"The IT rules, which became effective end-May, are aimed at regulating content on social media and making firms act more swiftly on legal requests to remove posts and sharing details on the originators of messages. They also require the appointment of certain new executives."
The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech.
Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good.
That plus forcing the company to hire government-approved executives seems like a slippery slope.
Are there any benefits to this regulation I'm overlooking?
> Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good.
I disagree. Both are bad. When you grow to the size of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Removing content from your own platform allows you to spread propaganda that meets your own agenda. That allows these platforms to promote a politician that maybe trying to reduce corporate tax, and suppress one who is trying to raise it. It’s bad enough these platforms are dictating what’s a conspiracy theory or who we should listen to about Covid.
I mean, I disagree with (some of) platforms' content removal, but I don't disagree with their legal right to do so.
If Twitter becomes a propaganda machine deleting any tweet it disagrees with, I think that's shitty and if I had an account I'd delete it to avoid participating, but I'm not sold on why the government should make that illegal.
People and private organizations currently have the right to propagandize in the U.S. (without explicitly calling for violent uprisings, etc). What's the major difference between Twitter moderating tweets and a privately-owned forum moderating comments?
To repeat, a farmer rammed a tractor into a barricade causing the tractor to overturn and was killed. The whole thing was clearly caught on camera[1][2]. Within minutes there were blatantly false tweets flying around saying that police had fired on the farmers and there was a genocide in progress (with an associated hashtag). Twitter refused to take down such blatantly false and deliberately incendiary tweets.
That's a good philosophical position to take, except when you're in charge of the law and order of a city, and you have messages such as these doing the rounds in the midst of a large scale protest.
The messages are used to legitimize people armed with daggers and sickles and machetes belonging to sundry outfits pouring out onto the streets and indulging in arson, rioting, and murder. The situation is not hypothetical.
Twitter itself, of course, does not take that philosophical position.
> except when you're in charge of the law and order of a city, and you have messages such as these doing the rounds in the midst of a large scale protest.
I think that cannot justify it. There are lines that should not be crossed, no matter what.
Because if some kind of unrest gives you the justification to take some freedom away from the people, then nothing is preventing you from staging such an unrest, and proceeding to do exactly what you wanted.
> legitimize people armed with daggers and sickles and machetes belonging to sundry outfits pouring out onto the streets and indulging in arson, rioting, and murder.
Also can you give be some proof that this was happening?
The agitating protestors vandalised a DTC bus and police vehicles. According to the police, the protestors used sticks, iron rods, pelted stones, while some Nihang protestors rode on horses fully equipped with deadly weapons like swords, kirpans and fursas and some protesters even used their tractors to run over the police. Some protesters driving their speeding tractors rammed barricades and attempted to mow down the policeman on duty
>The messages are used to legitimize people armed with daggers and sickles and machetes belonging to sundry outfits pouring out onto the streets and indulging in arson, rioting, and murder.
No, they did not take them down immediately (or even the same day) when it mattered. They took them down some 2 or 3 days or so after the incident, after the government cried foul and there was a big brouhaha about the whole thing. The new IT rules mandate a time-bound takedown for lawful requests. Hence the need for a compliance officer.
So there's some popularity point where after people use a platform to talk enough times, the platform is no longer allowed to moderate the speech on it? Why?
If I operate the world's biggest single-political-party discussion forum, is there a point where the forum is now legally compelled to host the other political party's opinions?
(To be clear: I'm not saying that example is exactly analogous to Twitter, but I don't understand why one would be legally different)
> So there's some popularity point where after people use a platform to talk enough times, the platform is no longer allowed to moderate the speech on it? Why?
That's not quite what I said, but yes, kind of. No phone company is allowed to moderate the speech that goes over their network, for example.
Do you have an answer for my political-platform question? I feel like that'd help me understand where you're drawing the line here.
As far as phone companies, my current understanding is that in the U.S., the government is involved in building and maintaining telecommunications infrastructure. Therefore it falls under the First Amendment.
If you run your own wires between a lot of houses to let people talk to each other, and then listen into every conversation and cut off ones you don't like, that doesn't seem illegal.
Things like Discord or Slack, for instance, should legally be able to moderate anything you send through them. Though it would be financial suicide to actually do so.
[Disclaimer here that I only have a vague understanding of telecommunications infrastructure]
With things like Discord or Slack, they aren't a public venue, there's no public thread that's readily available with curated content.
Slack and Discord have self moderating. You can create your own discord or slack server and kick/ban whoever you want.
Reddit relies on self moderating your own sub-reddits. If it didn't then sub reddits like /r/sino prob wouldn't exist. But you have to go and search/find sub reddits or navigate from click-bait titles on the homepage.
This is unlike Twitter where it's all public, people you follow who like things are thrown in front of you, and all misinformation, propaganda, violence, insults, whatever is shoved down your throat, and the public cannot determine what should and should not be allowed on there, its up to a private company who is looking to 1) Profit, and 2) Protect its own agenda.
It would be nice if we had a balance of platforms, but unfortunately we have 1 for each medium. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube. Each of these have not 1 real competitor.
My line is pretty simple: if there's a clear purpose for the platform or even a part of it, then you have every right to remove content that deviates from that purpose. So I would say that your political platform should not be forced to host content supporting any other party. Of course it would still have to follow campaign finance laws and things like that, but that's a whole different ball of wax.
Social media platforms are content-neutral. They want to be treated like the "public square" because a lot of benefits come along with that. But then at the same time, they censor content that they disagree with. That's where it crosses the line. If Twitter came out tomorrow and declared that they are officially a left-wing social network and updated their rules to reflect that, then I'd have no problem with them kicking every Republican off the platform and banning every person who complained about taxes being too high. But Twitter won't do that.
I don't want to get further off on the tangent about telecommunications infrastructure, so I'll just leave that alone.
I disagree, in that I think any privately-owned platform that people voluntarily use, have easy alternatives to, and can leave without consequence has the right to moderate the content on their platform as they see fit.
That being said, after having a political/ideological group I really liked removed off a major platform (that it followed the ToS of) without analogous opposite-side groups being removed, I'm at least very sympathetic to your position. I thing we both agree that harmless differences of opinion shouldn't be removed, but I'll agree to disagree on whether the law should be involved.
Well that's always the million-dollar question, isn't it? Take Twitter for instance. Whether there's an easy alternative to Twitter depends entirely on your reference class.
The social aspect makes this so much harder as people are unique. It's completely reasonable for someone to need to be on the same platform as some other particular person. Say, Elon Musk. Or pre-ban Trump if you want the least convenient example from a civics perspective. How do you justify kicking someone off a platform for having the wrong views if that's where their elected representatives spend most of their time?
But this perspective completely defangs your position in all but principle. Any privately-owned platform with important[1] people using it is basically any platform that has any reasonable amount of success. Even if you restrict to public officials, well, there's a lot of public officials.
[1] Note important is in the eye of the user, and people will generally self-select into platforms that have users that are important to themselves.
I don't need a Twitter account to read people's tweets, and I contact my representatives through phone/mail. If they decide to spend time in a private platform not everyone will be able to message them on (or spend a lot of time in a restricted physical location that only lets people with "correct" opinions in), that's fine. If a politician wants a consistent way for everyone to be able to read their writing and contact them, there's nothing stopping them from just... Using their own website for that.
Just because some "famous" person uses a platform shouldn't mean the platform has to fall over itself to make sure their every word is hear and everyone can contact them.
In principle, sure. But in practice for many politicians, sending a letter will receive a copy-pasted reply while replying on twitter might get you a personal response. Similarly, getting kicked off Instagram will cause many businesses to die, despite there being another dozen sites where you can upload pictures. Social networks have an inherent tendency to monopolise niches, even if those niches are hard to articulate.
> So there's some popularity point where after people use a platform to talk enough times, the platform is no longer allowed to moderate the speech on it? Why?
Yes, such a point exists. If you have a monopoly, for instance, then you should be subject to very different considerations. If you possess a monopoly on a discussion/communication platform so massive that it has become very important to societal communication and reach, then your ability to do what you want in terms of censoring content, should be curtailed in the favor of promoting free speech rather than the opposite. Meaning even if the monopolist wants to pursue their own political agenda and censor speech, they are barred from doing so. That is the price a corporation should pay for owning such an important platform, their responsibility should be greater, their freedom of action should be restricted more. You may be allowed to sell ads in that important quasi-public square, however you should not be allowed to restrict human rights in the square.
It is said, frequently and incorrectly, that only the government has the ability to censor. That's not correct. A monopoly, well positioned, can accomplish an identical outcome: it can restrict your voice in very comprehensive ways, including up to the point of literally denying you access to the Internet.
And a group of monopolies that conspire together in pursuit of a political agenda, well it's just that much worse.
Facebook (taking into account Facebook core + Instagram + WhatsApp) has a social media monopoly position, or something very close to it. They shouldn't get the same regulatory consideration as a modest sized political forum with 5,000 members.
YouTube has a monopoly in its consumer-upload streaming video segment. It's drastically larger than its comparable peers. Vimeo (who is #2 or #3 these days? I have no idea) should not get the same treatment as YouTube.
Google has a monopoly over search. It should not get the same treatment as DuckDuckGo.
Amazon (as with Walmart), should not get the same regulatory treatment as Joe's little corner grocer.
Twitter for its part, clearly doesn't have such a monopoly, even though it does have a massive, potent platform.
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile shouldn't be allowed to block your access to a phone account/number, and shouldn't be allowed to censor your calls. For exactly the same reason Facebook shouldn't be allowed to deplatform you.
I think it's very clear we're going that direction, there is no scenario where the biggest platforms escape being regulated in terms of their ability to censor and deplatform. If it has to be done at the state level to start, it will be.
I agree that if one company is the only feasible option - a true monopoly - there should be controls on their power.
However, I'm not convinced why any social media would fall under this umbrella at the moment. Facebook(& related) hardly have a stranglehold on the market, at least from the point of view of it being in competition with other social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, etc. All of their products are slightly different, but generally are grouped under the same niche. If Facebook decided tomorrow that half of the political spectrum was completely barred from discussion, I assume people would just successfully migrate off Facebook (in a way they could not do if their government banned their opinion, or if the only place they could discuss on the internet banned their opinion).
Afaik phone numbers are a completely different discussion, as I believe the government is involved in creating and maintaining phone networks (placing it under the First Amendement).
You make a good point about something like YouTube, though. YouTube is the one on your list which most clearly has control over its market, so I could see the argument for oversight there.
This is a great comment, and definitely food for thought. I'll use this to examine my own beliefs — much appreciated.
> So there's some popularity point where after people use a platform to talk enough times, the platform is no longer allowed to moderate the speech on it? Why?
Yes, see monopoly.
Why? See tragedy of the commons.
> If I operate the world's biggest single-political-party discussion forum, is there a point where the forum is now legally compelled to host the other political party's opinions?
The point in which you become monopolies that actively collude with other monopolies to shut down alternative platforms enabling discourse you disagree with politically is probably a good bar.
Then again, I think all censorship is immoral so basically there is no bar in my view on the matter.
> > So there's some popularity point where after people use a platform to talk enough times, the platform is no longer allowed to moderate the speech on it? Why?
> Yes, see monopoly.
It's not clear that a large platform is automatically a monopoly. For example, Twitter, Facebook, WeChat, and TikTok coexist.
While the United States Constitution's First Amendment identifies the rights to assemble and to petition the government, the text of the First Amendment does not make specific mention of a right to association. Nevertheless, the United States Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama (1958) that freedom of association is an essential part of freedom of speech because, in many cases, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others.
The fact that Freedom of Association is implicit in the First is not in question. All that's well litigated, and well understood.
Which is why one can have country clubs with, for example, racial exclusivity clauses. I'm not saying a like the idea of racial exclusivity policies. I'm only saying the First clearly grants private organizations a right to practice racial exclusivity.
The First Amendment explicitly differentiates on scale, as in "the people" versus "the government". When companies get large enough to wield power as de facto government, then it makes sense to demand that they too respect our natural rights.
I've never heard of a court ruling that construed "the government" in the Constitution, an amendment, or a law as synonymous with a private company based on size or power.
That's a massive leap that isn't codified in law and the consequences of intermingling the two concepts has massive implications.
I never said it was declared in law, nor currently interpreted by the courts as such. I was talking about what ought to be, because legally analyzing "what is" is trivial.
I don't think Twitter is to the size where it constitutes de facto government power (although Faceboot seems much closer). I'm just saying that asserting that anything that isn't the bona fide government cannot effectively oppress natural/human rights is a poor idea.
I didn't propose any specific legal encoding of "large enough", because yes, such a thing is hard to nail down and fraught with arguments.
I am pointing out that if we view freedom of speech/association as a natural/human right, it is possible for entiti(es) that are not the bona fide "government" to be oppressing that right.
This is trivially demonstrable by interpreting any existing society as an anarcho-capitalist paradise where there is no government, just one large company you're forced to contract with to obtain vital necessities.
For a real world example within our society, take a look at the list of songs censored by Clear Channel in the wake of September 11, 2001. There was no bona fide government edict declaring this, just opaque corporate power ultimately wielded by the same people marching us to war in most other forums.
I think most people view freedom of speech as a right in a broad sense, particularly with respect to the government, but are also okay with a violation of it in certain contexts, like in a private domain. It seems to me that a bar owner kicking out a loud or inflammatory patron is an example of "oppressing that right", but most people understand this and have no problem with it because the alternative -- a world where the bar owner is forced to let the patron say anything they want on the bar owner's property -- is worse.
There's a significant difference between private enterprise and government. For example, no matter how much a business doesn't like you, they can't jail you based on their own set of rules (laws).
I don't disagree with your first paragraph, because of the assumption that there are other bars to go to.
If there are not other bars to go to, and if instead of bars we're talking about vital services such as food, housing, or communication that have been monopolized or oligopolized, then that assumption no longer holds.
I don't think Twitter itself is anywhere near that type of critical. But in general it's ignorant to write off "private enterprise" as if it something that is entirely distinct from "government". And this goes doubly in the US where "private enterprise" ends up shaping much of society.
Sure, I absolutely agree that private enterprise can be a problem and can become intertwined with government. But the topic of this thread is Twitter, and more broadly, Big Tech, and I am not convinced that they are a serious problem in the way that telecom or rail monopolies were. I'm not even sure they are monopolies at all -- there's plenty of competition, even if people choose not to use it. A major difference that I see is that to start a competitor in, say, telecom infrastructure requires a massive amount of capital. To start a competitor with Twitter requires very little capital in comparison, although to succeed requires reaching some network effect.
If an argument about vital services is to be applied, I think it is much better applied to something more foundational to the internet, such as domain name registrars or ISPs.
> I don't disagree with their legal right to do so.
If the only thing that you care about is the legal requirements, then you are abdicating your ability to criticize these laws in India as well.
You need to think beyond what is literally required or not required by law, and think about what the actual effect of a decision or policy is, regardless of who is enforcing it.
If you are a true platform, which the social media giants insist that they are, then it's tough to call it "compelled speech" when it was posted by someone who is not representing the company. The company is not the one saying it, despite it being hosted by them.
It is pretty reasonable for conversations to have moderation, just as private groups can do in person, and as publications have editors.
It is not yet clear how social media fits into the platform/publisher/utility/whatever debate, but I'm just saying that we should be careful. Whatever we decide applies to Facebook/Twitter now will apply to some other company you or I create in the next decade.
To me, there are two aspects of that ruling you cited which make it entirely different from social media:
1. "newspapers are economically finite enterprises" - There is a very real cost involved with printing newspapers, while the cost of hosting a social media post is so small it's not even worth mentioning.
2. "the exercise of editorial judgment is a protected First Amendment activity" - Everything that goes into a newspaper has to pass editorial review, meaning the newspaper controls and is responsible for what is published. Social media does not have that.
The cost of an online news publication is even smaller than a social media site, but we don't limit their speech further.
The editorial power of social media sites is kind of nebulous, I guess we'll have a court case that settles this at some point, but I'm not so sure it's clear now.
>> Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good.
> I disagree. Both are bad. When you grow to the size of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Removing content from your own platform allows you to spread propaganda that meets your own agenda. That allows these platforms to promote a politician that maybe trying to reduce corporate tax, and suppress one who is trying to raise it. It’s bad enough these platforms are dictating what’s a conspiracy theory or who we should listen to about Covid.
Kinda sorta. There are actually two separate but related problems. It makes sense for private parties to be able to remove content on their own platforms, BUT that also becomes an issue if those platforms are able become as dominant "one stop shops" like Facebook or Google. So the real problem is figuring out how to break up the over-dominant platforms.
If the argument is that facebook is too big to be regulated by anyone, even facebook, then it's time to break it down into smaller and more manageable parts.
I think more importantly, they're responsible for anything they put on the air. Twitter claims a lack of responsibility, yet also wants to be the final arbiter.
You should read past the headline. The judge's ruling boiled down to the fact that Tucker Carlson Tonight is an opinion show, not a news show, and that any statements should be viewed through that lens.
Nobody, including Fox and Tucker Carlson himself, has claimed that Tucker Carlson Tonight is anything other than an opinion show. This is in contrast to CNN, where their opinion hosts actually do claim to be simply "reporting the news."
> That plus forcing the company to hire government-approved executives
Where did you get that from? Completely untrue.
The new IT rules mandate the appointment of persons in certain executive roles, and companies, including Twitter, have the freedom to choose whomsoever they please, as long as he/she is an Indian resident - they don't have to be "government approved"
Twitter didn't want to have a responsible officer in India. The managing director of Twitter India said he was only responsible for "marketing" and did not have control over the day-to-day functioning of the company.
> controversial hash tag related to farmer protests
It wasn't just a controversial hashtag. A farmer sped a tractor into a barricade causing the tractor to overturn and was killed. The whole thing was clearly caught on camera[1][2]. Within minutes there were blatantly false tweets flying around saying that police had fired on the farmers and there was a genocide in progress (with an associated hashtag). Twitter refused to take down such blatantly false and deliberately incendiary tweets.
I read the government's requirement of certain executive roles + the requirement of it being an Indian citizen as the government having undue control over a private (foreign) company's executive positions. I'm still not familiar with the background on the mandating of these new executive roles, but wanting the person overseeing implementation of your country's laws to be from your country at least makes sense to me.
As far as the "controversial hash tag", that was a quote directly from the article. I feel like removing an entire hashtag related to a political position is generally a bad idea and can silence a lot of legitimate free speech, but I don't know enough on the specifics of this situation to apply that here.
Thanks for adding more context to clear up some misconceptions.
>However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good. That plus forcing the company to hire government-approved executives seems like a slippery slope.
Most governments (including India's) already have the power to make Twitter and other sites censor content. The requirement for a local compliance officer comes from the fact that Twitter's India branch has literally no direct control over the content on its platform and is mostly here to sell advertisements and look over marketing.
The requirement for a local compliance officer comes from the desire to have someone associated directly with the company to lean on/harass/put in jail if the parent company doesn't comply with local government desires. Lots of countries have such a requirement.
Benefits: Videos where a person pisses on the Quran or desecrates the statue of a Hindu god, can be removed. Left alone it might cause a riot where dozens would die, and a lot of private (and public) property would be destroyed. The details of the uploader would be shared with law enforcement.
This course of action is primitive in western countries, but understandable in a country where the police to population ratio is around 100 times lower than in the west and only 2% of the working age population pays any taxes.
Self regulation as a course of action is a failure. Companies who want to “grow fast and break stuff” don’t care about riots in a country like India.
Dangers: Indians’ free speech will get trampled. Parties in power will enforce the law in a biased manner as they always have done.
This trade off is acceptable since western companies operating outside their home country only care about profit and don’t operate with any social conscience. It would be utterly foolish to outsource the fight for our rights to them. It is more preferable to have these companies operate within the boundaries of Indian law, no matter what they are.
One thing I can think of is revenge porn, child porn or any videos of sexual nature published without the consent of the participants. This has detrimental social impact. Courts should be able to make companies remove such content.
> The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech. Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense.
Strongly disagree. This is how China does it: they won’t tell companies what exactly to censor, but the companies will be punished if they don’t censor what the government wants to be censored in retrospect. It is much worse than governments forcing censorship explicitly, because otherwise companies are led to guess at government intentions and will be very conservative in what speech they allow.
This is also how America does it, except it happens more subtly, and few recognize it, let alone call it out. It goes something like this:
“Hey tech companies, can you censor that app or these views? We’re soon going to be discussing anti-trust, taxation, privacy, right to repair, gig economy, and other topics in this session of Congress but first let’s discuss what you’re doing about our political adversaries on your platforms.”
No, really it’s not. Yes, some American governments have tried that, but they’ve always failed because the courts don’t take a sympathetic stance with the government’s intentions. This is what separates a country with some notion of rule of law and an independent judiciary to one where all power is concentrated centrally.
To me it seems like America is increasingly the land of pushing boundaries and abusing technicalities from a position of power, such that politicians approximate those other countries you’re othering. Can we prove a link between congressional pressure for private companies to censor and the censorship performed by those same private companies? Not very easily. That’s exactly why members of the government shouldn’t even be allowed to suggest it - I view that itself as a violation of the first amendment (at least in spirit). It amounts to government coercion, and we shouldn’t be forced to accept the indefensible murk of not behind able to prove a link. As an example, AOC - as an elected, serving member of the federal government - should absolutely not be permitted to demand that Google and Apple censor Parler.
As a second term house member, AOC’s influence is mostly limited to getting her fans riled up on Twitter. Yes, companies can face pressure from people, but that influence is not being exerted via the government (via laws, it’s executive organizations, or it’s courts).
Frankly, you’d have a much better case if you pointed at politicians with much more power abusing their position (eg Trump or Biden), at least they have real influence on the DOD and DOJ. But even here, (recent) history has shown that this influence has very hard limits. Like Trump trying to punish Amazon by getting a cloud computing contract awarded to Microsoft, which was unwound this week due to undue influence playing a factor.
This seems pretty much the same as Chinese law which requires publisher verify the sources. I dont know what exactly to make of it. But I think it probably makes sense from the government's perspective.
"Controversial farm reforms" - nothing controversial about it, it is in the manifesto of every major party.
The problem is always with a small but powerful, adamant and ruthless minority that is ready to burn down the country to serve their interests.
Ultimately the elected government is the only true representative of the people.
Protests can be made to communicate your dissatisfaction and perhaps let the government know there is an alternate viewpoint.
However, the farmer protest was an orchestrated and violent bullying not only by those politically connected middlemen who want to maintain the status quo, but also a grand coalition of the corrupt, the compromised and enemies of India, including foreign actors.
The point is, people should be able to talk about it. Governments shouldn't decide for people what they can or can't talk about. Your opinion about the matter is one out of potential billions. They all equally deserve the same treatment by Twitter and the Indian government has no place dictating what kind of speech be posted on social media platforms.
In a parallel universe where a Twitter did not ban a Trump, that would be possible.
But then in such a parallel universe, we would probably not need nuclear weapons or armies.
The problem here is that in the space of global propaganda, you want to disarm democratically elected representatives while heavily arming dictators & tyrants.
Mass propaganda should not be the monopoly of few corporations and dictators.
>They also require the appointment of certain new executives
Ah so just like china?
>Now a wide range of foreign companies in China, from the cosmetics giant L’Oréal to Walt Disney and Dow Chemicals, all have party committees and display the hammer and sickle on their premises. In 2017, Reuters published an article that quoted executives from one European company saying that party representatives had demanded to be brought into the executive committee and have the business pay their expenses.
This is darkly funny; of course their loyalty is to money rather than any ideology. They'll be Communists if there's money in it. After all, this enhances shareholder value for the shareholders in the US, and isn't that the one and only thing that matters to a modern company? There's no risk to the bosses and shareholders of being expropriated.
No. They just need to appoint any resident in India they deem fit for the job. As said in another commenter here, Twitter doesn't have any accountable person resident in the country to raise complaints and get clarification. But, these rules aren't just for Twitter but for all "significant" intermediaries to retain their status as such.
> forcing the company to hire government-approved executives seems like a slippery slope.
Think is this closer to the GDPR requiring the Data Protection Officer role. I don't it needs to be govt-approved. Not in favour of the overreach by the govt here, but it's not quite as bad as that. They want a single point of contact they can put pressure on.
It's likely that they can't arrest someone for not doing something that said employees have neither the authority nor the ability to do nor would it help if they did. They wont someone in country with that power that can be held responsible for compliance with the Indian government.
TikTok didn't end up being banned and Huawei was much more about national security when a foreign adversary controls information infrastructure (5G.) You are making a false equivalence.
I don't care what they were or weren't censoring. Twitter and other social media giants are trying to become the arbiters of truth in this world and control much of the flow of information over the internet. A foreign entity with no responsibilities, checks or even connection to the local people should not have such power imo. I look at twitter censoring or promoting pro/anti govt. hashtags/accounts as election meddling. So I'm happy that they're forced to have an accountable local presence.
Given our population (India) we have 3 times more shitheads assuming ceteris paribus. So likelihood of an Indian head who is a shit head is there.
Compliance with local laws is well taken and twitter with its stupid bot storms masquerading as f.o.e was always asking for it.
Between meddling from an American executive and Indian government, I would any day prefer Indian government. At least I have the power to vote out the government if I don't like its meddling.
But that isn’t the choice right? The choices here are meddling from just an American executive or from both an America executive AND Indian government.
Are there any benefits to this regulation I'm overlooking?
> Yep lots,
A democratically elected government of a state is at least answerable to its constituents who can boot them out if the government doesn't do the right thing. These monopolistic social 'platforms' are not answerable to anyone but the whims of their management and advertisers.
They purposely allow lies and misinformation to propogate as it boosts engagement and are a cesspool of disharmony and conflict.
Just as well that they'll be now held responsible for the results of their actions.
Love it, high time many of them are broken down for having far too much power.
> A democratically elected government of a state is at least answerable to its constituents who can boot them out if the government doesn't do the right thing.
How can constituents come to any informed opinion if a government appointed executive is summarily striking any public discussion on controversial topics? Seems completely antithetical to any semblance of a functional democracy.
Twitter is not the only place for discussion. And people do not vote exclusively based on public discussion. Indians have tight knit communities and how the community votes is a much major influence on the elections than what is being discussed on twitter/facebook or even national TV.
Case in point, Indians might elect BJP for the central government but consistently have been booting them out at the state level for the past 3-4 years. BJP has actually lost power in multiple states since 2014.
Indian politics is way more nuanced than any discussion on an internet forum would ever allow for.
Hypothetically speaking, what if the said company acts with ulterior motives, is blatantly anti national, blatantly trying to interfere in elections, cause riots etc. What should a responsible government do then? Hypothetically.
Ulterior motives, anti national -> (personally) this seems like free speech. I don't have to like it to think it should be legal.
Blatantly trying to interfere with elections -> if you mean by spreading opinions / propaganda, this seems generally under the realm of free speech. The government being able to silence opinions that disagree with it generally seems much more problematic than civilians being able to spread bad opinions
Cause riots -> Again, I think opinions should be legal. However, saying "hey y'all let's get guns and actively participate in violence" is not protected under free speech in any country I'm aware of, but is also not really my major concern with this legislation.
The farmers protests were allegedly detrimental to the sovereignty and security of India and so it makes sense to ban those kinds of hastags.
FWIW, the American government also requests removals from social media sites.
Edit: perhaps this comment is unnecessarily controversial / inflammatory. I just wanted to suggest that there are other interpretations of free speech law and that it makes sense for a corporation to comply with those laws if they want to operate in those countries. I personally dont agree with those laws, which is why I fortunately moved to the US.
How is that a threat to India's sovereignty or security?
Modi is infamous for having caused, by his actions or inactions, the Gujarat riots that killed 2000+ people. Hell, he was even banned from entering the US, till he became the Indian PM. There is blood on his hands and lots of it.
And to give some context on this hash tag, I believe it came after the gov't put across barricades and barbed wires to caroll the protesters leading many to believe that the regime was planning a major crackdown. The situation in the first week of Feb was very tense.
>I believe it came after the gov't put across barricades and barbed wires to caroll the protesters leading many to believe that the regime was planning a major crackdown.
Didn't the US also place barricades for Biden's inauguration?
I'm noticing a pattern here:
People, who deem it "good" that the US places barricades to corral protesters of the biden inauguration, are the same people inclined to deem it "bad" that India places barricades to corral protesters of the farm bills.
Similarly, people who deem it "good" that Twitter deplatforms #StopTheSteal are inclined to deem it "bad" that Twitter deplatforms #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide
Claiming that the Prime minster is genociding farmers in a country of more than 100 million farmers certainly sounds worrisome. India's sovereignty is in good hands so I am not worried about that. But the same cannot be said for internal security. Government treating the protestors unfairly is no justification for spreading news that is clearly fake. To add more context, fake news has led to riots, murders and even incidents of mob lynching in the country.
> Modi is infamous for having caused, by his actions or inactions, the Gujarat riots that killed 2000+ people.
An accusation for which he was acquitted by the Supreme Court of India.
And Modi's actions/inactions pale in comparison to those of the Congress Party, who actually committed genocide against the Sikhs in 1984, which resulted in up to 17,000 Sikhs getting murdered by Congress goons, for which noone has been held accountable.
> The situation in the first week of Feb was very tense.
Wasn't it partly due to the genocide misinformation? One protestor died in a tractor accident and Twitter did little to curb the misinformation that he was shot by police.
It shows our Dear Leader in poor light and is thus something only anti nationals would do. Dissent is the biggest threat to India's sovereignty and free thought to its security.
The reasoning is that organizing for stuff like the farmers' strike or generally opposing Modi's politics threatens the security of India by... well, being critical of the government's actions.
> FWIW, the American government also requests removals from social media sites.
No, they don't. Any American Government official requesting a removal of anything from social media sites would probably lose their job. That's saying a lot because American Government officials rarely ever lose their jobs.
Everybody answering this with examples of Congresspeople is clearly missing that elected officials can't lose their jobs. You have to vote them out of office. It's why politicians can get away with saying and doing way more outrageous things than any ordinary employee, and arguably can just flat-out break the law in many cases if the rest of the government refuses to enforce laws against their own party members, claiming all attempts at enforcement action to be politically motivated from the other side.
An actual civil servant enjoys no such impunity from normal rules of conduct.
I thought that there was American government pressure to remove Al Qaeda/ISIS propaganda from social media sites. If not, then I hope the american gov takes a stronger stance against terrorism.
Ignoratio Elenchi: refuting an opponent while actually disproving something not asserted.
Your opponent was elaborating on the original claim that "If any American Government official requesting a removal of anything from social media sites would probably lose their job", then "AOC should also lose her job when she requested removal of Parler"
Your counter argument, "I'm sure AOC's demand was critical in their decision to ban such a vibrant, positive application" is an unfair redirection of what your opponent was asserting.
AOC doesn't have a job to be fired from, she has a position that she was elected to.
And a public plea for a company to take a certain course of action is different than a direct request. The latter carries much more "or else" subtext. An upset Congressperson doesn't carry the same potential for immediate disaster as having the DOJ on your back.
Twitter declined this time, but I have a hard time believing the Democrats had no hand in twitter blocking the Biden laptop story or removing Trump from the platform
Yes they do. Not personally, but they do. The amount of child exploitation that falls through the filters is not zero, and sometimes the government of the US intervenes and asks for the content to be removed.
The point is that India is a sovereign republic and has its own laws about what is illegal and is not. According to India's laws, spreading false rumours about the police shooting a farmer when there is clear evidence that the person actually died by running his tractor into a barricade is illegal. And when Twitter failed to comply with government's orders to remove these tweets, they didn't have any point of contact from the company they could turn to for accountability. That's why the need for the compliance officer.
Also, criticizing the government is not illegal according to Indian laws.
That video is of such poor quality that it's hard to determine anything from it. Yes, a tractor hit a barrier, flipped, and caught fire. Unclear why it hit the barrier. Did the driver intentionally run it into the barrier? Did the police shoot him and then the tractor continued on into the barrier?
Not saying it wasn't the simple explanation, but that video is not really evidence of anything either way.
Erm, you are requiring the kind of rigor that is needed to establish someone's guilt for establishing someone's innocence. Innocence is the null hypothesis.
The quality of evidence supporting the rumor that the person had been shot by the police was extremely sketchy and the evidence that is available points to the incident being an accident.
Illegal is just whatever the law says is illegal. If you make a law making dissent illegal, then that content is illegal. So now you have to define 'real'-illegal and 'I do not like your opinion'-illegal in the law of some other country.
ok, so removal of obvious illegal content like child exploitation is not equivilent to removal of content like "I don't agree with your political view" -- which is basically IMHO what this hashtag thing in india amounts to...?
> "I don't agree with your political view"
> which is basically IMHO what this hashtag thing in india amounts to...?
No, it doesn't. The tweets under that hashtag were spreading a false rumour that the police had shot at a farmer when there was a CCTV footage showing clearly that the said person had died in an accident caused by him running his tractor into a barricade.
I don't quite understand this need to quickly pass judgements on complex politics of a different country, without spending the minimum required time and effort to familiarize yourself with the topic.
Super interesting Wikipedia article, thanks for the link! Some of the restrictions on free speech make me instinctually uncomfortable (i.e. restrictions for the sake of "decency and morality"), but I recognize these are hardly unique to India and countries such as the U.S. have censored plenty of books, etc. in the past.
I'm not sure that I personally am in favor. However, you're clearly right in that it's hardly unprecedented or unique.
>countries such as the U.S. have censored plenty of books, etc. in the past.
The modern interpretation of the 1st amendment as being fairly absolute is only 50-100 years old. Don't forget the federal government had political prisoners for protesting against the US getting involved in WW 1, and the HUAC and McCarthy hearings were blatantly unconstitutional under modern jurisprudence.
We don't even need to talk about the Alien and Sedition acts, passed right after the 1st amendment was ratified!
That's true. It did take the US 200 years to come to the correct interpretation of First Amendment being damn near absolute. Shameful as that delay was, we progressed in the right direction.
It is worth noting that the IT mister resigned[1] just a day back in a massive cabinet reshuffling (if you could call that).
Twitter attracted the ruling government's wrath when it didn't censor/takedown Tweets supporting farmers' protests and those critical of government's handling of COVID's 2nd wave.
This is just FUD.. there has been no report whatsoever that the resignation was due to ongoing tussle with social media companies… do you have any sources explicitly stating that?
If not then please stop dumping random articles to support your viewpoint.
That doesn't seem true. Popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter still have a lot of "pro-farmer" posts and at least the former two are not exactly in a tussle with the Government. The government's relationship Twitter took a wrong turn when Twitter displayed lethargy in removing content that propagated fake news and celebrated terrorists(as per india)
Both Japan and South Korea made more legal demands for takedown of tweets than India (with Japan making 8 times more takedown requests than India). Are they also not democracies?
Given the fact that the LDP has been ruling Japan nationally for essentially 50 years uninterrupted and every single South Korean president resigned in disgrace, it's a better question that one would think.
My question exactly - I'd love to hear someone's take on this. Both are misinformation campaigns, and both result in violence.
I don't see why Trump should be banned but accounts tweeting that the government is planning a genocide should not (be banned). I'd say both bans were fair.
I think people are wary about a government making an official demand that content be removed. Trump's ban was entirely Twitter's own decision; by contrast, the Indian government seeks to compel removal of material.
I don't have a problem, per se, with governments having the ability to remove content from public platforms on public safety or security grounds. But the Modi government has also sought to remove content that's much less plausibly likely to inflame public violence, in particular related to its handling of COVID.
Reasonable in fascist Germany sure, on a democratic platform? Not so much. US companies need start saying "screw you" to more countries (the US included) when asked to violate their values. We need to be telling China to pound sand every day in every way we can.
Democratic as in protected by free speech laws as it is incorporated in a democracy. Not socialist as in no you don't get a say on how a private company operates as it also gets the right to freedom of speech and association.
It seems that you are not quite clear about the meaning of those terms.
> Socialism and democracy cannot be compared because it would just be like comparing apples to oranges since socialism is an economic system while democracy is a political ideology. An economic system defines the manner of producing and distributing the goods and services of society while a political system refers to the institutions that will comprise a government and how the system will work.
Ok this is tedious, socialized typically implies a higher level of government involvement (benefits, regulation, subsidies etc.) and often nationalization (like that socialist mexican oil platform that just lit the gulf on fire) than say a more free market economy democracy. Yes, technically you can have a socialist democracy. (Depending on how you stretch the word “democracy” you could have a democratic anything) However, in socialist democracies it is rare for companies to enjoy similar protections from government interference as the individuals do (and often the individuals are interfered with more as well). So a democratic company is a company in a nation whose democratic politics result in protections of the companies as well as the people. All political systems are fundamentally economic systems, lets not be naive.
World war 2 ended last century around the world, and in some ways a little bit in the US as well, but, interestingly the majority of the population still is quite unaware of this trivia.
I don't like the government, but I hate monopoly of the twitter ever more than I hate the existing government or their opposition or any coalition of them. I hate any single entity owning this much power. So government bending them a little is a good thing at least right now.
I am somewhat confused how a middling social network of ~200M (generously) active users with a message limit of 280 chars has a lot of power? Celebrating government strong arming is an interesting take and only nice when its going your way.
Always imagine whatever government excess you are ok with in this instance is now going against your position and see if you still like it.
Perhaps you're confused, but the rest of Europe isn't confused at how Twitter has a lot of power:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to the decisions [of banning Trump], saying on Monday that lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech and not private technology companies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-se...
I don't think you understand free speech in the US context, Twitter is protected by the first amendment, it itself has freedom of speech and of association. It does not have to allow anything it doesn't want on its platform. It could ban everyone wearing blue in their profile photo, it is THEIR platform. If Twitter COULDN'T ban anyone they wanted under US law THEN it would be a violation of free speech.
And that wouldn’t be an issue if twitter wasn’t so dominant for this form of communication between positions and people. It’s because it is so entrenched without a meaningful equivalent service that this becomes significant.
It’s hard to draw clear lines between domains, but I think for public representation of official organisations, there isn’t any other. So for this purpose it’s dominant.
By the commonplace colloquial definition. Economic taxonomy might call it an oligopsony, monopsony or whatnot.
To the average person, "really big powerful company that stands above ordinary competition and choice dynamics, influences politics, dominates a business sector or other realm, dictates rules to a market and such."
In many parts of the world, if you are a politician, journalist, celebrity or other public figure, twitter is extremely powerful... a determining factor in hundreds of thousands of careers. What trends on twitter trends in society.
But no, it doesn't fit neatly into a "cornered the market for turnips" box.
Monopoly claims need to show customer harm and an absence of alternatives. I don't think Twitter fits either definition as it has many competitors, it is free for users, and the advertisers are the customers and they have even more alternatives. Do you have data to show otherwise?
Hey, it seems there is no way one gets notifications on their hacker news comments. So I couldn't reply to this earlier. May be I should use a better word - but I have none right now. When I said monopoly - I intended to say the dominance and control it has over widespread news, opinions etc. Your twitter feed can decide what you know today, and what you don't know today. That's so much damn power. Now ofcourse there are other sources of news as well - but it is becoming more and more centralised towards twitter. People are getting to know about what is happening in the world from twitter and I don't know what algorithm they use - but it's their algorithm. They can make the left look stupid, the right look stupid, the government look stupid, the citizens look stupid.. they can practically do anything by just tweaking a little of our feeds.
>"Police in two Indian states have named Twitter India boss Manish Maheshwari in complaints. The state of Uttar Pradesh has challenged in the Supreme Court a bar on police action against Maheshwari, after a lower court protected him against arrest over an accusation that the platform was used to spread hate."
Really wondering why Twitter is continuing its presence in a country where its employees are criminally prosecuted, merely for being Twitter employees.
USA has the ability to make Zuckerberg face a panel when they have some problems with the way Facebook has been functioning, India doesn't. I am sure they would have been happier to summon Jack Dorsey instead, but he would probably not feel any obligation to appear before an Indian court/panel.
It's even more ridiculous when you realize Twitter's India unit (and Maheshwari) is only there to sell ads and do marketing. It really has no control over the content you see on Twitter's apps and websites.
Why wouldn't Twitter trade their employees for money? There's no shortage of potential employees in India to replace any that the police might arrest. As long as it's the employees suffering most of the consequences while Twitter receives most of the benefits, they're going to do what all profit first entities would do and let the employees suffer.
> Really wondering why Twitter is continuing its presence in a country where its employees are criminally prosecuted, merely for being Twitter employees.
Revenue and Profits. Just look up how much Twitter India made last quarter. The figures are not insignificant.
The answer to your final question is almost always money. The English-speaking upper echelons of Indian society are a significant presence on the internet.
What is intriguing is the fact that twitter in India is dominated by the elites or those at the top of the wealth pyramid i.e. the richest 5% of the population. These people have tremendous power in Indian society and hence their current right-wing regime is paranoid about this section being publicly critical of the government via twitter.
Filling the Chief Compliance Officer role is going to be extremely tricky. Not just because you are now liable for any content government considers objectionable (and this government is considers _a lot_ objectionable -- they recently arrested people for putting posters questioning government's vaccine export when we had shortage inside the country itself) but also because this puts that person at tremendous mental/physical risk. The government's IT cell will be the first one to trend #BoycottX when they don't agree with any of your decision.
Can't imagine someone taking up this role unless they are paid truckload of money.
India is a big country with many ambitious people. Doubt Twitter will ever have a problem finding someone to fill the role, even if they're little more than a designated patsy.
As a saying goes here tongue has no bones which means people can and will lie eaily.
That being said as son of a farmer i will support the government actions. period.
A company's solo responsibity is making money for its shareholders so no thanks corporations, please take your business elsewhere if you dont like our laws.
the people of india shouldn’t put up with such tyranny. every person is born free, we are humans first, citizens of our country second. anyone who forgets that has fallen into satans path.
Twitter is in an incredibly convoluted ideological war with the Indian Govt.
Monetarily and by pure numbers, the Indian right wing benefited from a new megaphone in twitter in 2014. Twitter only took notice of this after what they saw as the victory of a 'fascist' govt. (This is before twitter erupted into complete ideological polarization in 2016)
Looking at the readiness of getting blue check marks and twitter's general ideological tilt, twitter employees see themselves as ideological warriors defending the left wing in India. Twitter (either due to malice or incompetence) is known to favor the Indian opposition through its fact checkers, whom it signal boosts and the kind of news that gets marked as 'misleading'. A lot of my rather reasonable right-leaning acquaintances have gotten repeatedly banned off twitter, which to me does point towards a strong ideological bias on the platform.
Note that Twitter has only about 20 million Indians registered on the platform. That is a paltry sum given the size of the population. This means that most news about India on twitter is either by a very small set of west aligned Indians or folks who genuinely live outside India. Given that, I will entertain the possibility that the left wing bias of twitter is a consequence of the demographics who occupy it, rather than deliberate action by twitter. However, their actions towards the right wing in the US make me think otherwise.
When it comes to the law itself, twitter had been non-compliant for a while. But, the Govt. was stuck in a catch 22. Twitter remained the biggest platform for Modi to reach out to a 'global' population. So, the ruling party still feels like Twitter (despite it's best efforts to the contrary) might still be a useful tool for their politics. This makes it hard to ban twitter, because Modi doesn't want to appear like an authoritarian to the west. (for a counterexample, tiktok was banned due to the lack of these complicating dynamics)
Similarly for twitter, the capitalistic push is to expand further into India, which means expanding into a more modi-favoring and right-leaning population. On the other hand, the ideological push seems to be towards playing the martyr and getting banned in grand fashion with prime moral signalling in their favor.
Time will tell how this pans out, but Twitter is certainly not acting like a savior of free speech (and probably never has). Similarly, the Govt. while fully lawful, is using the laws in ways that benefits them politically (as almost all political bodies do).
From a legal perspective, I am glad to see Twitter comply with India's rules. For a while, it did seem like a foreign capitalistic body that was denying India's sovereignty because it felt it had too much leverage. At the same time, I do hope Rahul Gandhi falls in a ditch soon, so that the politically left bodies in India can elect a half decent leader who can mount a proper opposition instead of twiddling his thumbs on twitter.
People forget that Modi is democratically elected and has allowed the democratic electoral process to work under his regime. I disagree with a lot of his policies (social and economic) but the electoral process shall hold him accountable. Our Supreme court is also independent, so any outright violation can be addressed by twitter in the courts. Given that, Indian laws are an entirely internal matter and a foreign body like Twitter should abide by the laws of the land.
Last point: Correct me if I am wrong, but the Indian Govt. has yet to ask for any egregious censorship on twitter. Most cases are of removal of misinformation, selective use of fact checks and custom tags. Ofc, I am giving another perspective towards this issue. The rest of the comments do well to cover the rest of the rather valid perspectives.
I'll apologize in advance my response maybe a bit snarky. Your comment does not read like it comes from a place of good faith, so I find it hard to reciprocate.
> Perhaps you should think of your tilt when you see ideology in fact checkers
That's an awfully convenient way to disregard literally any and all scepticism.
Just over the last month the the lab leak theory has gone from conspiracy to a mainstream possibility and the facts in Assange case turned over their head. In any political matter, facts take ages to establish and sometimes facts themselves are no more than uneasy consensus.
When I'm personally invested, It takes me days to verify facts despite all the resources at my disposal and even then I leave some space to have my mind changed. In a world where all of NYT, CNN and Fox are doing their best to destroy public trust (some more than others), faith in reporting is rather hard to come by.
If you think underpaid faceless social media community fact checkers have either the ability or the moral purity to identify and report facts then, then I must regretfully refer to such an opinion as naive.
I agree. But Twitter’s fact checking in India is not about such nuanced matters. Someone literally makes up Hindu-Muslim BS and spreads it on social media when it’s demonstrably false. This is what folks like Alt News do. Bust fake news about “Brahmin priest attacked by Salim” as “A picture of a guy accidentally falling in the pit from 2004”
I don’t understand how anyone can take any issue with someone reducing fake news however biased they are. Some scientist spend their entire lives critiquing certain areas of research. That doesn’t make them less valid or valuable. In fact it’s the opposite.
Why does a party that apparently enjoys extreme popularity need such high amounts of fake news? The fact that you see propaganda in a fake news fighter and not the fake news shows you’re a fish in the an ocean of fake news.
The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech. Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good. That plus forcing the company to hire government-approved executives seems like a slippery slope.
Are there any benefits to this regulation I'm overlooking?