14 ms·

Facebook, Twitter & Instagram can be banned in India tomorrow for non-compliance

109 points by zakember 5y ago

rammy1234 5y ago
how grievance officer is helpful ?
wonnage 5y ago
I wonder if this is actually more significant than the equivalent bans in China. AFAIK none of these companies actually had a business presence in China prior to being banned. So noncompliance didn't risk any of their local workforce - they could just say no, we're not censoring anything, and get blocked by the Great Firewall. Twitter doesn't have to block anything on their end because the censorship is all on the China side. You'll notice on any sort of politically sensitive social media content (e.g, Taiwan) that Chinese are perfectly able to access and troll these sites via VPN. Twitter can also slap the "state media" tag on CGTN and they can't do anything about it. But FB has a huge presence in India and they can't just piss off that government without putting their employees at risk, as well as the sunk cost of their existing business. They'll actually have to block things on their end. You'll wind up with the same censorship-due-to-business-interests controversy that the NBA and other business operating in China have experienced over the past year.
throwaway8581 5y ago
No sane country can allow their public discourse to be controlled by the peculiar moral pieties of the American elite class. True, important information, e.g. that covid-19 may have originated in a Chinese lab, is actively suppressed by these platforms as part of an internal American struggle for control of information and ideas. Any people that value their own self-determination must reduce the influence of these manipulative platforms on their domestic market.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Yea, conspiracy theories are problematic. You can put "may" in any statement and it's technically true, doesn't mean facebook/twitter can't mark it as misleading.
  - throwaway8581 5y ago
    The point is they dismissed it out of hand and banned anyone who said otherwise. Btw, liberal news outlets are finally admitting now that the lab leak hypothesis is probably right.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      People were banned for falsely asserting it was confirmed to be a lab leak. That's still a false assertion. I'm not aware of any major news outlet - liberal or otherwise - "finally admitting now that the lab leak hypothesis is probably right" at this point. The WSJ story the other day doesn't come close to that assertion yet.
      - throwaway8581 5y ago
        Funny that no one was banned for saying, as many did, that it was impossible for it to have come from a Chinese lab. Those asymmetries in enforcement always seem to lean in the same direction.
        kelnos 5y ago
        It's a shame you're being downvoted, because you're exactly correct. I heard a lot of rhetoric around it being impossible that it was a lab leak. I thought it pretty unlikely, but claiming that it was impossible is just as misinformative as claiming it 100% was a lab leak.
        timeon 5y ago
        Can you give an example?
- _vertigo 5y ago
  I completely agree. By banning these networks, overall suppression of information will greatly decrease. With these platforms banned, it will be more easy for Indians to encounter information that challenges the dominant narrative of the elites. \s
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    Wouldn't banning a massive centralised network lead to more people talking over smaller networks?
    - _vertigo 5y ago
      One would hope. But that is not what is going to happen. People do not talk over small networks because they are inconvenient due to their small size. It is more convenient to talk over large networks because there are more people to talk to. If you ban a massive centralized network, another one will take its place. It will certainly be smaller than Facebook, but no less centralized. And in this particular case, I would imagine that based on the Indian government's grievances with these American networks, information will almost certainly be less free on the replacement.
      - throwaway8581 5y ago
        But maybe it will be run by Indian people, who will enforce Indian values, and who are accountable to their Indian families and Indian peers and Indian law.
        ivalm 5y ago
        In India Modi's government has a long history of subverting media and trying to use government powers to control narrative. I don't think totalitarianism (even though backed by the government) is a good option.
        jdauriemma 5y ago
        If it's a for-profit enterprise, it will be run by people whose primary loyalty is to shareholders and their own pocketbooks.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Except in cases where they somewhat dysfunctional systems of FB and US are considerably more rational and functional than the local systems, which is unfortunately very often the case.
  - actuator 5y ago
    I think we should stop asserting that what we perceive to be the right view is the right one for all. I am quite sure the local people there are not wishing for someone from outside to come and save them. This comment sounds a bit tone deaf.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      "I think we should stop asserting that what we perceive to be the right view is the right one for all." Nobody is asserting that, or even hinting at it. You have to have the most sensitive, assumptive and skeptical, upside reading of that to suggest that 'Having Facebook Available' as some kind of statement in support of 'One Truth'. Modi's government is one of the most corrupt and dysfunctional in thew world and becoming excessively authoritarian. Facebook, with it's obvious shortcomings, is one reasonably managed voice among many. On the whole, having a fairly open Facebook is considerably better than having a Completely Corrupt Modi Facebook. Facebook is not a tool or organ of the US and is not an organ of US state propaganda. While some of the 'New Rules' seem reasonable, others definitely do not, and have authoritarian implications [1] including direct government oversight over some forms of content. " I am quite sure the local people there are not wishing for someone from outside to come and save them." I'm pretty sure that people would like access to critical information wherever they are. I don't use FB, I don't care about it, but I would go to my first protest ever if my government tried to politicize it. [1] https://theprint.in/india/governance/modi-govt-announces-tough-new-rules-to-regulate-social-media-ott-platforms-digital-news/611792/ https://theprint.in/india/governance/modi-govt-announces-tou...
    - kabirgoel 5y ago
      India is an incredibly diverse country; "local people" isn't a meaningful term. As an Indian, I agree with the parent comment that Facebook and Twitter work well in comparison to local systems. Pointing this out isn't tone deaf in the least.
- chrononaut 5y ago
  I am having difficulty deconstructing your argument. Is it since you believe that these platforms are suppressing some plausibly truthful content, all content on these platforms / the platforms themselves should be suppressed?
  - throwaway8581 5y ago
    No, it's because the platform policies enforce a foreign social order. In America, we have our own pieties and taboos and these social media platforms heavily enforce them. Transgenderism, homosexuality, racial equality, gender roles, not every country holds American or European views on those, but those are the only views that are fully allowed on American social media platforms. India has its own social order. Why should it let its online discourse be controlled by the American social order?
    - vijaybritto 5y ago
      What do you think is the social order in India?
      - spiderice 5y ago
        How is this relevant to GP's point?
        Mordisquitos 5y ago
        GP is defending the possibility of the Indian Government banning Facebook, Twitter & Instagram on the basis that these platforms are "enforcing" some very particular issues that happen to be currently salient in certain American media, and implies that they are counter to India's social order. However, at no point does the linked article make any mention of the Indian Government being concerned about any of these issues nor social order in general, so asking GP about their thoughts on the current social order in India, which is purportedly being "controlled" by these American platforms, is very relevant.
        vijaybritto 5y ago
- bigpumpkin 5y ago
  Except the evidence that the virus came from a lab leak is provided by the American government, the arguments are constructed by Americans, and the news leaked and propagated by the American press and American social media networks. The other side of the debate use the same American tools. This is more a civil war in American discourse between the liberals and conservatives than anything else.
  - JI00912 5y ago
    Perhaps it appears that way to you because you follow American sources?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jdauriemma 5y ago
  You would have a point in an alternate universe where the Indian government is a credible guardian of whatever we might deem public discourse. In this universe, there are no good guys in this conflict.
  - throwaway8581 5y ago
    No good guys but the oligarchic silicon valley information complex is a definite bad guy that crowds out competing platforms where alternative views might flourish.
    - jdauriemma 5y ago
      No argument here, but I don't think the Modi government constitutes a competing platform.
      - urmish 5y ago
        Indian media existed before Facebook and twitter.
        jdauriemma 5y ago
        And if they were the ones trying to shut down Facebook et al. then that would be relevant.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      The only competition out there is going to abuse India's market and create an even worse paradigm shift. Newer platforms will be forced to be monitored/moderated by the state instead of a third party, which invites political oppression and censorship on a scale that's hard to fathom.
  - boruto 5y ago
    I know I will be downvoted to oblivion., Rather than Twitter I would rather have the public discourse which is guarded by Indian Govt/ Judiciary, parliament and media irrespective of the spectrum to which they have a bias. If tomorrow, I say something religious in nature, would such a thing be banned by some person in California who decides it is not rational thought?
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
  What's Facebook's angle for discouraging the view that Covid may have originated from a lab? E.g, what do they gain from this perspective? Sidenote: because it was being suppressed, I genuinely believed it was fringe theory. I didn't weigh the merits, that is, I considered the filter to just be the truth (because it seemed genuinely reasonable to conclude it was fringe, just because there is so much misinformation out there). My internal metric is: "Does this seem tin foil hat-y?" And I concluded "yes", and moved on. It was a concerning introspection of how I personally evaluate news.
  - throwaway8581 5y ago
    They face a hostile media and political complex, as well as several thousand aggressively activist employees, that all demand that right-wing information be suppressed. If Facebook doesn't do what those groups demand, they will be smeared in the media, suffer internal strife, and face punitive antitrust probes. And of course, many tech executive are true believers in left-wing politics and like that they can use their positions to advance those ideas.
    - ecommerceguy 5y ago
      Alot of those activist employees actively suppress non-progressive talking points on hn. Can I prove that with data as Dang has asked me to do...? Only if I have access to the logs is my answer.
  - ihsw 5y ago
    At the time, it gave air to Trump's 2020 election campaign ("orange man bad"). Now, it's an excuse to take the air out of conservative political sentiment.
  - slg 5y ago
    It was a fringe theory pushed largely but not exclusively by racists and opportunists that wanted to paint China as the bad guy and shield the previous administration and other politicians from blame for how they reacted to the pandemic. Totally independent of that, the general scientific community seemed to be much more opposed to the lab theory early on than they are now. It still doesn't appear to be much evidence for it beyond circumstantial stuff, but it is a possibility that more people are engaging with. Combine these two and it isn't surprising that these platforms cracked down on this type of talk early and are slow to allowing it to start happening again.
- ipsum2 5y ago
  How does this relate to the article?
  - boreas 5y ago
    It's very interesting, the comment you replied to seems to be using a typical free speech canard in support of increasing censorship. Their argument doesn't seem relevant to the policy discussed in the article at all.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  The problem here is that banning those platforms (but not whatsapp for some reason?) will not increase the amount of discussion and information available to the people of India.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- world_peace42 5y ago
  Heartened to see this at the top. I was expecting to see something like “Gasp! Modi is as bad as the Netanyahu/Hitler!” It’s almost as the rest of the world are not interested in being inundated with the Californian Elite’s warped ideas/ideological doctrine. As an American, it’s obvious now we are a declining power, and one can’t ignore how tech giants have accelerated that. Sensible countries, like India, are right to reject Facebook’s influence (and no, although many will disagree, this is not proof that India is a failed democracy/nazi state).
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    What's something bad Netanyahu has done that Modi hasn't?
    - world_peace42 5y ago
      Sorry, I know John Oliver et al informed me I must hate them, but I like both of them. I can only give you a list of great things that they've both done. Would that suffice?
      - random314 5y ago
        What's not to like about Apartheid?
        world_peace42 5y ago
        Do the people who think like you also pretend to care about the Jews very far from Israel being beaten due to your rhetoric?
        whydoibother 5y ago
        Violence is wrong. At the same time, actions have consequences. Perhaps the Israelis should have been worrying about the diaspora when they were lynching Palestinians in the street.
- kabirgoel 5y ago
  This comment and others on this thread are downright bizarre. It seems some get a perverse pleasure from seeing this ban happen in India, perhaps as a result of anger against what the platforms do in America. I’ve only ever seen this attitude on HN threads about China. It’s a little scary as an Indian to see people bring this rhetoric to India, as if clamping down on the free exchange of information is laudable. This ban isn’t because of some noble notions of protecting the public discourse. To the contrary, it seems the intention is to suppress it. It’s no secret that the Modi government is irked by criticisms of it on Twitter; it attempted to censor hundreds of tweets critical of its handling of the pandemic. Whatever the government may claim as its reasons for the (currently hypothetical) ban, it seems awfully convenient that it gets to remove the platforms which so many use to voice dissent. One of the benefits of social media platforms is that they insulate dissenters through anonymity, and the law precipitating this ban also threatens to undermine this power by making these platforms responsible for tracing the originators of information it deems unacceptable. This is not a country where you want the government to have this power. To give you an example of what could go wrong, people in Uttar Pradesh (an Indian state) have been harassed by cops just for asking for oxygen on Twitter and Instagram for their relatives dying of COVID-19. This was because the state government wanted to cover up oxygen shortages. You can just about expect that through this law, the government will be able to find and punish those spreading what it considers wrongthink. To your point, Indian public discourse is hardly "controlled by the moral pieties of the American elite class." Although there are in absolute numbers millions of Indians on these platforms, they are hardly a blip in the Indian population. Further, millions of Indians including myself also espouse Western values and subscribe to the “American social order” that comments in this thread implicitly refer to. Given that India is a free country, it isn’t for the government to decide whether this is good or bad, any more than the government should be able to decide which god I should worship or which school my kids should go to. India is already a massively heterogeneous country; no Indian is being forced to buy into “the moral pieties of the American elite class,” since these social media networks are strictly optional. But banning them will force people who believe similar things to find alternate places to express them, likely local alternatives where their views will be penalized. Personally, I use Twitter and Instagram to engage with people from around the world, and this will effectively restrict my ability to communicate with many of them. You can read more about the chilling effects of these laws in this post [1] by the Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian nonprofit. (One interesting byproduct of the fact that these laws require originators of information to be traceable is that they effectively constitute a ban on encryption, which I’m sure HN can appreciate is Not Good And Also Very Bad.) I don't expect that these laws will stand, since the reasoning behind them seems blatantly unconstitutional and contrary to the Indian constitution's protections for privacy and free expression. [1] https://internetfreedom.in/pound-the-alarm-the-clock-strikes-for-social-media-tomorrow-with-the-intermediaries-rules-coming-into-effect/ https://internetfreedom.in/pound-the-alarm-the-clock-strikes...
- Aperocky 5y ago
  > True, important information, e.g. that covid-19 may have originated in a Chinese lab. The irony.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  Do you just have to rant about the (unfounded and largely rejected by the scientific community) claim about covid lab leaks to get defense of internet censorship by an increasingly authoritarian Indian government upvoted to the top of hackernews? What the hell is going on
- random314 5y ago
  This has nothing to do with any lab leak. This is because fake news being published by the ruling government is being tagged as manipulated media. Calls to violence by the ruling government is also being removed. Pseudoscience covid19 cires by folks from and associated with the ruling party are also being tagged.
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  This is a really great argument for the ban, upvoted. But I disagree :)
  - armchairhacker 5y ago
    Here is my argument: I disagree because 1) in this specific case, it seems to be part of India suppressing information, and IMO India's suppression is a much larger issue than Facebook/Twitter/Instagram propagating controlled information (their suppression is different because there are other sites, vs. India cracks down on those other sites). 2) in the more general case, banning Facebook/Twitter/Instagram is controversial and there are more moderate approaches which are at least more practical. For example, you can better educate the public, or convince them to join your own site. It would be hard, sure, but forcing the public to quit Facebook/Twitter/Instagram without full-out rioting would be harder. Heck, you can "teach" children in schools that those sites are bad and the information there is wrong - I'm not arguing you should actually do that, but it would seriously threaten them while technically preserving free speech. If you aren't actually arguing for a full-scale ban (it was implied), then I 100% agree with what you said. --- Anyways, the main point of the above comment is to show that I'm glad such a great opinion is not only posted but it was top comment (unfortunately not anymore). It took me a long time to actually find a good argument against it even though it intuitively seemed so "wrong". I really wish this was more common on forums.
intricatedetail 5y ago
They are only negotiating the bribe. Nobody I going to ban them...
yawaworht1978 5y ago
Facebook has 5 offices in India, these could still be left operational. It would be nice to see a government clamp down on them, in the US this will never happen.
- puszczyk 5y ago
  Can you expand on what do you have in mind as “nice to see a government clampdown on the m [the 5 offices in India]”?
- smoldesu 5y ago
  What exactly would warrant a "clamp down" on Facebook's offices? Just because their app is banned doesn't mean that the government has the right to ransack their physical location.
cookiengineer 5y ago
Oh boi, this article is so horrible to read. So many grammar mistakes, it's hard to unsee them. Is this an autotranslated article? What is a lakh or crore as a unit?
- jdauriemma 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
- gipp 5y ago
  Lakh = 100k, crore = 10m. Extremely common in Indian English.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Conversely, Indian English is not extremely common outside of India
    - iammisc 5y ago
      This article is not written for international audiences.
- kaesar14 5y ago
  The time it took you to ask what a lakh or crore is in this comment was probably longer than googling what these units used by a billion people are.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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factorialboy 5y ago
So ... workplace productivity to possibly increase in India starting tomorrow?
maxrev17 5y ago
I wonder if a ban would really be all that effective at stopping people accessing these platforms? :s
- DSingularity 5y ago
  Yeah actually it would be. Not many are sophisticated enough to use things like TOR.
DSingularity 5y ago
Now that we are in the age of social media, we need a new or updated version of manufacturing consent.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Good. American technology companies have enjoyed a rules-free ride through economies and societies, both foreign and domestic. The power they hold, to control speech and influence people, is far too great. If they don't want to comply with the local law and government, then they can leave the market and let a local technology firm take their place. I see the advent of smaller local technology companies as a necessary move for other societies to retain their sovereignty and culture. Otherwise, the opinion shaping practiced by US tech companies is going to lead to cultural erasure as they impose their political values on the world. As for examples of how social media companies in particular shape public opinion, consider how Twitter banned Zero Hedge for many months for alleging the virus may have leaked from a lab. Now this hypothesis is mainstream, potentially only because it no longer a political tool in an intense election year. A more recent example of opinion shaping/propaganda is Facebook classifying and limiting visibility of comments that express hesitancy about vaccines (https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistleblowers-expose-leaked-internal-docs-detailing-new/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistl...). The plain reality is that these companies have government-like power in censoring and shaping public opinion, but are only accountable to themselves. That should be unacceptable to Americans, and doubly so to other nations.
tibbydudeza 5y ago
Only 17 million Twitter users in India - a blip to Jack.
- boruto 5y ago
  It sets a precedent.
temp8964 5y ago
Remember Twitter proactively banned the Hunter Biden story? The story URL and the NYPost account? The big techs have no shame in influencing U.S. politics. Of course government censorship is bad. I just have no sympathy to big techs who censor others.
smoldesu 5y ago
India's sudden fascist pivot is pretty troubling to see, and I only wonder how long it will be until the rest of the world starts to intervene. The only tragedy here is going to be the rights of the Indian citizen. I can't even begin to fathom how radical of a shift this would be for the global market, and I also don't really understand how the worlds most populated country will be okay with being cut off from uncensored information...
- jimsimmons 5y ago
  Sudden?!
- naruvimama 5y ago
  Correction there - censored information. Twitter does censorship and has accepted its left leaning.
- ridiculous_leke 5y ago
  > uncensored information On the contrary, these platforms are masssive cesspools of censored content.
cosmotic 5y ago
Oxford comma please, thanks.
amrrs 5y ago
This is another episode after Twitter offices in Delhi were raided by Delhi Police (that's in the control of Central Ruling Government) after Twitter labelled some of its (ruling party's) Tweets as "Manipulative" - https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-raid-twitter-tweets-government-manipulated-media https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-rai... IMO, This is more like a signal to threaten foreign companies (who anyways die to capture Indian market due to its startphone penetration and population) to comply with Government.
urmish 5y ago
It's interesting they might be banned not for allowing controversial content but rather selective censorship. It worked for these sites in the US, may not be tolerated elsewhere. Those using the f-word to describe the government, should know that the government wants full free speech, not the California controlled version of it.
- asenna 5y ago
  Did you just say the Modi Government wants full free speech? Wow. I really recommend looking up what the government's been doing just in the past few weeks. Spending the effort on trying to censor criticism instead of actually working on improving the Covid situation. https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/24/22400976/twitter-removed-tweets-critical-india-censor-coronavirus https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/24/22400976/twitter-removed-... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56883483 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56883483
reactspa 5y ago
I can't think of a better thing the govt can do for the country's youth than to ban TikTok and it's similars.
- asenna 5y ago
  Right. And I guess the government should also ban sugary products and being overweight or underweight. Or ban the reading books in a bad posture. /s
- choward 5y ago
  I can't think of a worse thing a government can do than censorship.
ridiculous_leke 5y ago
I don't see any reason why these companies should not be held responsible for the content that comes on their platform.
michaelmrose 5y ago
How does this work with the global nature of a website like Facebook? >requiring them to remove any content flagged by authorities within 36 hours Does this apply to content posted from an IP address located in India? Does it apply to content posted by a profile whose info states that they live in India regardless of where they connect from? If you don't want to be censored can you simply make a profile that lives elsewhere or connect via a vpn but friend all the same people? Is content expected to actually removed or is it merely not shown to users who either live in or appear to connect from a location where it has been "removed". Eg Bob in foo who doesn't believe in censoring sees a feed like 1. My friend had a great dinner out what a nice time 2. government of foo stinks they ought to take a long walk off a short pier 3. bar sucks too James in bar sees 1. My friend had a great dinner out what a nice time 2. government of foo stinks they ought to take a long walk off a short pier Sam in baz which wants to maintain a favorable relationship with foo and bar sees 1. My friend had a great dinner out what a nice time
fellellor 5y ago
Great news. I hope the government grows a spine and does it.
- random314 5y ago
  Twitter tagging fake news by the government as fake news is one line they should not have crossed.

109 points by zakember 5y ago

how grievance officer is helpful ?

I wonder if this is actually more significant than the equivalent bans in China. AFAIK none of these companies actually had a business presence in China prior to being banned. So noncompliance didn't risk any of their local workforce - they could just say no, we're not censoring anything, and get blocked by the Great Firewall. Twitter doesn't have to block anything on their end because the censorship is all on the China side. You'll notice on any sort of politically sensitive social media content (e.g, Taiwan) that Chinese are perfectly able to access and troll these sites via VPN. Twitter can also slap the "state media" tag on CGTN and they can't do anything about it. But FB has a huge presence in India and they can't just piss off that government without putting their employees at risk, as well as the sunk cost of their existing business. They'll actually have to block things on their end. You'll wind up with the same censorship-due-to-business-interests controversy that the NBA and other business operating in China have experienced over the past year.

throwaway8581 5y ago

No sane country can allow their public discourse to be controlled by the peculiar moral pieties of the American elite class. True, important information, e.g. that covid-19 may have originated in a Chinese lab, is actively suppressed by these platforms as part of an internal American struggle for control of information and ideas. Any people that value their own self-determination must reduce the influence of these manipulative platforms on their domestic market.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Yea, conspiracy theories are problematic. You can put "may" in any statement and it's technically true, doesn't mean facebook/twitter can't mark it as misleading.
- throwaway8581 5y ago
  The point is they dismissed it out of hand and banned anyone who said otherwise. Btw, liberal news outlets are finally admitting now that the lab leak hypothesis is probably right.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    People were banned for falsely asserting it was confirmed to be a lab leak. That's still a false assertion. I'm not aware of any major news outlet - liberal or otherwise - "finally admitting now that the lab leak hypothesis is probably right" at this point. The WSJ story the other day doesn't come close to that assertion yet.
    - throwaway8581 5y ago
      Funny that no one was banned for saying, as many did, that it was impossible for it to have come from a Chinese lab. Those asymmetries in enforcement always seem to lean in the same direction.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        It's a shame you're being downvoted, because you're exactly correct. I heard a lot of rhetoric around it being impossible that it was a lab leak. I thought it pretty unlikely, but claiming that it was impossible is just as misinformative as claiming it 100% was a lab leak.
        timeon 5y ago
        Can you give an example?
_vertigo 5y ago
I completely agree. By banning these networks, overall suppression of information will greatly decrease. With these platforms banned, it will be more easy for Indians to encounter information that challenges the dominant narrative of the elites. \s
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Wouldn't banning a massive centralised network lead to more people talking over smaller networks?
  - _vertigo 5y ago
    One would hope. But that is not what is going to happen. People do not talk over small networks because they are inconvenient due to their small size. It is more convenient to talk over large networks because there are more people to talk to. If you ban a massive centralized network, another one will take its place. It will certainly be smaller than Facebook, but no less centralized. And in this particular case, I would imagine that based on the Indian government's grievances with these American networks, information will almost certainly be less free on the replacement.
    - throwaway8581 5y ago
      But maybe it will be run by Indian people, who will enforce Indian values, and who are accountable to their Indian families and Indian peers and Indian law.
      - ivalm 5y ago
        In India Modi's government has a long history of subverting media and trying to use government powers to control narrative. I don't think totalitarianism (even though backed by the government) is a good option.
      - jdauriemma 5y ago
        If it's a for-profit enterprise, it will be run by people whose primary loyalty is to shareholders and their own pocketbooks.
jollybean 5y ago
Except in cases where they somewhat dysfunctional systems of FB and US are considerably more rational and functional than the local systems, which is unfortunately very often the case.
- actuator 5y ago
  I think we should stop asserting that what we perceive to be the right view is the right one for all. I am quite sure the local people there are not wishing for someone from outside to come and save them. This comment sounds a bit tone deaf.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    "I think we should stop asserting that what we perceive to be the right view is the right one for all." Nobody is asserting that, or even hinting at it. You have to have the most sensitive, assumptive and skeptical, upside reading of that to suggest that 'Having Facebook Available' as some kind of statement in support of 'One Truth'. Modi's government is one of the most corrupt and dysfunctional in thew world and becoming excessively authoritarian. Facebook, with it's obvious shortcomings, is one reasonably managed voice among many. On the whole, having a fairly open Facebook is considerably better than having a Completely Corrupt Modi Facebook. Facebook is not a tool or organ of the US and is not an organ of US state propaganda. While some of the 'New Rules' seem reasonable, others definitely do not, and have authoritarian implications [1] including direct government oversight over some forms of content. " I am quite sure the local people there are not wishing for someone from outside to come and save them." I'm pretty sure that people would like access to critical information wherever they are. I don't use FB, I don't care about it, but I would go to my first protest ever if my government tried to politicize it. [1] https://theprint.in/india/governance/modi-govt-announces-tough-new-rules-to-regulate-social-media-ott-platforms-digital-news/611792/ https://theprint.in/india/governance/modi-govt-announces-tou...
  - kabirgoel 5y ago
    India is an incredibly diverse country; "local people" isn't a meaningful term. As an Indian, I agree with the parent comment that Facebook and Twitter work well in comparison to local systems. Pointing this out isn't tone deaf in the least.
chrononaut 5y ago
I am having difficulty deconstructing your argument. Is it since you believe that these platforms are suppressing some plausibly truthful content, all content on these platforms / the platforms themselves should be suppressed?
- throwaway8581 5y ago
  No, it's because the platform policies enforce a foreign social order. In America, we have our own pieties and taboos and these social media platforms heavily enforce them. Transgenderism, homosexuality, racial equality, gender roles, not every country holds American or European views on those, but those are the only views that are fully allowed on American social media platforms. India has its own social order. Why should it let its online discourse be controlled by the American social order?
  - vijaybritto 5y ago
    What do you think is the social order in India?
    - spiderice 5y ago
      How is this relevant to GP's point?
      - Mordisquitos 5y ago
        GP is defending the possibility of the Indian Government banning Facebook, Twitter & Instagram on the basis that these platforms are "enforcing" some very particular issues that happen to be currently salient in certain American media, and implies that they are counter to India's social order. However, at no point does the linked article make any mention of the Indian Government being concerned about any of these issues nor social order in general, so asking GP about their thoughts on the current social order in India, which is purportedly being "controlled" by these American platforms, is very relevant.
      - vijaybritto 5y ago
bigpumpkin 5y ago
Except the evidence that the virus came from a lab leak is provided by the American government, the arguments are constructed by Americans, and the news leaked and propagated by the American press and American social media networks. The other side of the debate use the same American tools. This is more a civil war in American discourse between the liberals and conservatives than anything else.
- JI00912 5y ago
  Perhaps it appears that way to you because you follow American sources?
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jdauriemma 5y ago
You would have a point in an alternate universe where the Indian government is a credible guardian of whatever we might deem public discourse. In this universe, there are no good guys in this conflict.
- throwaway8581 5y ago
  No good guys but the oligarchic silicon valley information complex is a definite bad guy that crowds out competing platforms where alternative views might flourish.
  - jdauriemma 5y ago
    No argument here, but I don't think the Modi government constitutes a competing platform.
    - urmish 5y ago
      Indian media existed before Facebook and twitter.
      - jdauriemma 5y ago
        And if they were the ones trying to shut down Facebook et al. then that would be relevant.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    The only competition out there is going to abuse India's market and create an even worse paradigm shift. Newer platforms will be forced to be monitored/moderated by the state instead of a third party, which invites political oppression and censorship on a scale that's hard to fathom.
- boruto 5y ago
  I know I will be downvoted to oblivion., Rather than Twitter I would rather have the public discourse which is guarded by Indian Govt/ Judiciary, parliament and media irrespective of the spectrum to which they have a bias. If tomorrow, I say something religious in nature, would such a thing be banned by some person in California who decides it is not rational thought?
JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
What's Facebook's angle for discouraging the view that Covid may have originated from a lab? E.g, what do they gain from this perspective? Sidenote: because it was being suppressed, I genuinely believed it was fringe theory. I didn't weigh the merits, that is, I considered the filter to just be the truth (because it seemed genuinely reasonable to conclude it was fringe, just because there is so much misinformation out there). My internal metric is: "Does this seem tin foil hat-y?" And I concluded "yes", and moved on. It was a concerning introspection of how I personally evaluate news.
- throwaway8581 5y ago
  They face a hostile media and political complex, as well as several thousand aggressively activist employees, that all demand that right-wing information be suppressed. If Facebook doesn't do what those groups demand, they will be smeared in the media, suffer internal strife, and face punitive antitrust probes. And of course, many tech executive are true believers in left-wing politics and like that they can use their positions to advance those ideas.
  - ecommerceguy 5y ago
    Alot of those activist employees actively suppress non-progressive talking points on hn. Can I prove that with data as Dang has asked me to do...? Only if I have access to the logs is my answer.
- ihsw 5y ago
  At the time, it gave air to Trump's 2020 election campaign ("orange man bad"). Now, it's an excuse to take the air out of conservative political sentiment.
- slg 5y ago
  It was a fringe theory pushed largely but not exclusively by racists and opportunists that wanted to paint China as the bad guy and shield the previous administration and other politicians from blame for how they reacted to the pandemic. Totally independent of that, the general scientific community seemed to be much more opposed to the lab theory early on than they are now. It still doesn't appear to be much evidence for it beyond circumstantial stuff, but it is a possibility that more people are engaging with. Combine these two and it isn't surprising that these platforms cracked down on this type of talk early and are slow to allowing it to start happening again.
ipsum2 5y ago
How does this relate to the article?
- boreas 5y ago
  It's very interesting, the comment you replied to seems to be using a typical free speech canard in support of increasing censorship. Their argument doesn't seem relevant to the policy discussed in the article at all.
tomjen3 5y ago
The problem here is that banning those platforms (but not whatsapp for some reason?) will not increase the amount of discussion and information available to the people of India.
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world_peace42 5y ago
Heartened to see this at the top. I was expecting to see something like “Gasp! Modi is as bad as the Netanyahu/Hitler!” It’s almost as the rest of the world are not interested in being inundated with the Californian Elite’s warped ideas/ideological doctrine. As an American, it’s obvious now we are a declining power, and one can’t ignore how tech giants have accelerated that. Sensible countries, like India, are right to reject Facebook’s influence (and no, although many will disagree, this is not proof that India is a failed democracy/nazi state).
- iudqnolq 5y ago
  What's something bad Netanyahu has done that Modi hasn't?
  - world_peace42 5y ago
    Sorry, I know John Oliver et al informed me I must hate them, but I like both of them. I can only give you a list of great things that they've both done. Would that suffice?
    - random314 5y ago
      What's not to like about Apartheid?
      - world_peace42 5y ago
        Do the people who think like you also pretend to care about the Jews very far from Israel being beaten due to your rhetoric?
        whydoibother 5y ago
        Violence is wrong. At the same time, actions have consequences. Perhaps the Israelis should have been worrying about the diaspora when they were lynching Palestinians in the street.
kabirgoel 5y ago
This comment and others on this thread are downright bizarre. It seems some get a perverse pleasure from seeing this ban happen in India, perhaps as a result of anger against what the platforms do in America. I’ve only ever seen this attitude on HN threads about China. It’s a little scary as an Indian to see people bring this rhetoric to India, as if clamping down on the free exchange of information is laudable. This ban isn’t because of some noble notions of protecting the public discourse. To the contrary, it seems the intention is to suppress it. It’s no secret that the Modi government is irked by criticisms of it on Twitter; it attempted to censor hundreds of tweets critical of its handling of the pandemic. Whatever the government may claim as its reasons for the (currently hypothetical) ban, it seems awfully convenient that it gets to remove the platforms which so many use to voice dissent. One of the benefits of social media platforms is that they insulate dissenters through anonymity, and the law precipitating this ban also threatens to undermine this power by making these platforms responsible for tracing the originators of information it deems unacceptable. This is not a country where you want the government to have this power. To give you an example of what could go wrong, people in Uttar Pradesh (an Indian state) have been harassed by cops just for asking for oxygen on Twitter and Instagram for their relatives dying of COVID-19. This was because the state government wanted to cover up oxygen shortages. You can just about expect that through this law, the government will be able to find and punish those spreading what it considers wrongthink. To your point, Indian public discourse is hardly "controlled by the moral pieties of the American elite class." Although there are in absolute numbers millions of Indians on these platforms, they are hardly a blip in the Indian population. Further, millions of Indians including myself also espouse Western values and subscribe to the “American social order” that comments in this thread implicitly refer to. Given that India is a free country, it isn’t for the government to decide whether this is good or bad, any more than the government should be able to decide which god I should worship or which school my kids should go to. India is already a massively heterogeneous country; no Indian is being forced to buy into “the moral pieties of the American elite class,” since these social media networks are strictly optional. But banning them will force people who believe similar things to find alternate places to express them, likely local alternatives where their views will be penalized. Personally, I use Twitter and Instagram to engage with people from around the world, and this will effectively restrict my ability to communicate with many of them. You can read more about the chilling effects of these laws in this post [1] by the Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian nonprofit. (One interesting byproduct of the fact that these laws require originators of information to be traceable is that they effectively constitute a ban on encryption, which I’m sure HN can appreciate is Not Good And Also Very Bad.) I don't expect that these laws will stand, since the reasoning behind them seems blatantly unconstitutional and contrary to the Indian constitution's protections for privacy and free expression. [1] https://internetfreedom.in/pound-the-alarm-the-clock-strikes-for-social-media-tomorrow-with-the-intermediaries-rules-coming-into-effect/ https://internetfreedom.in/pound-the-alarm-the-clock-strikes...
Aperocky 5y ago
> True, important information, e.g. that covid-19 may have originated in a Chinese lab. The irony.
Barrin92 5y ago
Do you just have to rant about the (unfounded and largely rejected by the scientific community) claim about covid lab leaks to get defense of internet censorship by an increasingly authoritarian Indian government upvoted to the top of hackernews? What the hell is going on
random314 5y ago
This has nothing to do with any lab leak. This is because fake news being published by the ruling government is being tagged as manipulated media. Calls to violence by the ruling government is also being removed. Pseudoscience covid19 cires by folks from and associated with the ruling party are also being tagged.
armchairhacker 5y ago
This is a really great argument for the ban, upvoted. But I disagree :)
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  Here is my argument: I disagree because 1) in this specific case, it seems to be part of India suppressing information, and IMO India's suppression is a much larger issue than Facebook/Twitter/Instagram propagating controlled information (their suppression is different because there are other sites, vs. India cracks down on those other sites). 2) in the more general case, banning Facebook/Twitter/Instagram is controversial and there are more moderate approaches which are at least more practical. For example, you can better educate the public, or convince them to join your own site. It would be hard, sure, but forcing the public to quit Facebook/Twitter/Instagram without full-out rioting would be harder. Heck, you can "teach" children in schools that those sites are bad and the information there is wrong - I'm not arguing you should actually do that, but it would seriously threaten them while technically preserving free speech. If you aren't actually arguing for a full-scale ban (it was implied), then I 100% agree with what you said. --- Anyways, the main point of the above comment is to show that I'm glad such a great opinion is not only posted but it was top comment (unfortunately not anymore). It took me a long time to actually find a good argument against it even though it intuitively seemed so "wrong". I really wish this was more common on forums.

intricatedetail 5y ago

They are only negotiating the bribe. Nobody I going to ban them...

yawaworht1978 5y ago

Facebook has 5 offices in India, these could still be left operational. It would be nice to see a government clamp down on them, in the US this will never happen.

puszczyk 5y ago
Can you expand on what do you have in mind as “nice to see a government clampdown on the m [the 5 offices in India]”?
smoldesu 5y ago
What exactly would warrant a "clamp down" on Facebook's offices? Just because their app is banned doesn't mean that the government has the right to ransack their physical location.

cookiengineer 5y ago

Oh boi, this article is so horrible to read. So many grammar mistakes, it's hard to unsee them. Is this an autotranslated article? What is a lakh or crore as a unit?

jdauriemma 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
gipp 5y ago
Lakh = 100k, crore = 10m. Extremely common in Indian English.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Conversely, Indian English is not extremely common outside of India
  - iammisc 5y ago
    This article is not written for international audiences.
kaesar14 5y ago
The time it took you to ask what a lakh or crore is in this comment was probably longer than googling what these units used by a billion people are.
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factorialboy 5y ago

So ... workplace productivity to possibly increase in India starting tomorrow?

maxrev17 5y ago

I wonder if a ban would really be all that effective at stopping people accessing these platforms? :s

DSingularity 5y ago
Yeah actually it would be. Not many are sophisticated enough to use things like TOR.

DSingularity 5y ago

Now that we are in the age of social media, we need a new or updated version of manufacturing consent.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Good. American technology companies have enjoyed a rules-free ride through economies and societies, both foreign and domestic. The power they hold, to control speech and influence people, is far too great. If they don't want to comply with the local law and government, then they can leave the market and let a local technology firm take their place. I see the advent of smaller local technology companies as a necessary move for other societies to retain their sovereignty and culture. Otherwise, the opinion shaping practiced by US tech companies is going to lead to cultural erasure as they impose their political values on the world. As for examples of how social media companies in particular shape public opinion, consider how Twitter banned Zero Hedge for many months for alleging the virus may have leaked from a lab. Now this hypothesis is mainstream, potentially only because it no longer a political tool in an intense election year. A more recent example of opinion shaping/propaganda is Facebook classifying and limiting visibility of comments that express hesitancy about vaccines (https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistleblowers-expose-leaked-internal-docs-detailing-new/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistl...). The plain reality is that these companies have government-like power in censoring and shaping public opinion, but are only accountable to themselves. That should be unacceptable to Americans, and doubly so to other nations.

tibbydudeza 5y ago

Only 17 million Twitter users in India - a blip to Jack.

boruto 5y ago
It sets a precedent.

temp8964 5y ago

Remember Twitter proactively banned the Hunter Biden story? The story URL and the NYPost account? The big techs have no shame in influencing U.S. politics. Of course government censorship is bad. I just have no sympathy to big techs who censor others.

smoldesu 5y ago

India's sudden fascist pivot is pretty troubling to see, and I only wonder how long it will be until the rest of the world starts to intervene. The only tragedy here is going to be the rights of the Indian citizen. I can't even begin to fathom how radical of a shift this would be for the global market, and I also don't really understand how the worlds most populated country will be okay with being cut off from uncensored information...

jimsimmons 5y ago
Sudden?!
naruvimama 5y ago
Correction there - censored information. Twitter does censorship and has accepted its left leaning.
ridiculous_leke 5y ago
> uncensored information On the contrary, these platforms are masssive cesspools of censored content.

cosmotic 5y ago

Oxford comma please, thanks.

amrrs 5y ago

This is another episode after Twitter offices in Delhi were raided by Delhi Police (that's in the control of Central Ruling Government) after Twitter labelled some of its (ruling party's) Tweets as "Manipulative" - https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-raid-twitter-tweets-government-manipulated-media https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451271/police-india-rai... IMO, This is more like a signal to threaten foreign companies (who anyways die to capture Indian market due to its startphone penetration and population) to comply with Government.

urmish 5y ago

It's interesting they might be banned not for allowing controversial content but rather selective censorship. It worked for these sites in the US, may not be tolerated elsewhere. Those using the f-word to describe the government, should know that the government wants full free speech, not the California controlled version of it.

asenna 5y ago
Did you just say the Modi Government wants full free speech? Wow. I really recommend looking up what the government's been doing just in the past few weeks. Spending the effort on trying to censor criticism instead of actually working on improving the Covid situation. https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/24/22400976/twitter-removed-tweets-critical-india-censor-coronavirus https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/24/22400976/twitter-removed-... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56883483 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56883483

reactspa 5y ago

I can't think of a better thing the govt can do for the country's youth than to ban TikTok and it's similars.

asenna 5y ago
Right. And I guess the government should also ban sugary products and being overweight or underweight. Or ban the reading books in a bad posture. /s
choward 5y ago
I can't think of a worse thing a government can do than censorship.

ridiculous_leke 5y ago

I don't see any reason why these companies should not be held responsible for the content that comes on their platform.

michaelmrose 5y ago

How does this work with the global nature of a website like Facebook? >requiring them to remove any content flagged by authorities within 36 hours Does this apply to content posted from an IP address located in India? Does it apply to content posted by a profile whose info states that they live in India regardless of where they connect from? If you don't want to be censored can you simply make a profile that lives elsewhere or connect via a vpn but friend all the same people? Is content expected to actually removed or is it merely not shown to users who either live in or appear to connect from a location where it has been "removed". Eg Bob in foo who doesn't believe in censoring sees a feed like 1. My friend had a great dinner out what a nice time 2. government of foo stinks they ought to take a long walk off a short pier 3. bar sucks too James in bar sees 1. My friend had a great dinner out what a nice time 2. government of foo stinks they ought to take a long walk off a short pier Sam in baz which wants to maintain a favorable relationship with foo and bar sees 1. My friend had a great dinner out what a nice time

fellellor 5y ago

Great news. I hope the government grows a spine and does it.

random314 5y ago
Twitter tagging fake news by the government as fake news is one line they should not have crossed.