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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. t
by 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 agoYea, 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 agoThe 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 agoPeople 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 agoFunny 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 agoIt'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 agoCan you give an example?
- therealjumbo 5y agoFacebook banned a New York Post story that was factual and not inflammatory: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/548612-facebook-prevents-sharing-of-new-york-post-black-lives-matter-story https://thehill.com/homenews/media/548612-facebook-prevents-... So people or stories get banned even if they are true for some other reasons. You don't know what those reasons are, and they may change going forward.
- vharuck 5y agoDo you have a link to the New York Post story? I didn't see a link in the article you shared, and Facebook's claim was that the NYP story included a person's home address(es).
- ceejayoz 5y agoFacebook banned that story - as clearly stated in the article - for doxxing someone's private address. They've done this for years, as has Twitter (example from 2017: https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/03/technology/business/twitter-content-moderation-policy-updates/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/03/technology/business/twitter...). https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/privacy_violations_image_rights https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/privacy_violatio... > We remove content that shares, offers or solicits personally identifiable information or other private information that could lead to physical or financial harm, including financial, residential and medical information, as well as private information obtained from illegal sources.
- vxNsr 5y agoThat’s simply false. They don’t block stories that doxx people’s private addresses, their policies are enforced unequally and only when it suites their own political agenda, whatever that may be. Pretending they’re being fair, when you know they’re not is gaslighting. You may think it’s ok for them to apply their policies unequally, and dishonestly; that’s another discussion, but please don’t act like what they’re doing is fair or honest. The biggest example of them not blocking doxxing was the implicit help in spreading the Parlar hacked data. I know of fb devs who participated in spreading it. It can also be very easily argued that the leader of the BLM movement is a public figure and sharing her home address is not doxxing. And I’m sure that argument has been used to allow sharing private info of similar public figures who Facebook’s progressive devs didn’t care for.
- spiderice 5y ago> People were banned for falsely asserting it was confirmed to be a lab leak This is such a false spin on what was actually happening. It was only a year ago. It isn't hard to remember. People were banned/downvoted to oblivion for merely suggesting the lab leak was a credible theory, not for claiming it was definitely the 100% truth. Stop gaslighting.
- ceejayoz 5y agoI don't find it hard to remember, and conflating downvotes and bans as if they're the same thing is disingenuous.
- throwaway3699 5y agoConspiracy theories sometimes turn out to just be conspiracies. That's why we need to be able to talk about them. I'm not qualified to say if the lab leak has any credence, but it wouldn't be the first time the powers at be have been wrong. Just look at the classic "WMDs in the Middle East" rhetoric that lead us to war.
- kelnos 5y agoI don't think the WMD thing was anyone being wrong; rather it was a deliberate lie to justify a war that was wanted for other reasons. But agreed in general; I think there's a lot of political opposition on the left to the lab-leak theory, in no small part because Trump pushed so hard to blame the Chinese for the virus while in office. Even if unlikely, a lab leak is far from impossible as a cause, and we should talk about it and explore it until evidence conclusively rules it out.
- moralestapia 5y ago>Yea, conspiracy theories are problematic. Are they? It's easy to walk down the slippery road that leads to authoritarian behaviors.
- colinmhayes 5y agoObviously problematic is a spectrum. Banning them is problematic too. But yes, conspiracy theories are problematic. They lead to poorly informed decisions such as anti-vac and asian discrimination and anti-semitism.
- PureParadigm 5y agoSome conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Suppressing research into these would also lead to poorly informed decisions. For example, government mass surveillance on the scale revealed by Snowden was considered a conspiracy theory before the proof emerged. So I would disagree that "conspiracy theories are problematic." Some are problematic, but there are also some that turn out to be extremely important. No progress is made without questioning authority and the status quo.
- colinmhayes 5y agoNeeding to have evidence to not have your theory marked as misleading doesn't disincentivize research into conspiracies. It does the opposite. There would be more research into these theories so that their purveyors could say them without being labeled misleading. Anyone would still be able to do their own research under this model too, they would hopefully just know not to blindly believe what they read. Investigating wrongdoing and backing up findings with evidence is extremely important. Spouting unfounded lies is not.
- PureParadigm 5y agoThe bigger problem is when platforms block the content. In this case very few people will hear about the conspiracy theory. So then few will know that this is something worth investigating. This dramatically hinders research into the (potentially true) conspiracy theory. I have less of a problem with marking things as unfounded if they are actually unfounded. I wouldn't use the term misleading because not all unfounded claims are false. There's still a lot of gray area here. Maybe the person in charge of making those judgements is not a subject matter expert. Or maybe the person making the claim has some additional information that cannot be revealed. (Perhaps they are inside the organization and cannot leak too much or they will be caught.) I would set the bar for marking things as misleading as requiring evidence to the contrary. I think it is fine to mark things as lacking evidence, as long as that can be established fairly and reliably. I have my doubts that this can be done reliably, but as long as there is no blocking occurring, I think the harm of a mistake is minimized. Anyone claiming to be an impartial subject matter expert capable of making these judgements should provide evidence of that claim.
- boruto 5y agoThanks to Ministry of truth at Twitter, I feel so much protected from conspiracy theories online.
- tomjen3 5y agoIs it misleading to say that the CIA did mind control experiments on US citizens and that it lead to domestic terrorism? Is it misleading to say that a group of doctors conspired to ensure that black Americans died of a disease they could have cured, just so that they could study their effects? Because those are conspiracy theories, and they are both true.
- pjc50 5y agoThings which have actual evidence get to move from "conspiracy theory" to "fact".
- _vertigo 5y agoI 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 agoWouldn't banning a massive centralised network lead to more people talking over smaller networks?
- _vertigo 5y agoOne 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 agoBut 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 agoIn 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 agoIf it's a for-profit enterprise, it will be run by people whose primary loyalty is to shareholders and their own pocketbooks.
- jollybean 5y agoExcept 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 agoI 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 agoIndia 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 agoI 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 agoNo, 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 agoWhat do you think is the social order in India?
- spiderice 5y agoHow is this relevant to GP's point?
- Mordisquitos 5y agoGP 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 agoExcept 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 agoPerhaps it appears that way to you because you follow American sources?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jdauriemma 5y agoYou 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 agoNo 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 agoNo argument here, but I don't think the Modi government constitutes a competing platform.
- urmish 5y agoIndian media existed before Facebook and twitter.
- jdauriemma 5y agoAnd if they were the ones trying to shut down Facebook et al. then that would be relevant.
- smoldesu 5y agoThe 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 agoI 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 agoWhat'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 agoThey 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 agoAlot 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 agoAt 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 agoIt 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 agoHow does this relate to the article?
- boreas 5y agoIt'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 agoThe 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 agoHeartened 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 agoWhat's something bad Netanyahu has done that Modi hasn't?
- world_peace42 5y agoSorry, 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 agoWhat's not to like about Apartheid?
- world_peace42 5y agoDo 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 agoViolence 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 agoThis 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 agoDo 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 agoThis 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 agoThis is a really great argument for the ban, upvoted. But I disagree :)
- armchairhacker 5y agoHere 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.