Is India Setting a 'Global Standard' for Online Censorship of Social Media? (msn.com) 63
With 1.4 billion people, India is the second most-populous country in the world.
But a new article in the Washington Post alleges that India has "set a global standard for online censorship." For years, a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At the "69A meetings," as the secretive gatherings were informally called, officials from India's information, technology, security and intelligence agencies presented social media posts they wanted removed, citing threats to India's sovereignty and national security, executives and officials who were present recalled. The tech representatives sometimes pushed back in the name of free speech...
But two years ago, these interactions took a fateful turn. Where officials had once asked for a handful of tweets to be removed at each meeting, they now insisted that entire accounts be taken down, and numbers were running in the hundreds. Executives who refused the government's demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market. New regulations had been adopted that year to hold tech employees in India criminally liable for failing to comply with takedown requests, a provision that executives referred to as a "hostage provision." After authorities dispatched anti-terrorism police to Twitter's New Delhi office, Twitter whisked its top India executive out of the country, fearing his arrest, former company employees recounted.
Indian officials say they have accomplished something long overdue: strengthening national laws to bring disobedient foreign companies to heel... Digital and human rights advocates warn that India has perfected the use of regulations to stifle online dissent and already inspired governments in countries as varied as Nigeria and Myanmar to craft similar legal frameworks, at times with near-identical language. India's success in taming internet companies has set off "regulatory contagion" across the world, according to Prateek Waghre, a policy director at India's Internet Freedom Foundation...
Despite the huge size of China's market, companies like Twitter and Facebook were forced to steer clear of the country because Beijing's rules would have required them to spy on users. That left India as the largest potential growth market. Silicon Valley companies were already committed to doing business in India before the government began to tighten its regulations, and today say they have little choice but to obey if they want to remain there.
The Post spoke to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy technology minister in the BJP government who oversees many of the new regulations, who argued "The shift was really simple: We've defined the laws, defined the rules, and we have said there is zero tolerance to any noncompliance with the Indian law...
"You don't like the law? Don't operate in India," Chandrasekhar added. "There is very little wiggle room."
But a new article in the Washington Post alleges that India has "set a global standard for online censorship." For years, a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At the "69A meetings," as the secretive gatherings were informally called, officials from India's information, technology, security and intelligence agencies presented social media posts they wanted removed, citing threats to India's sovereignty and national security, executives and officials who were present recalled. The tech representatives sometimes pushed back in the name of free speech...
But two years ago, these interactions took a fateful turn. Where officials had once asked for a handful of tweets to be removed at each meeting, they now insisted that entire accounts be taken down, and numbers were running in the hundreds. Executives who refused the government's demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market. New regulations had been adopted that year to hold tech employees in India criminally liable for failing to comply with takedown requests, a provision that executives referred to as a "hostage provision." After authorities dispatched anti-terrorism police to Twitter's New Delhi office, Twitter whisked its top India executive out of the country, fearing his arrest, former company employees recounted.
Indian officials say they have accomplished something long overdue: strengthening national laws to bring disobedient foreign companies to heel... Digital and human rights advocates warn that India has perfected the use of regulations to stifle online dissent and already inspired governments in countries as varied as Nigeria and Myanmar to craft similar legal frameworks, at times with near-identical language. India's success in taming internet companies has set off "regulatory contagion" across the world, according to Prateek Waghre, a policy director at India's Internet Freedom Foundation...
Despite the huge size of China's market, companies like Twitter and Facebook were forced to steer clear of the country because Beijing's rules would have required them to spy on users. That left India as the largest potential growth market. Silicon Valley companies were already committed to doing business in India before the government began to tighten its regulations, and today say they have little choice but to obey if they want to remain there.
The Post spoke to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy technology minister in the BJP government who oversees many of the new regulations, who argued "The shift was really simple: We've defined the laws, defined the rules, and we have said there is zero tolerance to any noncompliance with the Indian law...
"You don't like the law? Don't operate in India," Chandrasekhar added. "There is very little wiggle room."
1984 is here (Score:3)
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now they won't be able to request one to show vegana
Makes sense (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: Makes sense (Score:1)
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I agree with most of this except:
"yelling fire in a crowded theatre"
https://www.popehat.com/2012/0... [popehat.com]
Yes, you can. At least in the US.
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You can also be held accountable for any harm that people experience as a result of your doing so. Reckless endangerment is a crime.
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Man, it's a bit of a stretch to extend "reckless endangerment" to speech.
Yelling fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire is reckless endangerment. You can stop with the quotes. You're not being edgy.
Reckless endgarment [uslegal.com] is:
a crime consisting of acts that create a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person. The accused person isn't required to intend the resulting or potential harm, but must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions.
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Man, it's a bit of a stretch to extend "reckless endangerment" to speech.
The crime is not the speech (in the USA), but the consequences of the actions which result from the speech.
People don't panic over "Fire!" in an crowded space like they did a hundred years ago (when such things killed hundreds, burned half of Chicago, etc.)
A more modern example would be shouting "He's got a gun!" or "Shooter" at a crowded club, or synagogue, or school... people panic, get hurt/killed -and you get prosecuted.
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Free speech has always been about the government restric
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All of your examples would be civil offenses. In other words any court case won't be State v. Person.
Reckless endangerment is a misdemeanor in every state in the USA. You could be sued civilly as well. Those are separate, but not exclusionary actions.
Free speech has always been about the government restricting what you can say in some way.
Free speech is about political activities (criticizing the government for example) and no prior restraint. Not freedom from consequences of speech. You are free to talk, right up until it actually causes a problem.
If you don't understand the difference, hire a lawyer to explain it to you.
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Good on you for highlighting this point. Of course you can yell, "fire" in a crowded theater. Go ahead and do it the next time you're at the multiplex (well ... if you still go to a multiplex, that is.) No one is going to arrest you. They might turn around and look at you, that's about it.
Why won't you be arrested? Because what is illegal is causing actual harm to others. If by your speech you cause another person to be immediately put into danger or at risk, then your speech is deemed equivalent to an act
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Because what is illegal is causing actual harm to others.
Nope. See my above comment regarding reckless endangerment. Simply creating the risk of injury is enough. No actual harm need be done.
It is the act that gets you into trouble in the US. Not the speech.
Wrong again. The speech is the act which creates or leads to the harm.
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But that last sentence is a doozy. First off, it’s not a given that “they know best”. It’s absolutely none of my business to tell them what to do, but plenty of countries claim sovereignty and then promptly shoot themselves in bot
Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
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Then why do people pick and choose? This country can define it's own rules, no matter how abhorrent the rules are, but this other country cannot do that because they're an adversary.
Yes, of course a sovereign country can define its own rules - that does not compel everyone to shut up and not criticize however! When you see bad governance, then speak up and call them out for it. Don't excuse it just because some companies want to make a profit in a regressive country.
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Sorry, the fact that you wrote this sentence proves that you know nothing about the region of the world where India is located. You are quite clearly transferring an inappropriate geopolitic worldview centered on threats to the US. India has in fact quite different enemies.
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China is easier to spell than Pakistan.
Although they are in a long running "warmish" war with China. You can't dismiss China as an ongoing rival.
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India has in fact quite different enemies.
Which is why China and India have been having skirmishes [bbc.com].
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They like to call themselves a democracy, but you can't have real democracy without free speech.
Not that the USA is a real democracy either, what with all the corporate money and corporate-written bills in our government, but that doesn't change the principle.
Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
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There is a large Sikh (and Hindi) population here in Canada with some (many?) backing an independent Sikh nation that India considers terrorists with some evidence that the Indian government arranged the assassination of one of the leaders. India does take this seriously and would try to cut them off from communicating. We also had a lot of Farmers protests the other year, they were more visible then BLM protests though mostly driving around slowly in trucks and tractors, something else the current Indian g
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Does that include protection for slander and libel?
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Libel and slander you deal with by accountability, not censorship. That is different. Incidentally, for example, copyright-infringement is also not dealt with by censorship, but accountability. Same for publishing private information. Or for publishing ways to build a bomb or attack some system. Hence your statement has no merit.
More concrete example: "Mein Kampf" is not allowed to be published in the non-commented Original in Germany. It is not censored though. It is simply that the Bavarian state holds th
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We deal with censorship of "unwelcome thoughts" via accountability, too. If the powers that be don't like what you say they ban you. That is a punishment. In most cases it is permanent.
My statement has full merit. You just don't care to see it. Or maybe you're just unaware of the bannings dictated by the government in scheduled secret meetings with the social media companies.
So if I were to slander/libel someone they could delete my post, which is censorship. They could also ban me which is definitely
@dotslashdo: Ethnocentric and colonialist /s (Score:2)
@dotslashdot [slashdot.org]: “India and other countries are sovereign and have the right to enforce laws based on their local situation. We cannot apply our cultural standards to another country. Nor is the US entitled to their markets. The tone of this post is very ethnocentric and colonialist. Even in the US, we have similar
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So India has
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
India and other countries are sovereign and have the right to enforce laws based on their local situation.
Absolutely. Of course, people and companies also have the right to complain, criticize, and act for their own benefit. Well, at least they do in free countries. The Indian government is moving in the direction of copying China and squelching speech that they disapprove of. Yes, this is their right, just like China. The big question is when India will trigger the same corporate withdrawal that has happened in China.
We cannot apply our cultural standards to another country.
Of course we can and should. The idea that in talking about another country, one should use the cultural standards of that country is nonsensical. Should we tell the Indians to use American sensibilities when talking about the US? Americans can think and say and criticize whatever they want of any country in the world, just like how the Indians can do same. The idea that one country cannot criticize another is one that most people in the Western world would reject.
Nor is the US entitled to their markets. The tone of this post is very ethnocentric and colonialist.
Yes, the US and other countries have absolutely no entitlement to Indian markets. They can obey Indian laws or leave the Indian market. However, this behavior by American companies to complain and try to find the wiggle room for their own benefit is exactly what they do in the US. There's no part that is ethnocentric or colonialist.
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Obviously anyone even playing at statehood has the ability to do more or less whatever; but just shouting "Sovereign!" "Cultural Standards!" "Internal Issue!" is irrelevant to the question of how we characterize what is being done with the available power.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is not ethnocentrist, it is critical of a distinct political power that has grabbed ahold of India, it is not blaming Indians themselves. What is in India today is a very weak democracy with an authoritarian party in charge. This is not "cultural standards" because India twenty years ago had more rights than they do now.
This excuse of yours "it's not in their culture" has been around for ages, and frankly it's just wrong; an insult to a people disguised as an excuse for bad governance.
India not second anymore (Score:4, Informative)
https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review.com]
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Their "live" numbers are nothing but estimates and projections, so this should be taken with a grain of salt. It is likely they have taken first place, but until official census numbers come out, we cannot be sure.
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Well, there was this coming, looking at the former numbers for dynamics, so it happened - it seems /. was reporting, as there is link pointed around too.
Let's get it set and used to.
Seems like it's all been a lie we tell children (Score:4, Insightful)
Free speech? Pluralism? Meritocracy?
Doesn't look like anyone with any kind of power or influence wants to go out on a limb to defend these things. And we're defaulting back to the old rule: whoever has the right connections gets to do as they please and everyone else pretends to like it.
Shame. But I suppose it's too much to expect that Roddenberry's New Mankind would spring into existence a few short generations after some of the bloodiest ethnic conflicts on record just because we have smartphones in our pockets.
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Democracy, self rule, and general freedom is bad for profits and inconvenient for government. Free speech leads to accountability and is downright annoying for those in power. It is then no wonder that they would want to silence all this.
What we had going for us previously was that the people were (somewhat) paying attention and would make noise if these things were threatened.
The problem we have now is everyone has their heads down watching their phones so they don't see what they don't see.
Not that it matters, but (Score:4, Informative)
With 1.4 billion people, India is the second most-populous country in the world.
India is in fact the most populous country in the world [slashdot.org].
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They are estimated to be 1st but are not officially recognized as such yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Leave India (Score:4, Insightful)
"You don't like the law? Don't operate in India...."
Companies from Free countries leaving India seems like a very rational thing to do at this point.
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For a company the rational thing is to follow the law and make the money. Take note of the fact that the right thing to do and the rational thing to do are not necessarily the same thing, much less so the further up you go. Usually this boils down to the rational thing being advancing your self-interest, and the right thing to do being advancing societal interest, and rarely anybody who has anything to win or lose choosing the latter.
The Holocaust was run on IBM hardware and washed down by Fanta. It was ver
Welp (Score:2)
Good thing that India has next to zero redeeming qualities other than sheer workforce.
And to those that say we cannot apply our culture to theirs, that is true. However, censorship, in this form, has nothing to do with culture. It's only about control and nothing else.
Re: Welp (Score:2)
What ? Shitting in the street, gang raping and murdering any solitary female they can find, and blatantly lying about their education and experience not good enough for you huh ?
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Smh.
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Well sure! After China cracked down they had to migrate somewhere. Those obscene profits aren't going to make themselves!
The problem is that it's happening secretly (Score:4, Interesting)
The legitimate way to challenge material on social media is to publicly announce what is being banned and why. Instead this process appears to be being done secretly, enabling a political agenda to control what is being blocked. This is bad - a part of a wider drift away from democracy that seems to be happening in India, sadly. Unfortunately Modi is doing a good job with the economy, so most voters will be happy because of that and not especially concerned with the loss of freedom of speech.
Tell me again how free the Indian people are? (Score:2)
Back when I worked with some Punjabi fucks at a startup, they would tell me all the time how important India was in the world because "it was the world's biggest democracy." At the time I laughed in their faces.
I laugh even harder now as Hindustan does the needful and shows us who it really is.
It's going to get worse as long as this Nationalist Hindu party is in control. Marriages of religion and government don't work well regardless of the belief system.
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A good example of an interaction, they loved bragging about being Brahman and how the people in the US are dalit, not even worth interacting with, and how it was bad karma to even give any help whatsoever or any response other than a passive-aggressive lie, because their $DEITY will punish them by lessoning a lower being's torment. "Kick a blind man. Why be kinder than God?"
The caste system lives on.
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Marriages of religion and government don't work well regardless of the belief system.
Indeed. Same as personality-cults, which really are just a variant of the "religion" idea.
All governments censor (Score:2)
Every country censors the internet: Most governments exercise more control over publishing than the USA model. The majority also care about their appearance in such publishing. (The USA had the Hayes code which was limited to Hollywood). With the USA fixating on female nipples, other countries are free to pursue the dissidents and remove their rights: Those rights that haven't already been cancelled by the war on terror.
The USA likes to own the internet but the reality is, corporate profits (and in som
Is this a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the huge amount of telephone fraud and scams emanating from India you have to wonder how they can so efficiently censor political views but not even one scammer.
Not really (Score:2)
That is just the standard authoritarian/fascist approach. You can read up on these and how well they work.
Modi is enslaving his people just like Xi does (Score:1)
If you can't say what you want you are a slave.
It isn't unique to the party currently in power (Score:2)
So there's nothing uniquely authoritarian or dictatorial about what's happening now, free speech is anathema to Indian politicians of all shades.