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Twitter suspended Indian dairy giant Amul for call to boycott Chinese goods

90 points by abc-xyz 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
treebornfrog 6y ago
And it begins...
- RandomTisk 6y ago
  The bigotry of big tech began a long time ago.
itsspring 6y ago
Can we not have opinions on trade and economics on social media now?
- iliekcomputers 6y ago
  These companies have too much control over public discourse.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  You didn't read the latest guidelines? They specifically ban [redacted] unless you're arguing that [redacted] didn't have anything to do with [redacted]. Unless of course, you've accepted money from [redacted], then you are welcome to criticize [redacted] as long as you mark posts as promotional. It's really pretty easy. Just visit: [redacted] for more details.
  - Y_Y 6y ago
    Biased propaganda. If you want the truth go to [blueacted].
cma 6y ago
Seems to be a mistake, possibly automated: >On this post, Twitter messaged that your account is temporarily blocked. You are seeing this message because some unusual activity has occurred from this account.
- pacala 6y ago
  Wow. Building and operating a massive unaccountable automated system to deboost and/or silence undesirable speech is now OK because 'it was a mistake'. Edit. At what point are the users and/or the public at large owed a detailed postmortem for those 'mistakes'?
  - cma 6y ago
    It seems to be related to hack detection of the account: https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocked-briefly-social-media-firm-cites-security-processes https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocke...
- shripadk 6y ago
  It is not a mistake. Twitter has been censoring Right wing accounts in India for past 3 years. The modus operandi is to first suspend a popular account and when there is hue & cry reinstate the account citing some stupid policy reason. Twitter is the most politically biased social media outlet in existence today. No doubt about that.
seesawtron 6y ago
"Let's suspend everything that seems to be offensive but if public starts to make a big deal out of it, just say there was a bug with our automated software for filtering content. It's not like anyone will ever look at our code"
- sukilot 6y ago
  The automated software is intended to predict and prevent public backlash. They aren't lying.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  It would be interesting to see a cataloging of censorship actions by social/media companies, etc. alongside the response. Ie Company x did y, z number of times, and blamed a bug w times versus deliberative actions q times.
  - seesawtron 6y ago
    they are never going to show their proprietary code
JesusChrist2020 6y ago
1: Google gets caught building project dragonfly and is forced to abandon it. 2: YouTube gets caught automatically deleting comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party and is forced to undo it. 3: Google bans the most popular "Remove Chinese Apps" app in India. Is anyone else starting to see a pattern here?
bedros 6y ago
Probably Chinese hackers trying to hack and get access to the account, so it was suspended
- tomschlick 6y ago
  More likely is that China used many accounts to report it as violence or some other sensitive category. Automation would have taken it down at that point.
  - thedudeabides5 6y ago
    If so, would be the latest in a long and successful strategy of using the West’s language on offense and identity politics against our speech and media institutions. And to be fair, we haven’t really figured out where we stand on this stuff.
JesusChrist2020 6y ago
Newsflash to tech giant leadership. The free world is gearing up for WAR with Chinese Communist Party. https://www.ipac.global/ https://www.ipac.global/ Get with the program and support our ally India. You do NOT want to be on the side of the enemy at a time of war.
sukilot 6y ago
Was it ever suspended? The screenshot shows clickwall, not suspension.
bufferoverflow 6y ago
I wonder if they see the irony of that action.
Magodo 6y ago
Clickbait. Actual reason cited was account security issues https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocked-briefly-social-media-firm-cites-security-processes https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocke...
- shripadk 6y ago
  Hahaha they always say that. Trust me Twitter India is the worst when it comes to censorship. They have been randomly suspending accounts and then reinstating them after uproar. This has been going on for a good 3 years. Nothing new for us here in India. All this crap about them being for "freedom of speech and expression" is just humbug. If there was any agency that kept a track of the number of times Twitter suspended a popular account and reinstated it after uproar then the real picture would come out into the open. And Twitter specifically targets right wing accounts. From suspensions to shadow banning. Everything is allowed. This has turned more and more people in India against such biased services. And it isn't helping Twitter or its cause in anyway. It is only causing more alienation. It is only reaffirming our beliefs that Twitter is not apolitical. I don't see why Twitter has to do it? If it wants people to switch political affiliations then this is the worst way to go about it. I know Jack Dorsey admitted that he is a leftist and most employees in Twitter are leftists too [1]. That those employees who lean towards the right feel threatened to voice their opinions within Twitter. If that is the situation within the company then how can you expect it to not be biased when dealing with political issues on the platform? Surely those biases will permeate into decision making. And one can't blame algorithms always. I don't see leftist accounts being banned by Twitter no matter how much hate and abuse you find on such accounts. So it is not automation. This is definitely targeted. [1]: Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-employees-conservative-trump-politics https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  As per your article: > “We have asked Twitter why it blocked our account,” Sodhi said. “We are waiting for the reply.” Sounds like they suffered from more than a simple CAPTCHA before their login (in which case it also sounds absurd to publicly restrict the account). Twitter says: > “Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult [or costly] for spammy or malicious account owners to complete.” This makes no sense. It's a ~9 year old verified account with 250k followers, operated by one of the largest companies in India, with no unusual tweet activity.
miked85 6y ago
Up until now, many have been cheering Twitter bans and attacking FB for not doing the same since it aligned with their political views. This kind of behavior by tech giants is bad, regardless if you agree or not with who they are suspending or banning.
- aplummer 6y ago
  Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. I think they are a private company with free speech, and people should just not use their products if they don’t like it.
  - faned 6y ago
    Would you support changing laws to allow Twitter to ban black people from their platform?
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      I think the constraints on these companies should be the same as in normal public discourse. It is strange to me that I can talk to someone on the street about how I'm trying to minimize my consumption of Chinese goods and how this is worthwhile and no one would bat an eye but that that is somehow offensive online. We can then decide if we want to regulate general public discourse about what we're talking about.
      - Fjolsvith 6y ago
        Twitter is not a free speech platform. Simple.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Straw horse argument. And as a private business I’m pretty sure they can ban anyone they want for any reason.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    Yes, I think if people want <public> squares then it's time to think about <public> funding. And is broadband now the road to this public square? If so, is there a problem that all these roads are basically toll roads owned by mega-corps?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
josephby 6y ago
More Modi-fake-news; you can't out-Xi Xi. Good luck guys.
pxtail 6y ago
I love all recent moves done by social media giants and I hope that they will continue along this path - it's just boring when only selected type of content and opinion is allowed. Some people will be able to perceive that published content is complaisant, inhonest artificial facade and will look around for other communication solutions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

90 points by abc-xyz 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

treebornfrog 6y ago

And it begins...

RandomTisk 6y ago
The bigotry of big tech began a long time ago.

itsspring 6y ago

Can we not have opinions on trade and economics on social media now?

iliekcomputers 6y ago
These companies have too much control over public discourse.
caseysoftware 6y ago
You didn't read the latest guidelines? They specifically ban [redacted] unless you're arguing that [redacted] didn't have anything to do with [redacted]. Unless of course, you've accepted money from [redacted], then you are welcome to criticize [redacted] as long as you mark posts as promotional. It's really pretty easy. Just visit: [redacted] for more details.
- Y_Y 6y ago
  Biased propaganda. If you want the truth go to [blueacted].

cma 6y ago

Seems to be a mistake, possibly automated: >On this post, Twitter messaged that your account is temporarily blocked. You are seeing this message because some unusual activity has occurred from this account.

pacala 6y ago
Wow. Building and operating a massive unaccountable automated system to deboost and/or silence undesirable speech is now OK because 'it was a mistake'. Edit. At what point are the users and/or the public at large owed a detailed postmortem for those 'mistakes'?
- cma 6y ago
  It seems to be related to hack detection of the account: https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocked-briefly-social-media-firm-cites-security-processes https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocke...
shripadk 6y ago
It is not a mistake. Twitter has been censoring Right wing accounts in India for past 3 years. The modus operandi is to first suspend a popular account and when there is hue & cry reinstate the account citing some stupid policy reason. Twitter is the most politically biased social media outlet in existence today. No doubt about that.

seesawtron 6y ago

"Let's suspend everything that seems to be offensive but if public starts to make a big deal out of it, just say there was a bug with our automated software for filtering content. It's not like anyone will ever look at our code"

sukilot 6y ago
The automated software is intended to predict and prevent public backlash. They aren't lying.
Simulacra 6y ago
It would be interesting to see a cataloging of censorship actions by social/media companies, etc. alongside the response. Ie Company x did y, z number of times, and blamed a bug w times versus deliberative actions q times.
- seesawtron 6y ago
  they are never going to show their proprietary code

JesusChrist2020 6y ago

1: Google gets caught building project dragonfly and is forced to abandon it. 2: YouTube gets caught automatically deleting comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party and is forced to undo it. 3: Google bans the most popular "Remove Chinese Apps" app in India. Is anyone else starting to see a pattern here?

bedros 6y ago

Probably Chinese hackers trying to hack and get access to the account, so it was suspended

tomschlick 6y ago
More likely is that China used many accounts to report it as violence or some other sensitive category. Automation would have taken it down at that point.
- thedudeabides5 6y ago
  If so, would be the latest in a long and successful strategy of using the West’s language on offense and identity politics against our speech and media institutions. And to be fair, we haven’t really figured out where we stand on this stuff.

JesusChrist2020 6y ago

Newsflash to tech giant leadership. The free world is gearing up for WAR with Chinese Communist Party. https://www.ipac.global/ https://www.ipac.global/ Get with the program and support our ally India. You do NOT want to be on the side of the enemy at a time of war.

sukilot 6y ago

Was it ever suspended? The screenshot shows clickwall, not suspension.

bufferoverflow 6y ago

I wonder if they see the irony of that action.

Magodo 6y ago

Clickbait. Actual reason cited was account security issues https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocked-briefly-social-media-firm-cites-security-processes https://scroll.in/latest/964035/amuls-twitter-account-blocke...

shripadk 6y ago
Hahaha they always say that. Trust me Twitter India is the worst when it comes to censorship. They have been randomly suspending accounts and then reinstating them after uproar. This has been going on for a good 3 years. Nothing new for us here in India. All this crap about them being for "freedom of speech and expression" is just humbug. If there was any agency that kept a track of the number of times Twitter suspended a popular account and reinstated it after uproar then the real picture would come out into the open. And Twitter specifically targets right wing accounts. From suspensions to shadow banning. Everything is allowed. This has turned more and more people in India against such biased services. And it isn't helping Twitter or its cause in anyway. It is only causing more alienation. It is only reaffirming our beliefs that Twitter is not apolitical. I don't see why Twitter has to do it? If it wants people to switch political affiliations then this is the worst way to go about it. I know Jack Dorsey admitted that he is a leftist and most employees in Twitter are leftists too [1]. That those employees who lean towards the right feel threatened to voice their opinions within Twitter. If that is the situation within the company then how can you expect it to not be biased when dealing with political issues on the platform? Surely those biases will permeate into decision making. And one can't blame algorithms always. I don't see leftist accounts being banned by Twitter no matter how much hate and abuse you find on such accounts. So it is not automation. This is definitely targeted. [1]: Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-employees-conservative-trump-politics https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
abc-xyz 6y ago
As per your article: > “We have asked Twitter why it blocked our account,” Sodhi said. “We are waiting for the reply.” Sounds like they suffered from more than a simple CAPTCHA before their login (in which case it also sounds absurd to publicly restrict the account). Twitter says: > “Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult [or costly] for spammy or malicious account owners to complete.” This makes no sense. It's a ~9 year old verified account with 250k followers, operated by one of the largest companies in India, with no unusual tweet activity.

miked85 6y ago

Up until now, many have been cheering Twitter bans and attacking FB for not doing the same since it aligned with their political views. This kind of behavior by tech giants is bad, regardless if you agree or not with who they are suspending or banning.

aplummer 6y ago
Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. I think they are a private company with free speech, and people should just not use their products if they don’t like it.
- faned 6y ago
  Would you support changing laws to allow Twitter to ban black people from their platform?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    I think the constraints on these companies should be the same as in normal public discourse. It is strange to me that I can talk to someone on the street about how I'm trying to minimize my consumption of Chinese goods and how this is worthwhile and no one would bat an eye but that that is somehow offensive online. We can then decide if we want to regulate general public discourse about what we're talking about.
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      Twitter is not a free speech platform. Simple.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Straw horse argument. And as a private business I’m pretty sure they can ban anyone they want for any reason.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Yes, I think if people want <public> squares then it's time to think about <public> funding. And is broadband now the road to this public square? If so, is there a problem that all these roads are basically toll roads owned by mega-corps?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

josephby 6y ago

More Modi-fake-news; you can't out-Xi Xi. Good luck guys.

pxtail 6y ago

I love all recent moves done by social media giants and I hope that they will continue along this path - it's just boring when only selected type of content and opinion is allowed. Some people will be able to perceive that published content is complaisant, inhonest artificial facade and will look around for other communication solutions.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]