apt that she face the courts within that state's jurisdiction.
There has been not a single incident of anti-democratic measure from the current Indian government, it would be more than interesting if you could provide rational, logical and judicially verifiable information to counter that.
From your tone and attitude, it looks like you have some kind of unwarranted grudge against the current government, most probably because you are a crony of the Congress who's sitting in the opposition, playing every game possible to topple the good natured environment created by the currently in power BJP government.
Agree Social media platforms gotten more powerful than necessary.
Also Saying new laws are suppressing freedom of speech is not enough , for sake of valid argument one must point out which clause/sub clause of the said law mentions this suppression.
I am not at all of the opinion that the new laws suppress freedom of speech. I was countering the previous comment using sarcasm as a means to convey the futility of their argument.
> Play stupid games and win stupid prices. No govt will surrender sovereignty and media control.
Why should government control the media ? That makes no sense.
Most of the social media giants lose money on their India operations while giving poor Indians an opportunity to have a better platform to express themselves. India has virtually seen a one party rule since independence, that too by a single family who could be more corrupt than all the south american dictators combined. The only way an ordinary tea seller could become a PM while defeating this party was because of power of social media are grassroot movement against corruption.
India has a history of screwing up what works without fully understanding the consequences of their regulations.
The foreign social media sites have political agenda blatantly well “foreign”.
Media houses are strictly regulated and have to abide much stringent criteria for reporting or an oped.
It’s about control it was in the best interest of these tech firms to be “neutral” before they captured the entire public discourse space. That is clearly not the case now, They have infinitely more power than they had before and even more power than the sovereign government in many many countries.
Some governments are trying to protect their (digital) sovereignty through regulation.
The view that governments are necessarily trying to control information unless they’re dumb is not universally shared. This has little to do with surrendering sovereignty.
On their websites. You keep leaving that out. Facebook can't control what goes on Twitter and vice versa. But the government has power over both. That's why it's bad for the government to do it.
Well censoring of Trump is best example. Another recent one is Facebook trying to ban and influence Unganda Elections.
In General these social media giants are extremely liberal towards Iran and China but they are eager to ban Trump and trample anyone not agreeing with idealogical standing of their staff.
Narendra Modi is a con-man who chose politics as career to make money; He doesn't have any credible Education/Qualifications other than Bigotry/Narcissism;
And Modi is privy/proxy to Pyramid schemes run by Ambani/Adani;
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first" --Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
Privacy is not such a big thing. Most of the Asian societies have been very open in the past and privacy only hurts it. But, with the power to monitor people in the hands of government or social media companies, it is better to have at-least some privacy. Encryption for financial transactions is a must. Reputations can be built and tarnished easily very rapidly. It is natural that there should be adequate protections in law. Social media should not be used to incite mobs or fan riots. More such actions are required to prevent unnecessary conflicts. Tracking user actions only help in identifying when trouble arises.
This is also one more of those “all encryption should have backdoors so that the government alone can snoop” (as if the government is always trustworthy, responsible, and is one single, uniform and dedicated being). This playbook has been seen in other countries too, even the developed ones.
The government and authorities don’t even provide any information about random website blocking orders or any way to get incorrectly implemented orders resolved quickly.
It’s one sided to aid those in power and take power from those who are already on the other side of the scale. We don’t need more of this.