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Will India Ban Twitter?

55 points by laurex 6y ago

nafey 6y ago
Can someone summarize the issue? The article is behind a paywall.
- baxter001 6y ago
  It's an article post on the paywalled site platformer.news (Alexa Rank 57,888, most of the sites visitors coming from cnewton.org) by the San Francisco based founder and writer of platformer.news Casey Newton, the article title ends in a question mark.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dagmx 6y ago
  The current party in power in India is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is akin to removing minimum wage for farmers in a market where it would be financial ruin for most farmers and give way to corporate farms leading the way. The farmers were peacefully protesting and the government has reacted by attacking them quite brutally etc.. recently they've also issued FIRs (effectively arrest warrants) for foreigners who've voiced their support for the farmers on Twitter. Generally the government is trying to keep exposure to these events as low as possible. Twitter is obviously not beholden to their wishes.
  - Chetan496 6y ago
    1. The protest on the republic day was not peaceful. Some groups among protesters hoisted a different flag on the Red fort, Delhi 2. Not all farmers across the country are protesting. Some are. Mainly Punjab, Haryana, few from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, Rajasthan. 3. It's true that the government has not been totally transparent. But they put a stay on implementation of farm laws for the next 18 months and offered to continue further discussion. However, the protesters continued the protests and vandalised Red fort, a historic building in New Delhi. The protests did become violent on the Republic day where the police were injured.
    - mandeepj 6y ago
      You forgot UP, Karnataka, Kerala, and WB. So, it's pretty much most of India :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farmers%27_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme... https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states-that-have-bypassed-farm-laws-1753995-2020-12-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states...
  - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
    It is more nuanced. The peaceful protestors got violent. They attacked the Red fort and flew flags for a separatist movement after bringing down the Indian flag. Such an attack on democracy should not be allowed.
    - mandeepj 6y ago
      >after bringing down the Indian flag Indian flag was not even touched. Stop spreading lies. There's not even a single other instance where flag was disrespected during last 4+ months. So, why it happened only there? It was conspired and scripted by govt to malign the movement. The entry gates were also not secure.
      - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
        Why did they fly a religious flag? There is no excuse for political violence in a democracy. Those who committed it and their enablers and supporters should be brought to justice. Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence. Police are strict - you blame the govt. Police are lax - you blame the govt. No winning with anti democratic forces.
        mandeepj 6y ago
        > Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence. Have some strength to hear the facts
  - l0k3ndr 6y ago
    Just to add the context - the law does't target MSP directly. They are basically saying that now all farmers of the country can sell their produce without the control of government owned marketplaces called 'mandis'. In 'mandis' there is a minimum support price, so farmers have a guarentee of getting atleast that much for their produce. Now when market will be opened, this will probably kill the MSP system, as now this will be an open market where farmers will directly deal with corporates or their consumers. Right now the produce has to be strictly sold with government owned mandis, which I think is causing government financial losses. The protests were generally peaceful, but recently on our republic day we cannot say it remained peaceful. I think government should have first spent time in making people understand the pros/cons of the changes and take their feedback if they are ready. Any protests long drawn, can turn violent. My personal take on this is that farmers are not ready yet to face the corporate world as buyers. This law should come, but not now. And Government can build an intermediary organization to work with both mandis and corporates - but again, whenever government builds something in India, the officers appointed use corruption to take it from useful to useless. So that also won't work. I don't know, what can solve this issue apart from government holding off the laws. They are saying they can put the law on hold for 1.5 years, but the protest is at a stage where they want it to be totally taken back. The case is also in supreme court of India where I think they have made a committee to solve this. But I believe protesters are very concerned about livelihood post these laws. I guess that's the trouble with big changes like this, it can impact people positively/negatively in short term but might boost the economy in long run. It's important to protect people during these major changes also. May be NGOs can be used to first raise awareness - small A/B test can be done with experiment group. I don't know why governments don't do incremental changes slowly.
    - dagmx 6y ago
      To be clear the police did attack the farmers long before republic day. It's a pressure cooker situation right now
      - nonamechicken 6y ago
        Did they actually attack? I haven't come across any news about that.
  - nell 6y ago
    The law is also removing mandatory middle men who had a lot of sway over the farmers who had to go through them to sell their produce. Effectively going towards a free-er market.
  - vinay_ys 6y ago
    > ...is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is false. They are removing the restriction that all produce has to be sold in a APMCs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_co...)
  - bhaskara2 6y ago
    Well my dads a farmer and he has no problem with these laws and you will find the same with majority of the farmers in India. They support the law, literally every economist is giving their approval to these laws. There will naturally be some opposing the law and the government has held a dozen meetings with the small number of farmers to discuss each and every point, but they are hell bent on repealing the law instead of amending, which imo is not very constructive.
    - dagmx 6y ago
      Whether your dad is okay with it or not is irrelevant though. The fact remains though that many are unhappy about it and have been attacked violently. The fact is that the police have filed FIRs against people for voicing support. Those are the salient points to this discussion on whether India will ban Twitter or not
      - Chetan496 6y ago
        It's true that considerable number of farmers are unhappy with the new farm laws. But an even larger number of farmers are just fine with those. Ideally, this should be implemented differently in each state, as situation in each state is different. Violence does not help in anyway - either by the farmers or the police. The other point is about involvement of shady organizations. There is evidence that the protests were planned in advance. Greta Thunberg seems to be involved. I have read the document which was published on Cryptpad. While the document is not really encouraging violence, it does have phrases which clearly intend to malign India's image. A Canadian outfit called 'poetic justice' is also involved. read the article from the Print https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspected-for-farmers-protest-toolkit-tweeted-by-greta-thunberg/599098/ https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspe... and this is the link for the toolkit https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/ehTz+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivwVCKhwNe7OD1YHDiBUj0Y/ https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/ehTz+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivw... while the toolkit does not directly incite violence , it clearly mentions that the plan was followed per schedule. the protests were already planned despite the leaders of protests giving their word that the protests would be peaceful on the republic day. the toolkit reveals intentions to malign India by asking people all over the world to protest infront of Indian embassies
temptemptemp111 6y ago
If India bans Twitter, then I am buying property in India.
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/jammu-and-kashmir/story/south-kashmir-internet-services-suspended-1766144-2021-02-05 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/jammu-and-kashmir/story/sout... They just banned internet for million or so people in Kashmir. Outright internet vban, twitter ban is nothing
- blackoil 6y ago
  Yes considering all the news we see about Hong Kong. It is surprising that Kashmir isn't covered despite being in worse situation for more than a year, over a similar issue.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    HK used to be more stable and is a highly visible global node that is well connected, exports cultural products, and is home to foreign offices for a lot of companies. It’s very easy to cover HK given that, say, the NYT has been there for the past few decades and has staffers who have directly observed changes throughout that time. My impression of Kashmir is that the situation hasn’t been positive for a very long time, and all the other factors are either less true or don’t apply.
    - actuator 6y ago
      Also, in Kashmir's case, the lines become blurry because on one hand you have excesses from the Indian state, and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines. It is quite a controversial topic and when someone looking from outside can't even gauge the recent issue at hand correctly[1], you can't expect them to have the context of Kashmir issue. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-cause-in-india-11612465735 https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-ca...
      - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
        why are things blurry? you are saying >and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_guerrilla_movements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_guerrilla_movements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_rebel_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_rebel_groups kashmir has been fighting against both india and pakistan on many fronts ever since this issue began. the state of kashmir has been essentially fighting war of independence against foreign oppressive rule for the past 500 years. so what 30 years ago pakistan convinced and managed to turn thousands of kashmiris as pawns in a proxy war with india. that doesnt mean kashmir is with pakistan, on the contrary, people in pakistan occupied kashmir protest against their oppression daily. why do you think just because someone picked a gun that they have muddied the waters and only way out is to surrender because you cannot do an armed struggle?
blackoil 6y ago
I don't think they'll ban Twitter. This isn't the first time ruling party is unhappy with it. Govt. would not want it to be escalated as it is already in a soft war with China and would need USA's support in it.
- navidkhn1 6y ago
  They managed to get TikTok out of the country. IMO, China has just as much influence in India as the US, if not more. They recently banned Internet access in several parts of Delhi ( the capital ) as well, during the farmer protests on Republic day. This did not even make the news. I know because I live here. Moreover, the bulk of the population won't really be affected by a Twitter ban - they aren't on it, and make most of the voter pool.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  Hypothetically, you can ban twitter and still be friends with USA geo-politically. One is not comparable to the other.
adhdbrain 6y ago
I'm going to go with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli... on this.
cccc4all 6y ago
It’s a private country, they can do whatever they want.
- ksd482 6y ago
  Lol
eplanit 6y ago
Right now I'm listening to a report on NPR about how India, the world's largest democracy, leads the world in the number of times it has shut down Internet access. As this will inevitably (sadly) become the norm, I fully expect we'll see the same in the U.S. in relatively short time. Hopefully that's too pessimistic; but, to be prepared -- what is the state of the art of HAM-based networking in the U.S.?
- JohnCurran 6y ago
  What leads you to believe the USA has any interest, now or in the future, in shutting down Twitter?
  - tw600040 6y ago
    It need not shut down twitter, when twitter itself will shut down accounts 'the USA' doesn't like..
- MrRadar 6y ago
  Keep in mind that amateur radio operators are banned from using encryption* on the air which means no HTTPS/TLS, SSH/SFTP, VPNs, or Tor. You'd basically be operating with the privacy of the Internet circa 1995. Almost all commercial activities are also banned. * Authentication is allowed but the contents of the messages cannot be concealed.
  - eplanit 6y ago
    But if the extreme measure of cutting people off at the ISP level were to occur (heaven forbid), wouldn't such rules be broken in the name of civil disobedience? I'm curious about what's technically feasible. Do "preppers" have a plan for such an event?
    - MrRadar 6y ago
      Hams are pretty uptight about self-policing what goes on in their RF spectrum, mostly because they realize that if they don't a) other people will step in and police it for them and b) it would make it much easier for commercial interests to make the case for their spectrum allocations to be taken away (they're recently losing this fight in the 3.3-3.5 GHz band to 5G cellular networks and increasingly high-frequency traders are eyeing their traditional shortwave allocations to shave those next few microseconds off compared to microwave networks). If you did start transmitting encrypted stuff on the ham bands someone would probably foxhunt you (even if you were doing it for "civil disobedience") and ask you politely to stop before reporting you to the FCC. You could of course work outside of the ham bands but then what you're doing would be illegal for other reasons.
hollerith 6y ago
Sadly, it is unrealistic to hope that my country will also ban Twitter. Details of the software behind an online forum make a big difference to how the forum affects its participants and the society they are part of. It would take a long article to begin to describe exactly how the details of Twitter are bad, but as a start we might notice how difficult it is for a reader to find the responses to a particular contribution (tweet) and how difficult it is for the writer of a response to predict which readers will see the response -- making Twitter a worse tool for arriving at collective truth than are most online fora or at least worse than most pre-social-media online fora. We might notice that (probably for complicated reasons, perhaps partly because it is a bad tool for online truth-finding) experience has revealed that Twitter is more likely to assist in the formation of an online mob than other online fora are.
- hollerith 6y ago
  (replying to myself) On second thought, it would be bad for my government to ban Twitter, but I still wish more people would decide to stop using it.
qart 6y ago
Indian. I resisted getting a twitter account all these years, but created one just to keep track of the pandemic. As far as I can tell, Indian political parties and "news" outlets have completely gamed the system. Every day, there would be a new outrage hashtag. And by no means are these outrages driven by one political faction. Over the last one year, I notice that Twitter itself has taken steps to limit the "trending" hashtags. Since 2021, I see just one or two such hashtags on the homepage. With all this outrage generated on Twitter, I really wonder how much of a role Twitter is playing in incitement(s). Would I be sad to see Twitter go? To some extent... there are some great people I follow on Twitter. But the platform itself, I tend to see as a force of evil.
- creaghpatr 6y ago
  >As far as I can tell, Indian political parties and "news" outlets have completely gamed the system. Every day, there would be a new outrage hashtag. And by no means are these outrages driven by one political faction. Over the last one year, I notice that Twitter itself has taken steps to limit the "trending" hashtags. Since 2021, I see just one or two such hashtags on the homepage. It's exactly like that in America too.
- _jgdh 6y ago
  For an example of how "one political faction" can manufacture trends, check this out - https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352 https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352. They contact famous personalities (in this case athletes who had represented India at the Olympics), give them a text ("I thank @narendramodi for his initiative to honour and empower...") and ask them all to tweet it at the same time. Then they use their vast network of fake accounts to amplify it. Same thing yesterday, when they requested cricket players with large followings to implicitly criticise Greta Thunberg and Rihanna for "interfering" in India's affairs. It's so easy to co-opt this too. One person got access to the shared google doc where they store the next tweets that need to be trending and changed it to something critical of Modi. It was promptly tweeted out regardless by government ministers who said "working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt" and "Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point". (https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1095571793233043456?s=19 https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1095571793233043456?...)
actuator 6y ago
Sure, we are back to talking about free speech considerations since now it is not the side most of the tech press hates being blocked. What Twitter started with when it decided to become the arbiter of what is allowed on the platform, and what constitutes inciting violence and unrest, it opened a slippery slope. I read about the hashtag in question and it definitely seems like one can spin it as people inciting unrest and violence similar to what happened few weeks back. Twitter lost the moral ground here as soon as it decided to wade into what constitutes good speech and what not. Anyway, Twitter has been a toxic platform for a while now. It just has managed to evade the scrutiny FB gets. Just look at the sort of activism that goes around there which is related to the current issue. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-cause-in-india-11612465735 https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-ca...
Zezi 6y ago
Twitter is 100% gamed by big money. Rihanna for instance was paid 2.5M for pro farmer tweet
- aryamaan 6y ago
  Source for this?
  - Zezi 6y ago
    https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/rihanna-paid-2425-million-by-pr-firm-with-khalistani-links-to-tweet-in-support-of-farmers-report/ar-BB1dpZX3 https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/rihanna-paid-2425-milli...
  - totaldude87 6y ago
    This is what i saw this morning, not sure about authenticity though https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspected-for-farmers-protest-toolkit-tweeted-by-greta-thunberg/599098/ https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspe... According to sources, it was Skyrocket that allegedly paid $2.5 million to popstar Rihanna to tweet in support of the farmers’ protest in India. Dhaliwal, the sources said, is a Canada-based Sikh who is a “self-proclaimed Sikh separatist” and is also close to Jagmeet Singh.
    - mandeepj 6y ago
      "According to sources" FFS
      - totaldude87 6y ago
        >>not sure about authenticity though
        mandeepj 6y ago
        I commented on news article. Not on your post. No offence intended
_jgdh 6y ago
Ah yes, like most HN thread where the content touches on the policies of the BJP Government in power, this will go through a familiar lifecycle - discussion about the shortcomings of the policy, followed by shortcomings of this particular government in general. These discussions will be heavily downvoted. Scroll all the way to the bottom to find a person who was greyed out and flagged for pointing out that internet access in an entire state (Kashmir) has been revoked for more than a year. Then we get to the next phase - contentious arguments completely unrelated to TFA about how one side is using censorship to stop criticism of the government. Then the entire thread is reported for flame war, and the thread disappears from the front page. That's mission accomplished for those who can't bear to see the BJP being criticised for any reason. Let's be clear though - the BJP is far more draconian than any Indian government in the last 40 years. They have cut off internet access arbitrarily whenever it suits them. They have coopted the courts so that their stooges always escape legal issues while journalists, social workers and comedians languish in jail without bail for imagined offences. This government instigates religious hatred just so it can win elections. And to the point here, it oppresses farmers so a couple of crony capitalists can make a quick buck.
undefined1 6y ago
given how much Twitter influences elections and has clearly demonstrated the degree to which they put their thumb on the scale, countries will be making their own and/or block it. it would be stupid not to.
BrawnLongHaul 6y ago
Private countries should be able to ban private companies
amriksohata 6y ago
I remember when Twitter was trending pro-Labour trends everyday in the last election you would think they were going to win. But Tories did. I think it shows how much of an echo chamber each social media platform can be. Rihannas tweeted about some political protest, but it was later established she was paid for the tweet. SM platforms have a responsbility to declare political endorsements.

55 points by laurex 6y ago

nafey 6y ago

Can someone summarize the issue? The article is behind a paywall.

baxter001 6y ago
It's an article post on the paywalled site platformer.news (Alexa Rank 57,888, most of the sites visitors coming from cnewton.org) by the San Francisco based founder and writer of platformer.news Casey Newton, the article title ends in a question mark.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dagmx 6y ago
The current party in power in India is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is akin to removing minimum wage for farmers in a market where it would be financial ruin for most farmers and give way to corporate farms leading the way. The farmers were peacefully protesting and the government has reacted by attacking them quite brutally etc.. recently they've also issued FIRs (effectively arrest warrants) for foreigners who've voiced their support for the farmers on Twitter. Generally the government is trying to keep exposure to these events as low as possible. Twitter is obviously not beholden to their wishes.
- Chetan496 6y ago
  1. The protest on the republic day was not peaceful. Some groups among protesters hoisted a different flag on the Red fort, Delhi 2. Not all farmers across the country are protesting. Some are. Mainly Punjab, Haryana, few from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, Rajasthan. 3. It's true that the government has not been totally transparent. But they put a stay on implementation of farm laws for the next 18 months and offered to continue further discussion. However, the protesters continued the protests and vandalised Red fort, a historic building in New Delhi. The protests did become violent on the Republic day where the police were injured.
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    You forgot UP, Karnataka, Kerala, and WB. So, it's pretty much most of India :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farmers%27_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme... https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states-that-have-bypassed-farm-laws-1753995-2020-12-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/farmers-protest-states...
- cscurmudgeon 6y ago
  It is more nuanced. The peaceful protestors got violent. They attacked the Red fort and flew flags for a separatist movement after bringing down the Indian flag. Such an attack on democracy should not be allowed.
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    >after bringing down the Indian flag Indian flag was not even touched. Stop spreading lies. There's not even a single other instance where flag was disrespected during last 4+ months. So, why it happened only there? It was conspired and scripted by govt to malign the movement. The entry gates were also not secure.
    - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
      Why did they fly a religious flag? There is no excuse for political violence in a democracy. Those who committed it and their enablers and supporters should be brought to justice. Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence. Police are strict - you blame the govt. Police are lax - you blame the govt. No winning with anti democratic forces.
      - mandeepj 6y ago
        > Don’t spread conspiracy theories without evidence. Have some strength to hear the facts
- l0k3ndr 6y ago
  Just to add the context - the law does't target MSP directly. They are basically saying that now all farmers of the country can sell their produce without the control of government owned marketplaces called 'mandis'. In 'mandis' there is a minimum support price, so farmers have a guarentee of getting atleast that much for their produce. Now when market will be opened, this will probably kill the MSP system, as now this will be an open market where farmers will directly deal with corporates or their consumers. Right now the produce has to be strictly sold with government owned mandis, which I think is causing government financial losses. The protests were generally peaceful, but recently on our republic day we cannot say it remained peaceful. I think government should have first spent time in making people understand the pros/cons of the changes and take their feedback if they are ready. Any protests long drawn, can turn violent. My personal take on this is that farmers are not ready yet to face the corporate world as buyers. This law should come, but not now. And Government can build an intermediary organization to work with both mandis and corporates - but again, whenever government builds something in India, the officers appointed use corruption to take it from useful to useless. So that also won't work. I don't know, what can solve this issue apart from government holding off the laws. They are saying they can put the law on hold for 1.5 years, but the protest is at a stage where they want it to be totally taken back. The case is also in supreme court of India where I think they have made a committee to solve this. But I believe protesters are very concerned about livelihood post these laws. I guess that's the trouble with big changes like this, it can impact people positively/negatively in short term but might boost the economy in long run. It's important to protect people during these major changes also. May be NGOs can be used to first raise awareness - small A/B test can be done with experiment group. I don't know why governments don't do incremental changes slowly.
  - dagmx 6y ago
    To be clear the police did attack the farmers long before republic day. It's a pressure cooker situation right now
    - nonamechicken 6y ago
      Did they actually attack? I haven't come across any news about that.
- nell 6y ago
  The law is also removing mandatory middle men who had a lot of sway over the farmers who had to go through them to sell their produce. Effectively going towards a free-er market.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  > ...is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is false. They are removing the restriction that all produce has to be sold in a APMCs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_produce_market_co...)
- bhaskara2 6y ago
  Well my dads a farmer and he has no problem with these laws and you will find the same with majority of the farmers in India. They support the law, literally every economist is giving their approval to these laws. There will naturally be some opposing the law and the government has held a dozen meetings with the small number of farmers to discuss each and every point, but they are hell bent on repealing the law instead of amending, which imo is not very constructive.
  - dagmx 6y ago
    Whether your dad is okay with it or not is irrelevant though. The fact remains though that many are unhappy about it and have been attacked violently. The fact is that the police have filed FIRs against people for voicing support. Those are the salient points to this discussion on whether India will ban Twitter or not
    - Chetan496 6y ago
      It's true that considerable number of farmers are unhappy with the new farm laws. But an even larger number of farmers are just fine with those. Ideally, this should be implemented differently in each state, as situation in each state is different. Violence does not help in anyway - either by the farmers or the police. The other point is about involvement of shady organizations. There is evidence that the protests were planned in advance. Greta Thunberg seems to be involved. I have read the document which was published on Cryptpad. While the document is not really encouraging violence, it does have phrases which clearly intend to malign India's image. A Canadian outfit called 'poetic justice' is also involved. read the article from the Print https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspected-for-farmers-protest-toolkit-tweeted-by-greta-thunberg/599098/ https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspe... and this is the link for the toolkit https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/ehTz+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivwVCKhwNe7OD1YHDiBUj0Y/ https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/ehTz+drfKPwi4fP5dn0mivw... while the toolkit does not directly incite violence , it clearly mentions that the plan was followed per schedule. the protests were already planned despite the leaders of protests giving their word that the protests would be peaceful on the republic day. the toolkit reveals intentions to malign India by asking people all over the world to protest infront of Indian embassies

temptemptemp111 6y ago

If India bans Twitter, then I am buying property in India.

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/jammu-and-kashmir/story/south-kashmir-internet-services-suspended-1766144-2021-02-05 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/jammu-and-kashmir/story/sout... They just banned internet for million or so people in Kashmir. Outright internet vban, twitter ban is nothing

blackoil 6y ago
Yes considering all the news we see about Hong Kong. It is surprising that Kashmir isn't covered despite being in worse situation for more than a year, over a similar issue.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  HK used to be more stable and is a highly visible global node that is well connected, exports cultural products, and is home to foreign offices for a lot of companies. It’s very easy to cover HK given that, say, the NYT has been there for the past few decades and has staffers who have directly observed changes throughout that time. My impression of Kashmir is that the situation hasn’t been positive for a very long time, and all the other factors are either less true or don’t apply.
  - actuator 6y ago
    Also, in Kashmir's case, the lines become blurry because on one hand you have excesses from the Indian state, and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines. It is quite a controversial topic and when someone looking from outside can't even gauge the recent issue at hand correctly[1], you can't expect them to have the context of Kashmir issue. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-cause-in-india-11612465735 https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-ca...
    - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
      why are things blurry? you are saying >and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_guerrilla_movements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_guerrilla_movements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_rebel_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_rebel_groups kashmir has been fighting against both india and pakistan on many fronts ever since this issue began. the state of kashmir has been essentially fighting war of independence against foreign oppressive rule for the past 500 years. so what 30 years ago pakistan convinced and managed to turn thousands of kashmiris as pawns in a proxy war with india. that doesnt mean kashmir is with pakistan, on the contrary, people in pakistan occupied kashmir protest against their oppression daily. why do you think just because someone picked a gun that they have muddied the waters and only way out is to surrender because you cannot do an armed struggle?

blackoil 6y ago

I don't think they'll ban Twitter. This isn't the first time ruling party is unhappy with it. Govt. would not want it to be escalated as it is already in a soft war with China and would need USA's support in it.

navidkhn1 6y ago
They managed to get TikTok out of the country. IMO, China has just as much influence in India as the US, if not more. They recently banned Internet access in several parts of Delhi ( the capital ) as well, during the farmer protests on Republic day. This did not even make the news. I know because I live here. Moreover, the bulk of the population won't really be affected by a Twitter ban - they aren't on it, and make most of the voter pool.
vinay_ys 6y ago
Hypothetically, you can ban twitter and still be friends with USA geo-politically. One is not comparable to the other.

adhdbrain 6y ago

I'm going to go with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli... on this.

cccc4all 6y ago

It’s a private country, they can do whatever they want.

ksd482 6y ago
Lol

eplanit 6y ago

Right now I'm listening to a report on NPR about how India, the world's largest democracy, leads the world in the number of times it has shut down Internet access. As this will inevitably (sadly) become the norm, I fully expect we'll see the same in the U.S. in relatively short time. Hopefully that's too pessimistic; but, to be prepared -- what is the state of the art of HAM-based networking in the U.S.?

JohnCurran 6y ago
What leads you to believe the USA has any interest, now or in the future, in shutting down Twitter?
- tw600040 6y ago
  It need not shut down twitter, when twitter itself will shut down accounts 'the USA' doesn't like..
MrRadar 6y ago
Keep in mind that amateur radio operators are banned from using encryption* on the air which means no HTTPS/TLS, SSH/SFTP, VPNs, or Tor. You'd basically be operating with the privacy of the Internet circa 1995. Almost all commercial activities are also banned. * Authentication is allowed but the contents of the messages cannot be concealed.
- eplanit 6y ago
  But if the extreme measure of cutting people off at the ISP level were to occur (heaven forbid), wouldn't such rules be broken in the name of civil disobedience? I'm curious about what's technically feasible. Do "preppers" have a plan for such an event?
  - MrRadar 6y ago
    Hams are pretty uptight about self-policing what goes on in their RF spectrum, mostly because they realize that if they don't a) other people will step in and police it for them and b) it would make it much easier for commercial interests to make the case for their spectrum allocations to be taken away (they're recently losing this fight in the 3.3-3.5 GHz band to 5G cellular networks and increasingly high-frequency traders are eyeing their traditional shortwave allocations to shave those next few microseconds off compared to microwave networks). If you did start transmitting encrypted stuff on the ham bands someone would probably foxhunt you (even if you were doing it for "civil disobedience") and ask you politely to stop before reporting you to the FCC. You could of course work outside of the ham bands but then what you're doing would be illegal for other reasons.

hollerith 6y ago

Sadly, it is unrealistic to hope that my country will also ban Twitter. Details of the software behind an online forum make a big difference to how the forum affects its participants and the society they are part of. It would take a long article to begin to describe exactly how the details of Twitter are bad, but as a start we might notice how difficult it is for a reader to find the responses to a particular contribution (tweet) and how difficult it is for the writer of a response to predict which readers will see the response -- making Twitter a worse tool for arriving at collective truth than are most online fora or at least worse than most pre-social-media online fora. We might notice that (probably for complicated reasons, perhaps partly because it is a bad tool for online truth-finding) experience has revealed that Twitter is more likely to assist in the formation of an online mob than other online fora are.

hollerith 6y ago
(replying to myself) On second thought, it would be bad for my government to ban Twitter, but I still wish more people would decide to stop using it.

qart 6y ago

Indian. I resisted getting a twitter account all these years, but created one just to keep track of the pandemic. As far as I can tell, Indian political parties and "news" outlets have completely gamed the system. Every day, there would be a new outrage hashtag. And by no means are these outrages driven by one political faction. Over the last one year, I notice that Twitter itself has taken steps to limit the "trending" hashtags. Since 2021, I see just one or two such hashtags on the homepage. With all this outrage generated on Twitter, I really wonder how much of a role Twitter is playing in incitement(s). Would I be sad to see Twitter go? To some extent... there are some great people I follow on Twitter. But the platform itself, I tend to see as a force of evil.

creaghpatr 6y ago
>As far as I can tell, Indian political parties and "news" outlets have completely gamed the system. Every day, there would be a new outrage hashtag. And by no means are these outrages driven by one political faction. Over the last one year, I notice that Twitter itself has taken steps to limit the "trending" hashtags. Since 2021, I see just one or two such hashtags on the homepage. It's exactly like that in America too.
_jgdh 6y ago
For an example of how "one political faction" can manufacture trends, check this out - https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352 https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352. They contact famous personalities (in this case athletes who had represented India at the Olympics), give them a text ("I thank @narendramodi for his initiative to honour and empower...") and ask them all to tweet it at the same time. Then they use their vast network of fake accounts to amplify it. Same thing yesterday, when they requested cricket players with large followings to implicitly criticise Greta Thunberg and Rihanna for "interfering" in India's affairs. It's so easy to co-opt this too. One person got access to the shared google doc where they store the next tweets that need to be trending and changed it to something critical of Modi. It was promptly tweeted out regardless by government ministers who said "working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt" and "Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point". (https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1095571793233043456?s=19 https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1095571793233043456?...)

actuator 6y ago

Sure, we are back to talking about free speech considerations since now it is not the side most of the tech press hates being blocked. What Twitter started with when it decided to become the arbiter of what is allowed on the platform, and what constitutes inciting violence and unrest, it opened a slippery slope. I read about the hashtag in question and it definitely seems like one can spin it as people inciting unrest and violence similar to what happened few weeks back. Twitter lost the moral ground here as soon as it decided to wade into what constitutes good speech and what not. Anyway, Twitter has been a toxic platform for a while now. It just has managed to evade the scrutiny FB gets. Just look at the sort of activism that goes around there which is related to the current issue. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-cause-in-india-11612465735 https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-ca...

Zezi 6y ago

Twitter is 100% gamed by big money. Rihanna for instance was paid 2.5M for pro farmer tweet

aryamaan 6y ago
Source for this?
- Zezi 6y ago
  https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/rihanna-paid-2425-million-by-pr-firm-with-khalistani-links-to-tweet-in-support-of-farmers-report/ar-BB1dpZX3 https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/rihanna-paid-2425-milli...
- totaldude87 6y ago
  This is what i saw this morning, not sure about authenticity though https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspected-for-farmers-protest-toolkit-tweeted-by-greta-thunberg/599098/ https://theprint.in/diplomacy/canada-firm-mp-pr-person-suspe... According to sources, it was Skyrocket that allegedly paid $2.5 million to popstar Rihanna to tweet in support of the farmers’ protest in India. Dhaliwal, the sources said, is a Canada-based Sikh who is a “self-proclaimed Sikh separatist” and is also close to Jagmeet Singh.
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    "According to sources" FFS
    - totaldude87 6y ago
      >>not sure about authenticity though
      - mandeepj 6y ago
        I commented on news article. Not on your post. No offence intended

_jgdh 6y ago

Ah yes, like most HN thread where the content touches on the policies of the BJP Government in power, this will go through a familiar lifecycle - discussion about the shortcomings of the policy, followed by shortcomings of this particular government in general. These discussions will be heavily downvoted. Scroll all the way to the bottom to find a person who was greyed out and flagged for pointing out that internet access in an entire state (Kashmir) has been revoked for more than a year. Then we get to the next phase - contentious arguments completely unrelated to TFA about how one side is using censorship to stop criticism of the government. Then the entire thread is reported for flame war, and the thread disappears from the front page. That's mission accomplished for those who can't bear to see the BJP being criticised for any reason. Let's be clear though - the BJP is far more draconian than any Indian government in the last 40 years. They have cut off internet access arbitrarily whenever it suits them. They have coopted the courts so that their stooges always escape legal issues while journalists, social workers and comedians languish in jail without bail for imagined offences. This government instigates religious hatred just so it can win elections. And to the point here, it oppresses farmers so a couple of crony capitalists can make a quick buck.

undefined1 6y ago

given how much Twitter influences elections and has clearly demonstrated the degree to which they put their thumb on the scale, countries will be making their own and/or block it. it would be stupid not to.

BrawnLongHaul 6y ago

Private countries should be able to ban private companies

amriksohata 6y ago

I remember when Twitter was trending pro-Labour trends everyday in the last election you would think they were going to win. But Tories did. I think it shows how much of an echo chamber each social media platform can be. Rihannas tweeted about some political protest, but it was later established she was paid for the tweet. SM platforms have a responsbility to declare political endorsements.