All: this thread turned into a hellish flamewar and I've belatedly banned 8 (!) accounts who were doing it particularly badly. Please understand that if you break the site guidelines like that, we're going to seriously consider banning you—especially if you've made a habit of it or we've warned you before. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
p.s. I didn't look at which side any of these accounts were arguing for or against, because it doesn't matter and we don't care. Commenters here need to follow the site guidelines regardless of what their beliefs are, how right they are or feel they are, or how wrong others are or they feel they are.
That doesn't match my experience. My ex-colleagues and I used to criticize the government regularly, and publicly, when I lived there, and we faced no hostility or opposition.
Altnews the left wing version of Tucker Carlson. I'd go as far as to say that if Alt-news told me there was no Earthquake in my house, my first instinct would be to find cover.
Local and politicized news in India is notoriously biased. But the direction of the bias varies from news org to news org. Somehow, American & British news orgs are notorious for giving megaphones to the worst faith actors within Indian politics.
I've found that ThePrint is the closest thing to centrist-neutral reporting in India. They are pretty open about leaning left*[1] on social issues and leaning right [2] on economic issues.
[1] The left-right division doesn't work as cleanly in India, but left for the Print means separation of church & state, live-n-let-live, individual freedoms, LGBT support, a kind of French secularism.
[2] which in an Indian context means left of Biden, but right of pre-1991 socialist India. ie. Welfare-ist, but not isolationist.
Alt News is much more similar to Rappler, a Filipino news website and fact checker whose founder (Maria Ressa) was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize after she was arrested and convicted by the Filipino ruling government for "cyberlibel" in retaliation for her journalism.
The Peace Research Institute Oslo nominated the Alt News founders (Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha) for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize after Zubair was jailed for "hurting religious sentiments" in retaliation for his journalism.
"Hurting religious sentiments" by tweeting a screenshot of a 1983 movie is obviously not a war crime. Zubair is a journalist who was jailed for spurious reasons:
> Retired Supreme Court judge Justice Deepak Gupta on Tuesday said that questions arise on the Delhi Police for arresting journalist Mohammad Zubair for allegedly hurting religious sentiments even as suspended Bharatiya Janata Party Nupur Sharma is still free despite making controversial comments on Prophet Muhammad, Live Law reported.
> The first information report against Zubair was based on a complaint by Delhi Police Sub-Inspector Arun Kumar, who said he was monitoring social media when he came across the March 2018 tweet after a handle named Hanuman Bhakt raised objections.
> The handle had taken objection to Zubair’s tweet, showing a hotel signboard with the name “Honeymoon Hotel” repainted to “Hanuman Hotel”. The journalist’s lawyer has argued in court that the photo is a screenshot taken from a 1983 Hindi movie.
> On Tuesday, Gupta said that nobody had complained about the movie for 40 years. “How was it [the tweet] reported based on one anonymous complaint?” he asked.
As a journalist, Mohammad Zubair is like Maria Ressa. Both speak truth to power in countries in which press freedom is an ongoing issue, and both are not afraid to publish inconvenient facts that reflect poorly on the ruling party of their countries. There are plenty of Indian sources that reported on Zubair being jailed for "hurting religious sentiments", so I'm not sure how your dislike of Western media is relevant. Your comparisons of Zubair are also not very appropriate, since "hurting religious sentiments" is not the same thing as publishing false information.
The BJP expelled Nupur Sharma from her position as the national spokesperson of the BJP because of the incendiary comments she chose to make on live television. Mohammad Zubair made a compilation of her comments and did not change any of her words.
As the former Supreme Court judge Deepak Gupta said, one of the problems in this case is that the journalist Mohammad Zubair was jailed for "hurting religious sentiments" because he tweeted a screenshot of a 1983 Hindi comedy film, while the politician Nupur Sharma was not jailed despite her incendiary comments "hurting religious sentiments" on live television.
> “If she [Sharma] could say that…which had a much bigger propensity to incite violence… but she is not arrested, Zubair is...Then some questions do arise on the fairness of the police,” Gupta said, in an interview to Live Law.
Additionally, the fact that there is even a law that allows the government to imprison people for making comments perceived to be "hurting religious sentiments" is a serious violation of freedom of speech.
As a former MP, Ahmed was obviously also a politician and there are plenty of articles from Indian media describing him as a politician. Someone can be both a politician and a mobster at the same time.
You lie by speaking selectively. BJP leadership was supportive of Nupur Sharma initially. Prominent Muslim figures like Nasiruddin Shah (who normally despise BJP) have come out and said that Nupur Sharma did not say anything wrong about Mohammed.
BJP distanced itself from her after they got a lot of push back from friendly Middle Eastern states. BJP are a bunch of opportunist cowards themselves anyway.
There is no case against Nupur Sharma and she only said what she said (on that TV show) after having been provoked by another Muslim panelist about Hinduism and Hindu gods.
Politicians are responsible for the statements they make. Nupur Sharma is a politician who made a statement that the public took offense to, and she had to endure the political consequences regardless of what anyone else said before or after her comments. The other panelist in the debate is not a high-ranking political figure and the public does not necessarily demand the same level of decorum from him.
Nobody here is claiming that Sharma deserves to die for her incendiary comments, which went far beyond "quoting a religious book". However, she did get expelled from her position as national spokesperson of the BJP and that is an appropriate response, considering the negative feedback she has received.
No politician is immune to criticism. Nupur Sharma made incendiary comments on live television and Mohammad Zubair has the right to quote and criticize those comments. Zubair's quotes were not "misinformation" since his video compiled Sharma's comments verbatim. If Sharma did not want to anger the public, she should not have made provocative statements in a public setting.
Sharma's comments did result in violence. The Supreme Court blamed Sharma for inciting a beheading that was carried out by extremist perpetrators:
> The Supreme Court Friday slammed suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma, for her controversial remarks on the Prophet. While hearing the plea filed by Sharma seeking transfer of the FIRs against her to Delhi, the Supreme Court accused the leader of “igniting emotions across the country” with her “disturbing” remarks.
> “She has threat or she has become a security threat? The way she has ignited emotions across the country. This lady is single handedly responsible for what is happening in the country.” “She and her loose tongue have set the entire country on fire.”
> The Supreme Court said her outburst is responsible for the unfortunate incident at Udaipur, where a tailor was murdered.
As for Kajal Hindustani, it looks like her situation is being handled appropriately:
> Police have registered a first information report (FIR) against a woman activist for her alleged hate speech and detained more than 50 people on the charge of rioting following a communal clash at Una town in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath that left two persons injured, an official said on Sunday, PTI reported.
> “We have registered two FIRs. One is against Kajal Hindustani for hate speech, and another against the mob for rioting," Superintendent of Police Sripal Sheshma told reporters.
You can keep spewing non sense like this, but people here are more literate than what you are used to. Your argument boils down to - if you insulted or are perceived to have insulted the prophet of Islam (by even quoting a hadith), then you deserve to die and live in perpetual fear of being murdered by a "ghazi".
No one cares if Nupur Sharma lost a bloody BJP job. You are justifying murder and religious fanaticism.
Don't put words in my mouth. The murder is not justified and the perpetrators deserve the appropriate penalties. As the Supreme Court explained, Nupur Sharma made the incendiary statements that incited the murder. Nobody here has claimed that Sharma deserves to die for her rhetoric. Sharma knew her comments were provocative and much more than "quoting a hadith", which is why she issued her apology after she was suspended from her position.
She literally quoted a Hadith. What is "incendiary" according to you is her tone of quotation. As if people don't quote nonsense from other religions in a non-reverential but mocking manner. Is Islam so fragile that Muslims get provoked by "quoting a hadith"?
I am incapable of putting words into your mouth, you are just taking hilariously diametrically opposite positions in the same conversation.
She apologised after she was thrown under the bus by her party (in a cowardly manner), which got pushback on this issue from India's middle eastern partners. The Supreme Court Judge's comments on her are unprecedented and disgraceful. After having received severe criticism for those comments, the court silently provided her the same relief from prosecution that she had sought in the first place.
The next time you turn up to support islamic barbarism, at least own up to it.
There is no hadith with the negative phrasing Nupur Sharma used in her comments. As a politician in a country with religious tension, Sharma knew that her incendiary comments would inflame this tension.
The Supreme Court correctly assessed Sharma's comments as irresponsible and inflammatory, which even your LiveLaw link affirms:
> On July 1, a vacation bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala refused to entertain Sharma's petition. During the hearing, the bench made strong oral comments against Sharma, saying that she was "singlehandedly responsible for what is happening in the country". The bench said that being a spokesperson of a political party is not a license to make irresponsible comments. The bench had also said that the petition "smacks of arrogance that the Magistrates of the country are too small for her", and added that she should avail alternate remedies than approaching the Supreme Court. Following the critical remarks of the bench, Sharma's lawyer chose to withdraw the petition.
The fact that Sharma made incendiary comments does not justify any threat of violence against her. However, as a politician, she should have known better than to inflame the people she is assigned to serve. The BJP removed her from her position because her behavior made her unsuitable for representing the party.
Your accusation that I am "supporting Islamic barbarism" is unjustified and also against the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Criticizing a politician for making incendiary statements is not the same thing as "supporting Islamic barbarism".
> because Indian Government recently jailed an independent fact checker for a tweet he made 4 years ago.
Are you contending the fact that a 4 year old tweet was used to suppress an Altnews? This ad-hominem attack may have basis, but the assertion that there is very filthy gross things being used to suppress doesn't seem to have been addressed.
And it seems like gross government indecency from where I stand. You're talking about ethics in journalism, but this seemingly is a case of government jailing & taking away someone's right, which seems like an act that requires a much much higher standard of conduct than antagonistic-left journalism.
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> the current ruling party is straight up unironically fascist and descends from the same political party that inspired the german nationalist socialist party.
This is false. There is no link between the German Nazi party and BJP. If you are talking about RSS, the link comes from a quote in a book published in 1939 (well before the world found about the holocaust) by the RSS founder [0]. Admiration for Hitler and his Nazi party in the 30s wasn't unique to the RSS founder [1][2].
Golwalkar was also supportive of allies in their war against Nazis and supported the formation of Israel.
Also Golwalkar is 100% pro-nazi, he only went against them later for gains.
"German Race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by." (Golwalkar, MS, “We Or Our Nationhood Defined”, Nagpur, 1939, p. 45)
The whole point was that most of the world was pro-nazi until the events of WW2 and the holocaust. And if you are comparing someone's views in the 30s to the current worldview, I hate to break it to you that everyone's racist and fascist, including Roosevelt, Churchill and MK Gandhi. Gandhi pretty much called for the Jews to offer themselves up to be butchered by Nazis and Arabs.
Ironically fearmongering that there's an imminent genocide is one of the justifications used by the the Government for internet shutdowns and censorship. Law and order is precarious in most parts of the country and anybody can spark an unrest by sparking rumors and it spreads like forest fire causing riots and loss of life.
Last I checked India was home for second largest Muslim population, and population has only been growing, more than other sections of societies in India.
Sure things aren’t same for Muslims post 2014 and people should raise their voice. However for every Muslim atrocity, there is one against Hindus or any other religion. Should we take comfort in that? Absolutely no, but this genocide nonsense is utter rubbish.
You should be the one presenting evidence of planned genocide. And proper evidence, not some bullshit he said she said. Maybe some leaked papers from the Indian Government showing attempt to arm mobs, moving battalions of the military or the paramilitary expressly for the purpose of mass murder etc.
“the current ruling party is straight up unironically fascist and descends from the same political party that inspired the german nationalist socialist party.”
Oh can we stop with this bullshit? In hindsight Nazism is an almost cartoon like singular epitome of pure evil but in its day it was considered by many throughout the world not just in India to be a cutting edge political philosophy whose ideas were to be taken seriously.
Nazism like many other ideologies including some varieties of Hindutva was an offspring of 19th century Romanticism. The idea of one’s culture having a primitive yet glorious mystical past was appealing to many freedom fighters the world over and implied nothing about their feelings towards Jews or German expansion etc. Similarly the superficial adoption of e.g. the swastika doesn’t imply Germans were rushing to make a yatra to the Himalayas.
In fact the most prominent example of a “Nazi” Indian is not any RSS member but Subhash Chandra Bose. His nickname Netaji is a direct translation of “fuehrer”! He died in the Burmese jungles where, bankrolled by Berlin, he was trying to open an attack against the British colonial regime. However he wasn’t so much pro-German as he was anti-British. And that’s how India remembers him; as a freedom fighter. A couple of years ago he briefly came into the news in the US because Saikat Choudhary (the architect of the Democrat party’s “Green New Deal”) wore a t-shirt with his picture on it. When a “fascist” is on an ultra-leftists apparel, the word fascist has lost all meaning.
I’ll leave you with an assignment. Find out about the prominent Indian Muslims of they 1930’s who made pro-Nazi comments. It’s an interesting historical exercise (especially their reasons why.) but I don’t think it would reveal much about the views of todays Muslims. Do you?
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political/national/religious/ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against.
> In hindsight Nazism is an almost cartoon like singular epitome
Not that singular, even in its time, which is why we usually call the more general thing that it is an example of by the name of its Italian contemporary and ally.
Let me restate my point. A persons reasons for supporting the Nazis in 1933 may be quite different from the reasons you think people are pro-Nazi in 2023. So such comparisons don't add very much to the discourse.
lol what? There have been plenty of Hindutva terror incidents, one as recent as the day before yesterday, when 3 men killed a couple of undertrials in front of live camera and then went on to scream the terror warcry of "Jai Sree Ram".
> If this is “fascism” as you say, majority of the Indians are happy living under it.
Do you have a sense of irony? Majority is always happy under fascism. It is the minority who matters in that case.
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This is failure of law and order. What bothered me is how liberal media portrayed these individuals.
The primary identity of individuals killed is undertrials (as you rightly mentioned) or murderers or criminals, and not lawmakers or MPs as portrayed by these headlines.
For those crying oceans, read this Twitter thread. These two “undertrials” were monsters of the worst kind who killed anyone with impunity. Shame on people who support such monsters just because they happen to share the same religion. https://twitter.com/Sanity_3/status/1647304754002010113?s=20
The 2 brothers who were killed were notorious gangsters involved in 100+ cases of murders, loot, kidnapping etc. At least read-up before trying to win with your ignorance.
India has Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, Zoroastrian as “true” minorities. They don’t have any problems in India. In fact they are among the most prosperous folks.
Why is that only Muslims have problem everywhere on the globe? France, US, UK, Israel and the list goes on.
Few months back, in a similar fashion a Hindu Don was encountered by the UP cops. All Hindus still supported the cops.
For people like you, if the person is a Muslim irrespective of whether he is a terrorist, serial murderer he should be supported at any cost.
And don’t club Sikhs and Dalit among yourself to look good. They have a far larger contribution to society and don’t cry victimhood at any given opportunity.
We've banned this account for repeatedly abusing HN with political, nationalistic, and religious flamewar. Regardless of how right you are or feel you are, it's not what this site is for.
Posting like this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please stop.
It’s the usual protocol of astroturfing. Accuse the whistleblower of something vague and discard them with name calling. Straight out of playbook of authoritarian governments. Nothing new.
I searched the name Nupur Sharma and it gave me this article which explains everything.
That's correct. Nupur Sharma's comments on the Times Now news channel were incendiary enough that Times Now decided to delete the video of the debate she was featured in and also issue a statement:
> Views expressed by BJP Spokesperson on Newshour@9 last night are her personal views. TIMES NOW does not endorse views of participants. We urge participants on our debates to maintain restraint and not indulge in unparliamentary language against fellow panelists.
It's not someone else's fault that Sharma decided to make those comments on live television in the first place.
If you watch the full debate, the Muslim panelists were continuously mocking Hindu Gods, Nupur got fed up and replied to them in the similar manner.
What this fact checker cunningly did was to edit out the Muslim panellist mocking and simply showed her part of the clip. He has a mass following in Islamic nations and it got blown out of proportion.
Political leaders are expected to conduct themselves appropriately in public view because they are selected to represent all of their constituents. If a politician makes an appearance on live television and says something that is offensive to their constituents, they can expect political repercussions regardless of what anyone else said on the TV show.
That other people in the debate compared a Shivling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam) to roadside signs and poles does not excuse Nupur Sharma from the repercussions of what she said. Sharma made comments that she knew would be offensive to a religious minority, and she was expelled from her position as the national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party because that was not the behavior the public expected from a high-ranking political figure.
When someone like Mohammed Zubair makes a supercut of Sharma's comments to highlight the fact that a politician is not appropriately representing her constituents, it's not Zubair's fault that Sharma made those comments in the first place.
At the end of the day one is a human being who gets triggered on repeated offensive things. If you look-up, what she said was not incorrect since several Islamic scholars make the same claim. I guess the aggressive tone in what she said made all the difference.
For the record, Nupur does not represent any constituents in the purest sense. She was the spokesperson, that’s it. She is neither an MP nor MLA.
She should be able to say anything she wants on Islam and Muhammed. The only consequence to her should be what is in the Indian Penal Code, and ostracisation by her constituents. She doesn't deserve to be lynched by a muslim mob for that.
People like you who justify mob lynching don't belong in civilised society.
Sharma made incendiary comments on live television. Zubair and many other people called her out for her comments, and in response, her political party (the BJP) expelled her from her position as national spokesperson. She was not "lynched".
When a politician chooses to make incendiary comments that are then met with anger from the public, that politician has nobody to blame but herself for the negative response.
Gaslighting at it's finest right here. Nupur Sharma can never live a normal life. The moment her security is removed, and whereabouts are known she will absolutely get murdered by some Muslim fanatic, just like Kamlesh Tiwari.
You're abusing the word "gaslighting". Nobody is claiming that Nupur Sharma deserves any retribution beyond expulsion from her position.
High-profile figures are more vulnerable than average individuals and it is not in anyone's interest to make incendiary statements that expose themselves to higher security risks. Sharma should have taken this into consideration before saying what she did on national television, even though any violence against her would be unjustified.
We've banned this account for repeatedly abusing HN with political, nationalistic, and religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
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I appreciate your concern for the HN guidelines and have banned the other account. However, fairness obliges me to add that you also broke the guidelines by repeatedly perpetuating this flamewar.
"Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse."
And guess what Muslim fanatics have butchered few Hindus already on this issue. These were the normal people who simply liked or expressed support for Nupur.
The amazing thing is that even after killings, these fanatics cry victim hood.
As bad as that is, and it is helpful you've provided some context here, I still don't think that's worthy of jail or any sort of formal state punishment. Which obviously is not a controversial take in most western countries. But more importantly I don't think it's an effective strategy to deal with the problem. Censorship rarely ever works unless you go full-bore and destroy plenty of good will and legitimate human progress in between.
Twitter has a great feature for that not where citizens can provide context / 'fact check' an article without deleting it. That's the best (and IMO only legitimate way) to deal with this stuff, countering bad information with better information. While still exposing publicly that this person is lying to you. As opposed to deleting or censoring it, you put up a big flag that says "there's more to this story".
The fact that you have to search for the name shows you are not enough clued in about what is happening in India. Wish you take some time out and get the facts straight from some Indian friends to understand both side of the story.
It will become a long comment, all I can say , BBC, NyTimes etc has some axe to grind with the current dispensation.
I understand by "Indian friends" you mean upper caste Hindu Indian friends who are Modi acolytes and his primary voting demographic. Not Indian Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Dalits or Shudras who form greater than 50% of the Indian population.
No, I mean people with loads of common sense who can tell you both side of the story.
>> Not Indian Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Dalits or Shudras who form greater than 50% of the Indian population.
Acc to you, if they are more than 50% AND not happy with Modi, why is Modi winning back to back elections and almost certain to come to power again in 2024?
You only need 35% to win in Indias multiparty elections.
Additionally, Muslims in Gujarat and UP have been coerced into voting for BJP candidate by threatening them with shut down of municipal services when BJP wins. This is enabled because EVMs report summary statistics from each location which the government employees have access to.
Did you even read what I said? EVMs are not being tampered. But they make per polling booth data available to candidates. The BJP candidates use that summary data to withhold municipal services from constituents who didn't vote for them.
They are able to make this threat because of summary data made available by EVMs
Please do something new than the other authoritarian shills. It’s the same playbook.
Why do you assume that everyone outside of India is incapable of understanding things on their own and need help from Indian friend? Why do you patronise? Isn’t that racist? Isn’t the that some kind of twisted supremest thinking?
I can read the stats and make up my mind on my own.
Of course when you come here with a half-baked knowledge and accuse someone* of astroturfing , one has to call you out.
By your own admission, for the first time you heard Nupur’s name, you did a quick search and within minutes you reached the conclusion what you wanted to reach.
Since when asking to understand the issue in depth - rather than a 2 mins cursory look up - racism?
Apparently, death threats and actual deaths and rapes should only happen to Dalits and Muslims via periodically organized riots. It's also a great idea to jail the lawyer of the survivor of a lynch mob, Teesta Setalvad. Indias Supreme court is pleased.
I'm not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.
I find it fascinating that people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information.
If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?
> If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?
I'm afraid that people are looking around, asking themselves that same question, and concluding that democracy has failed.
The problem is that democracy depends on an educated populace and there have been active efforts to dumb people down so that they can be more easily lied to and manipulated. The American people, on average, have the math skills of a 6th grader and their reading skills are worse (https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/). They lack the critical thinking skills to compete with sophisticated disinformation campaigns. The solution requires education, training, and time. Until the population catches up, we're going to continue to see some very bad choices made by voters while scammers and charlatans will continue to be very successful.
I don't blame people for losing some faith in the American people, but I hope we don't lose faith in democracy because clawing it back after we've given up what few freedoms we still have will not be easy. As long as we have democracy we can still make things better.
> I find it fascinating that people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information. If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?
In the early 2010s there was a rash of "pranks" in India where people would forward accusations accusing men pictured with children of pedophilia to rile up mobs to assault and kill them. These accusations were basically always false and done to settle scores, basically as a form of stochastic murder. It was bad enough that WhatsApp had to introduce some UX patterns to slow down forwards of accusations and put warning disclaimers on things forwarded too often. (And I'm sure there were other measures around moderation put in on the back end, including collaboration with state law enforcement entities).
Democracy generally operates through a series of institutions that are held accountable to the public, but doesn't directly fly according to every passing whim of the public.
Short, glib comments get dunked on here, but you've got a point. As the saying goes, “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” The judgement of the common folk is not unassailable, and is frequently wrong, which is why Democracy needs numerous checks and balances.
Democracy is a hedge against worse outcomes, not a guarantor of future outcomes. You might get your heart’s desires in the service of a King, but he’ll still be King and you’ll now be his subject.
> If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?
The fact that people are irrational is why we do not have a direct democracy. Representative democracy, and the existence of constraints in the form of constitution-type documents and term limits, are designed to limit the impact of temporal individual stupidity and crowd stupidity on global outcomes, by constraining the scope of immediate democracy.
> people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information.
This is overly flippant and strawman-like (conflating government censorship with private company moderation, for example) to what is a massive problem in the age of social media. Vaccine hesitancy, leading to hundreds of thousands of additional dead people, is due to misinformation. There are literal dead people as the end result of this misinformation. Now I for one would prefer that private companies do not censor misinformation, and instead focused on altering the viral dynamics. But this is not a topic to brush under the rug with denialism that misinformation is an actual thing.
Today? I'm not sure you're right about which is the greater threat.
Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today. Right now.
I'm not sure what the real answer should be. If "the market" manages to get the propaganda farms' misinformation under control, then great. If they don't, the only answer I can see is for government to step in.
As they say, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Dying to protect absolute freedom of speech when bad actors are abusing it to destroy the country is not wise.
How do you reconcile the premise of democracy (that the general public will be able to discern and organize for good) with calls to supervise what opinions they can be exposed to?
Democracy is about the people being able to participate in government. That's it. In order for that to be a good thing, the people need to be informed about the decisions they're making.
If the people are completely brainwashed by lies that are completely contrary to the truth--like nearly a quarter of our population seems to be at the moment--then they will vote for those with the most convincing lies.
If someone who gets their information from Fox "News"--which has been shown to be less reliable than not watching any news at all--is given an equal vote to those who actually know what's going on, Democracy is subverted. At that point you actually have a "fake Democracy", where the country is actually guided by the propagandists and not the people.
The US is one of a very few Democracies with this absolutist attitude about freedom of speech. It's not a required component of Democracy, and it's ultimately self-destructive, but it's clearly (based on the downvotes and responses to my comment) deeply ingrained.
As an example, Trump should have gotten barely any votes in the last election. He accomplished almost nothing besides stacking the supreme court and passing a deeply unpopular tax cut. Yes, we beat him, but 74M people voted for Trump. And those 74M people, nearly 47% of the voting public, were manipulated by blatantly false Russian and Republican propaganda.
To my mind, the "free speech as a religion" POV is looking like it will be the death of our democracy. If we can't fight misinformation, it may bury the country.
And clearly those on HN disagree. I won't argue with you further. But as things stand, we're circling the drain.
> Democracy is about the people being able to participate in government. That's it.
But why is that a good thing? We don't have to have everyone participate. You don't seem to believe in democracy yourself here.
> were manipulated by blatantly false Russian and Republican propaganda.
I think we should be extremely cautious about views that suggest cross sections of the population are not capable agents. Either you're right, 47% of people are manipulated idiots, and the other half are enlightened, or they hold grievances and values you just don't understand.
> I think we should be extremely cautious about views that suggest cross sections of the population are not capable agents.
I'm calling it as I see it. "Being cautious" and trying to be "fair" to the other side has been increasingly destroying the country.
47% of the voters in last election, which is just under 25% of the US population, were in fact manipulated, and are really, in this respect, not capable agents as a result of that manipulation. At the very least they're demonstrably not capable of critical thinking.
I've looked carefully at many explanations as to why MAGAts vote the way they do. It's blatantly obvious that there are a small number of primary motivations.
Aside from "sociopathic self-interest" of some of the 0.1% who simply want lower taxes, everyone else be damned, and a big chunk who reflexively vote Republican as if it's their home team and aren't really paying attention, the main motivator seems to be hate of "the liberals." And no, I don't accept that "hurting more than half of the country" is a reasonable motivation for someone under normal circumstances.
Where did that extreme level of hate come from? Manipulation. Sure there was an underlying anger that the propaganda stoked. People in rural America have it hard and they see all of these rich people in urban areas doing well. But that anger has been fanned to the point where kids knocking on the wrong doors are being shot. And the anger is fundamentally misdirected; these blue-collar folks could tremendously benefit from a higher minimum wage, for instance, and it's not like the Republicans would ever voluntarily vote for a minimum wage increase at this point.
> But why is that a good thing? We don't have to have everyone participate. You don't seem to believe in democracy yourself here.
It's the worst form of government around...aside from all the others that have been tried. (paraphrased Churchill).
I don't know of another form of government that has better results. Neither did Churchill. If we could enforce better national education standards, we'd end up with a better result. But in short term I don't know how to fix the problem other than taking the worst liars off the air.
"We don't have to have everyone participate" -- that sounds too much like a support for voter suppression, which is not what I'm talking about.
I can confirm, you cannot articulate what rural voters are concerned about.
> voter suppression
It sounds like your motivation for democracy is that you "owe people" a vote, not that it's actually better to give them it. If education is the factor, what if we gate it by high school, land ownership, or college graduation?
I guess to get back to my original point. You suggested that free information (and misinformation) was a threat to democracy, but I see little indication you believe democracy is important. It's hard to see calls like this as anything other than being upset that the majority is not voting the way you want, and wanting to reign them in.
> I can confirm, you cannot articulate what rural voters are concerned about.
I never claimed that I was giving the entire picture.
Given that there is ZERO positive that Trump accomplished for rural voters aside from "owning the libs," and many things that were actively negative like starting a trade war that may see rural soy farms permanently out of business, no, I don't think that rural voters are motivated by anything aside from "voting their team" and "trolling the libs."
> I see little indication you believe democracy is important
...trouble with reading comprehension there? I'll simply repeat:
> It's the worst form of government around...aside from all the others that have been tried. (paraphrased Churchill).
> I don't know of another form of government that has better results. Neither did Churchill. If we could enforce better national education standards, we'd end up with a better result. But in short term I don't know how to fix the problem other than taking the worst liars off the air.
But you don't actually care what I'm saying if you follow up with:
> It's hard to see calls like this as anything other than being upset that the majority is not voting the way you want, and wanting to reign them in.
Umm... It wasn't a majority. It was barely 25% of the country. The majority of active voters did in fact vote for Biden.
>Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today. Right now.
State Censorship is being abused today right now. State Censorship is also a threat to Democracy. It's giving the most powerful institutions the tools to attack Democracy.
Who gets to decide what is mis/mal/dis information? The government? We as human beings are constantly weighing up information and evaluating details to inform our actions. Why do you think they have better tools to decide this for you?
Who are these individuals in Government that have worked out all the truths of the world and why do you buy into them deciding this? Has anyone here worked for Government?
All the worlds information isn't easily summed up into Scientific truths that can be instantly fact checked by Government and everything else. This power your giving the government to decide what information you can see and not. Doesn't empower you the citizen to make good decisions. It allows government to sway your information to guide the outcome they want. Which is known as Public Policy, and they have decided that Public Policy is no longer up for debate for the plebs.
I agree with mst of your post, but there is no scientific truths, just a method to search knowledge that suck less.
Also, there are a lot of good informed guess by scientifics that are reported as Scientific truths. Last month there was a new study that showed that it's good to give peanut butter to children to avoid allergy later, that is the oposite of the standard recommendation during the last decade(s).
the real answer is full transparency. Someone posting a lie is only a problem when no one is allowed to challenge it, and when you allow censorship you are giving someone the authority to prevent challenges to both truth and lies at the same time.
The Constitution has problems and I've love to see some changes to it, but freedom of speech is not something we should abandon. I don't think I've ever met anyone who wants "absolute freedom of speech". Everyone, even our government and courts agree that there are limits, but censorship is not the solution to lies, it is their most efficient breeding ground and it removes our only defense.
We must be able to point out lies and falsehoods no matter where they come from or who is inconvenienced by the truth.
The problem we have now is a populace that is largely uneducated and incapable of telling the truth from a lie or knowing when a source is untrustworthy. We can help to solve that with education and training in basic critical thinking skills. In the meantime we should be exposing and correcting lies publicly and transparently and holding people accountable for knowingly spreading dangerous falsehoods (free to speak still does not mean free from consequences).
> the real answer is full transparency. Someone posting a lie is only a problem when no one is allowed to challenge it, and when you allow censorship you are giving someone the authority to prevent challenges to both truth and lies at the same time.
It's always easier to simply state something is true than it is to prove it, or disprove it. That's a lot less of a problem when people aren't receptive to believing everything they see without question in the first place. Brandolini's law doesn't mean that it is impossible or undesirable to correct misinformation. It just says that spewing lies takes less effort. It demonstrates why it's important to give people critical thinking skills in the first place, so that you don't have to spend as much effort chasing and cleaning up after bullshit because that would mean fewer people are accepting it and forwarding it along.
The alternative being proposed here is to accept censorship which allows lies to go unchallenged entirely and makes it impossible to ever correct them.
This kind of thinking of yours is far a bigger threat, among other things because it means goverment have the very strong incentive for social media to NOT get the propaganda farms under control because that way it has a public excuse to step in and abuse that position with totalitarian censorchip; a big red flag that points this to be the case is how this censorship is planed, is not in the slightest a democratical censorship that includes the input of local and international journalists or opposition leaders.
The government will just infiltrate and control that third party by funding it. "You want us to raise your rates the next round of appropriations, here is what we expect to get 'fact checked'".
> Why is the government well suited to declare what it and isn't misinformation though?
Presumably because much of the lies and disinformation going around involves them to start with. When some nutjob starts posting about something like millions of American citizens being locked up in FEMA camps, or claiming that a proposed healthcare bill calls for the formation of a government death panel any respectable fact checking org is going to end up asking the lawmakers and FEMA about it anyway so government certainly has a role here.
Ideally, each social media platform would have their own people catching and flagging the worst examples of disinformation and that might also involve enlisting the services of both governments and vetted independent third parties.
In my limited experience on social media where I don't see any official flags for misinformation I've seen plenty of cases where it's other users stepping in and correcting outright lies and common misconceptions complete with sources. That probably works better in some spaces than others though.
That doesn't really work, though. You picked some examples of obviously-false things that someone might say about the US government (one would hope, at least), and, sure, the US government is in a decent position to refute those claims.
But let's take something we now know to be true: the NSA collecting data on US citizens. Pre-Snowden, someone could post something asserting that the NSA is spying on us. The government, being the hypothetical arbiter of what is and isn't misinformation, would of course immediately label that as misinformation.
You can't trust the government to be honest here. Sometimes they will even lie for fairly good reasons. But I don't want them marking things as misinformation (or, worse, suppressing such information) when it's true. And they certainly will do that, sometimes.
That's why misinformation labels aren't really a problem. If Snowden posts that they NSA is spying the government could flag the claim as misinformation, but flagging Snowden's post doesn't make it go away and Snowden came with evidence which the public could review. Once the public saw that spying was happening, they'd know the government lied and the next time they saw something flagged by the government as misinformation they'd be less willing to assume that to be accurate, and eventually might even start to assume that things flagged as "disinformation" by the government we're more likely to be true than not.
As long as the fact checking is transparent, there will be an incentive for the fact checker to stay honest and when they fail we should adjust our understanding of what the flag actually means.
I've gone through that already with popular fact checkers like snopes. I still consider it to be a valuable resource, but I've become aware that they allow bias to influence their findings and that they can't be trusted blindly. Really no one source should be blindly trusted and that's something we should be trying to let people know, but warning labels can still be helpful and also revealing about how adversarial our government has become. A government that can't be trusted not to repeatedly mislead the public is one that should be voted out and replaced.
Correction, state censorship will be abused. What happens when India elects their version of Trump? Suddenly, what might seem like half-decent system under better leadership becomes a weapon to completely obliterate the news media and target individuals to pursue personal vendettas.
EDIT: If you don't like my comparison, choose any other politician who has documented history of threatening suppression and violence against the free press.
Their current leader, Modi, is extremely divisive and has been accused of very actively fanning the long-running ethnic/religious conflict in the country. The BBC documentary on him is not unbiased but still very revealing.
So you should view this action using the same lens you would as any other divisive leader, eg Trump.
Is this the documentary where he attacks the journalist who was calmly interviewing him about his political record and changes the subject and blames the media for his own shortcomings? I don’t frighten easily, but that was truly scary.
Democracy is not going to die because people spread false information.
Newspapers have had the monopoly on spreading whatever information they deemed correct (whether it turned out to be or not) for decades and have now lost that and they are pissed.
This is why there is a rise in apparent outcry that all of a sudden anyone and everyone can spread their message broadly where only a handful of organizations could do it before.
There's is no crisis in democracy. As long as the same tools are free to be used to counter whatever fact you think is false then you are free to have an open debate and correct the record.
The government having the power to decide who can say what and what is "true" or "false"... That's the real risk of bringing death to democracy.
> People do not have the tools to discern truth given plausible misinformation.
Then give them the tools.
> Indeed, that is a risk, but not the only risk.
It's not really a risk, it's a fact. Governments routinely lie about plenty of things, and deny things that we later find out to be true.
I would much rather have a bunch of people believe the wrong thing, than have true things labeled as misinformation, or worse, censored.
The onus is on us, as citizens of a free society, to set the record straight, and constantly work to educate people. That's just the responsibility we have to accept. "Freedom isn't free" and all that.
"Truth" is not something that can be discerned even in the absence of misinformation. It is a constantly evolving and negotiated equilibrium between the individual and their environment through the imperfect filter of perception. To put the reins of "fact-checking" in government control is simply a shortcut to tyranny, and not something that can stifle the death of democracy.
How do you know they aren’t making decisions based on falsehood right now? You have to get information out there and only then can you evaluate whether it is true or false (or practical or inconvenient which is arguably more important in politics.). All democracy means is that we trust the citizens to evaluate truth for themselves. Not everyone believes this. India, for instance, has from its founding has taken the paternalistic position that the wise philosopher princes of New Delhi know better than you or me. I don’t agree but most people over there don’t seem to mind. (And I bet 90% of the ones who claim to be upset about it are only upset because it is the wrong set of philosopher princes.) This unfortunately is also democracy. So what are you going to do?
One powerful way to insulate against this is to instill critical thinking skills: "don't believe everything you read or think" as a tenet of public life.
Yesterday I learned that Canada is the fourth oldest ongoing democracy, measured as beginning in 1867.
I think given our short lifespans, anything that our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents enjoyed is really easy to perceive as a steady state. Something to take for granted as being invariant. But it’s really not.
While it’s possible to debate the specifics and semantics, this really brought into focus, for me, just how young modern democracy is with a rather unproven durability.
It's even younger than that; women couldn't nationally until 1920 in the US. And in practice, many black people couldn't vote until the voting acts right of 1965.
...which pretty much ends democracy. Without the ability to criticize a government in power, one cannot build opposition. Hence, there is no democracy.
Unfortunate that this rightward lurch by the Modi government (still incredibly popular in India) will be ignored by the "west" due to competition with China.
India considers unfettered social media and speech a threat to stability, just like China.
Not the person you're replying to, but there is this persistent fallacy that left is inherently good and right is inherently evil, despite the fact that neither side of the political spectrum is inherently good or evil. Great injustices have been committed under both liberal and conservative governments throughout history.
Opposition parties are often anti-censorship, pro free speech etc. Once they come into power this all changes and they drift towards authoritarianism.
Western, left-leaning governments have invented the term "hate speech" to justify this behaviour, right-leaning governments would often use "family values".
Restricting hate speech protects the politically vulnerable, the minority, the oppressed. It's not a restriction on hate speech toward the government.
Restricting 'anti-family' speech protects the status quo, those in power, the political majority and oppresses the vulnerable minority. For example, look at the discrimination against LGTBQ people now.
the action of preventing part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons
The US government does not remove instances of incitement to violence, fraud, or slander, and most intellectual property law is probably unconstitutional but that's a different issue.
Originally created for soldiers in guerrilla warfare situations, this handbook demonstrates the techniques for constructing weapons that are highly effective in the most harrowing of circumstances. Straightforward and incredibly user-friendly, it provides insightful information and step-by-step instructions on how to assemble weapons and explosives from common and readily available materials. Over 600 illustrations complement elaborate explanations of how to improvise any number of munitions from easily accessible resources.
Some of the materials discussed in this special forces guide to boobytraps include:
- Disguise boobytraps in common items.
- Disguise boobytraps in structures such as window frames and stairways.
- Disguise boobytraps in outdoor areas, in bushes and underground.
- Learn the mechanics of the various types of firing devices, detonators, fuses, cords, adapters, blasting caps, and lighters.
Actually following instructions in these books may lead to felony charges in all 50 states. But writing or reading about them is perfectly legal. The same goes for reading and writing about making scheduled drugs, poisons, and other controlled items.
I doubt all the Soviet Union and other authoritarian communist regimes censored for decades was hate speech.
Sure, at the moment the left seems to largely align with social liberalism, at least in the west. Maybe authoritarianism is generally more correlated with conservatism, and conservatism with right-wing politics. But left vs. right and authoritarian vs. liberal aren't really the same axis, and it would seem historically quite myopic to think left-wing views somehow confer immunity to abuse of power.
It's true that the US has a lot of reasons to play nice with India, but even if they didn't, there's not much I'd expect the US to do in this situation. Maybe Blinken would make a statement. But this isn't the kind of thing that historically results in sanctions or officially curtailing the bilateral relationship.
Unchecked Censorship by the government can be a problem, but I find it hard to take voices in this space on face value since they are often the most vocal cheerleaders when a government or political party they like is doing the censorship since it's "Human rights" not politics.
Given the dissolving line between Social media and the Town square, who should be the arbiters of speech on Social media?
A committee appointed from "Interest groups" with all the right "credentials" and "expertise"? Effectively an incestous group with circular pats on the backs.
A separate body elected by the people just for this purpose?
Democracies cannot function if the people are shielded from all the evil things that necessitate thinking critically. Bad information is a fact of life, not social media.
The only way you get someone to think critically is putting them in a situation where they have to. If you constantly censor and baby them, they won't make better decisions they will make worse ones.
The idea that censorship has to happen in order to protect democracy really fulfills horseshoe theory.
You're absolutely correct. Curation is the ethical answer, not censorship. Gigantic difference.
>No matter how critically I approach it, I will not be able derive objective truth from biased and fuzzy information.
That will always be true no matter the source. There are no truth fairies. There limits of mediums (TV vs Article vs Book vs Movie vs Stream vs etc.) before you even get to individual biases.
I dont know. But the idea that we pick a group never sits well with me. The election to that group becomes highly political, & eventually the group will fall out of grace.
There's the idea of forming digital juries to hear cases. http://digitaljuries.com/ In the case of censorship it's less about moderating a person, so I think a more fitting flow would be to have the censor build a small case, say why they think there's an issue, then let a jury vote.
I do think we'd need some meta-moderation of a sort. The jury system itself should be broadly open access, but it needs some checks too.
There is a bright line between the town square (which is a public space) and social media (which is private property). Pointing to this line and claiming that it is dissolving is counterfactual and seems, to me, to be an unsubtle yearning for government control of private property, which is very close to an unmitigated evil.
IMO, create a policy constraint one person, one account and One company, one account would help a lot about this because it will be much easy to identify and punish those who spread fake news. Anonymous accounts are, IMO, the biggest problem of social networks.
One of the more bizarre parts of the Musk-Twitter saga has been Musk's unyielding support for censorship of tweets critical of Modi. [1] I don't really understand why someone who claims to be dedicated to free speech would ever take such a position? Does he intend for his "Everything App" to dominate South Asia rather than North America?
Because generally the right isn’t for free speech, just the free speech that supports their perspective. They’re literally defunding public libraries as we speak.
I know tons of people from both political spectrums who are pro-free-speech. I also know people who support free-speech that only supports their views. Nonetheless, you are correct in that there are right-wingers who are hypocrites by claiming to be pro-free-speech but then defunding libraries. Many on the left do this too, unfortunately. They claim to be for freedom but then advocate for the censorship of "misinformation" - a term that is currently being twisted to fit different political agendas.
I read your link. It says Twitter and Youtube were ordered by the government to take down links to the BBC documentary and both complied. The BBC itself is sending copyright strikes to Youtubers who upload the documentary. Even the Internet Archive took the link down when someone uploaded it there.
HN seems to have Musk Derangement Syndrome. I have never seen selective outrage aimed at someone to this degree. Everyone on this site seems to turn a blind eye or tolerate to every tech company complying with local laws in foreign countries, but then hold Musk to a much higher standard. He's not allowed to merely be an improvement over his predecessors, he must pass the highest purity tests given to a tech leader, or else he's a lying hypocrite.
This is the actual draft of the press release. Couldnt find the amendment. Its talking about online gaming. Regulations are with respect to content with self harm and betting. There's no appeals process listed but it does not state general fact checking powers. This source is listed twice in the article and online gaming is mentioned right at the beginning.
Is restofwoorld actually something credible (I dont really know) ?
There is freedom of speech, but the first amendment[0] ironically added measures to restrict free speech. Even aside from that, it's a minefield of colonial era Sedition laws, blasphemy laws, anti-terrorism laws etc. The state can also make it pretty miserable for you even if you didn't break the laws just by arresting you and denying swift justice (since the court cases can take decades). You could also be "made to disappear" if you sufficiently piss off a powerful non-state entity. So yeah it's pretty bleak.
I highly recommend you go read a summary of the Indian constitution before reading comments on here. I will offer my own opinions on the matter, but you'll likely find that my answers are in stark contrast to some others on this thread.
The Indian constitution (and its amendments) is one of the most liberal and social-justice oriented constitutions of any nation in the world. It was primarily drafted by independent India's most famed social justice proponent: Dr. Ambedkar and the blessings of Gandhi and Nehru, who'd fit right into the sociology departments of academic universities in the US in 2023.
In broad strokes it attempts to empower states with federalism on social issues and governance, but central economic and national policy. It tries to allow social insularity of communities, linguistic or religious. So, religious minorities get to have their own personal civil law (marriage, inheritance) and independent institutions (religious schools, churches, mosques, hospitals, etc) and land ownership. On the other hand, it is paternalistic towards the Indic religions (Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and partially sikhs) taking full ownership (for better or for worse) of issues pertaining to those religions. Similarly, its individual states get a lot of power over how bills are implemented on that ground, meaning that a strong central govt (like Modi's) is still quite weak and can be completely blocked by a uncooperative state govt. (TN, Kerala, WB, Delhi, etc).
India was formed as an insecure nation, desperate to show how secular it was, as a counter weight to Pakistan's religious fundamentalism.
Here are a few accommodations in the constitution that stand out:
* Article 334 [1] of the Indian constitution explicitly grants affirmative action in all govt. institutions to those that belong to lower castes.
* The judiciary is FULLY independent. This means, that unlike the US, the Indian Govt. cannot pick judges, with the judiciary internally handling issues of selecting judges all the way up to the Supreme court. [2]
* The standard fundamental rights. They almost entirely focus on protection of minorities. [3]
Only majority community (Upper caste - hindi speaking - hindus have freedom of speech). Infact they are so free that they can call for genocide on live television, and get away with it. If you're minority (especially a journalist), you'd be Jailed without trial for years (UAPA and NSA). Think of it as a modern day Gulag.
would love to see some analysis here for solutions at a protocol level (W3C ActivityPub, Bluesky pbllc AT protocol, nostr etc) as a way to prevent nation-states from imposing this kind of control over a specific service.
Curiously, the very same thing done by a US-based corpo is almost unanimously considered a must have, to the point of ostracizing people for even suggesting that the corpos should be slightly less empowered to "fact check" and delete social media posts.
If this isn't the definition of doublethink, I don't know what is.
If a substantial portion of society easily falls for misinformation, then the solution is not to bring in a centralized entity to "fact check". The solution is to improve educational standards so people can use critical thinking skills to assess the validity of claims. Misinformation is not a threat to democracy, lack of critical thinking is. The day people willingly outsource their critical thinking will be the day democracy collapses.
15 years from now there will be no distinction between India and China in terms of freedom. There will be single party rule by BJP. The opposition is being coerced to join in with the BJP or be thrown in to jail for random offenses. BJP simply buys the legislators where it can't win elections.
In terms of economics, India will not be in the same league, of course.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. I didn't look at which side any of these accounts were arguing for or against, because it doesn't matter and we don't care. Commenters here need to follow the site guidelines regardless of what their beliefs are, how right they are or feel they are, or how wrong others are or they feel they are.