Indian. I resisted getting a twitter account all these years, but created one just to keep track of the pandemic. As far as I can tell, Indian political parties and "news" outlets have completely gamed the system. Every day, there would be a new outrage hashtag. And by no means are these outrages driven by one political faction. Over the last one year, I notice that Twitter itself has taken steps to limit the "trending" hashtags. Since 2021, I see just one or two such hashtags on the homepage.
With all this outrage generated on Twitter, I really wonder how much of a role Twitter is playing in incitement(s). Would I be sad to see Twitter go? To some extent... there are some great people I follow on Twitter. But the platform itself, I tend to see as a force of evil.
>As far as I can tell, Indian political parties and "news" outlets have completely gamed the system. Every day, there would be a new outrage hashtag. And by no means are these outrages driven by one political faction. Over the last one year, I notice that Twitter itself has taken steps to limit the "trending" hashtags. Since 2021, I see just one or two such hashtags on the homepage.
For an example of how "one political faction" can manufacture trends, check this out - https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352. They contact famous personalities (in this case athletes who had represented India at the Olympics), give them a text ("I thank @narendramodi for his initiative to honour and empower...") and ask them all to tweet it at the same time. Then they use their vast network of fake accounts to amplify it. Same thing yesterday, when they requested cricket players with large followings to implicitly criticise Greta Thunberg and Rihanna for "interfering" in India's affairs.
It's so easy to co-opt this too. One person got access to the shared google doc where they store the next tweets that need to be trending and changed it to something critical of Modi. It was promptly tweeted out regardless by government ministers who said "working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt" and "Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point".
True that. Daily you wake up and you see powerplay of tweeting trends. Accounts trying to just use their followers to build a wave of trends and then people against them doing the same.
It's not the number of tweets that should build a trend, but number of authentic facts that is backing it up. I wish there was a platform which shows facts leading up to a certain tweet - for both sides. So that immediately, I can compare the reality.
>But the platform itself, I tend to see as a force of evil.
Exactly my thoughts the last couple of weeks. I think world would be a much better place if platforms like Twitter or Facebook doesn't exist. All they are doing now is spreading hatred and divisiveness in our societies, be it USA or India. I left Facebook back in 2012. And quit Twitter & Reddit for good this week.
Right now I'm listening to a report on NPR about how India, the world's largest democracy, leads the world in the number of times it has shut down Internet access.
As this will inevitably (sadly) become the norm, I fully expect we'll see the same in the U.S. in relatively short time. Hopefully that's too pessimistic; but, to be prepared -- what is the state of the art of HAM-based networking in the U.S.?
Keep in mind that amateur radio operators are banned from using encryption* on the air which means no HTTPS/TLS, SSH/SFTP, VPNs, or Tor. You'd basically be operating with the privacy of the Internet circa 1995. Almost all commercial activities are also banned.
* Authentication is allowed but the contents of the messages cannot be concealed.
But if the extreme measure of cutting people off at the ISP level were to occur (heaven forbid), wouldn't such rules be broken in the name of civil disobedience? I'm curious about what's technically feasible. Do "preppers" have a plan for such an event?
Hams are pretty uptight about self-policing what goes on in their RF spectrum, mostly because they realize that if they don't a) other people will step in and police it for them and b) it would make it much easier for commercial interests to make the case for their spectrum allocations to be taken away (they're recently losing this fight in the 3.3-3.5 GHz band to 5G cellular networks and increasingly high-frequency traders are eyeing their traditional shortwave allocations to shave those next few microseconds off compared to microwave networks).
If you did start transmitting encrypted stuff on the ham bands someone would probably foxhunt you (even if you were doing it for "civil disobedience") and ask you politely to stop before reporting you to the FCC. You could of course work outside of the ham bands but then what you're doing would be illegal for other reasons.
Sure, we are back to talking about free speech considerations since now it is not the side most of the tech press hates being blocked.
What Twitter started with when it decided to become the arbiter of what is allowed on the platform, and what constitutes inciting violence and unrest, it opened a slippery slope.
I read about the hashtag in question and it definitely seems like one can spin it as people inciting unrest and violence similar to what happened few weeks back. Twitter lost the moral ground here as soon as it decided to wade into what constitutes good speech and what not.
Anyway, Twitter has been a toxic platform for a while now. It just has managed to evade the scrutiny FB gets. Just look at the sort of activism that goes around there which is related to the current issue. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rihanna-rallies-to-the-wrong-ca...
According to sources, it was Skyrocket that allegedly paid $2.5 million to popstar Rihanna to tweet in support of the farmers’ protest in India. Dhaliwal, the sources said, is a Canada-based Sikh who is a “self-proclaimed Sikh separatist” and is also close to Jagmeet Singh.
I don't think they'll ban Twitter. This isn't the first time ruling party is unhappy with it. Govt. would not want it to be escalated as it is already in a soft war with China and would need USA's support in it.
They managed to get TikTok out of the country. IMO, China has just as much influence in India as the US, if not more. They recently banned Internet access in several parts of Delhi ( the capital ) as well, during the farmer protests on Republic day. This did not even make the news. I know because I live here.
Moreover, the bulk of the population won't really be affected by a Twitter ban - they aren't on it, and make most of the voter pool.
I remember when Twitter was trending pro-Labour trends everyday in the last election you would think they were going to win. But Tories did. I think it shows how much of an echo chamber each social media platform can be.
Rihannas tweeted about some political protest, but it was later established she was paid for the tweet. SM platforms have a responsbility to declare political endorsements.
It's now lifted [0]. I'd not like any ban on freedom – however the ban was on the geographic area and anyone living in there had been effected of course. Hopefully things will only improve from here.
Being running a purely internet business I can completely understand the pain and frustration it would have caused. However, if I see the bigger picture, Lack of ban would have caused hundred of lives in the aftermath of change in constitutional status of the J&K.
It's like lockdown that we all had to endure to save lives.
You have the right to your opinion but this is how I see it.
Your words sound like you support implementing laws, then clamping down on any avenues of dissent until things cool down aka people get tired and carry on all the while the motive behind laws is achieved, people be damned? that so? is that what is meant by "democracy" in 2021 ?
Yes considering all the news we see about Hong Kong. It is surprising that Kashmir isn't covered despite being in worse situation for more than a year, over a similar issue.
HK used to be more stable and is a highly visible global node that is well connected, exports cultural products, and is home to foreign offices for a lot of companies. It’s very easy to cover HK given that, say, the NYT has been there for the past few decades and has staffers who have directly observed changes throughout that time.
My impression of Kashmir is that the situation hasn’t been positive for a very long time, and all the other factors are either less true or don’t apply.
Also, in Kashmir's case, the lines become blurry because on one hand you have excesses from the Indian state, and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines.
It is quite a controversial topic and when someone looking from outside can't even gauge the recent issue at hand correctly[1], you can't expect them to have the context of Kashmir issue.
why are things blurry?
you are saying
>and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines.
kashmir has been fighting against both india and pakistan on many fronts ever since this issue began. the state of kashmir has been essentially fighting war of independence against foreign oppressive rule for the past 500 years.
so what 30 years ago pakistan convinced and managed to turn thousands of kashmiris as pawns in a proxy war with india. that doesnt mean kashmir is with pakistan, on the contrary, people in pakistan occupied kashmir protest against their oppression daily.
why do you think just because someone picked a gun that they have muddied the waters and only way out is to surrender because you cannot do an armed struggle?
I apologise for any mistake I make here as my knowledge of Indian history is not very fresh.
> the state of kashmir has been essentially fighting war of independence against foreign oppressive rule for the past 500 years.
But what constitutes foreign rule. If I move before 500 years, we have Mauryas or Karkotas ruling Kashmir with Srinagar being an important city to them, which are pan North Indian empires.
> why do you think just because someone picked a gun that they have muddied the waters and only way out is to surrender because you cannot do an armed struggle?
Well, I think once a struggle turns violent, the issue becomes emotive on both sides as there is blood shed. For people in Kashmir, it has been since 1947, wounds of which keep opening up again. For people in rest of India, the narrative and the blood of the people from RoI which has been spent in keeping Kashmir has been huge as well.
No one would want to back down, the armed insurgent movement is never going to succeed.
My second point was, some of the groups are motivated on religious lines and want a country based on a religion which makes it extremely hard for others to sympathise for them.
I am not too aware about the reason for this. Most of the states have been divided on linguistic lines. Punjab and Haryana have different dominant languages. It also might have been administrative like it was for a lot of states.
Weaken them by making a state where electoral prospects are just decided by them? That is just counter intuitive. If you don't divide the state, they aren't in the majority anymore but it does increase the administrative burden.
Also, you are talking about the same person who gave away land in other states, even the Himalayan ones to the community. They had very limited presence there before.
If you read the history of the religion and subcontinent, there is no reason he would even want to weaken them as well. Leaving the small separatist voices aside, the vast majority is so intermingled with the dominant religion in North India, that there is no reason to do this.
Anyway, it seems you are even less aware about this topic than most people are. I am not sure where you are getting your information from, but reading from your charged language I can only ask you to not fall for hyperbole and look at things pragmatically.
They wanted all of Punjab to be theirs, no? Not sharing a capital with Haryana. I would think they were settling, if they got a more compact state. What I will say is that Sikhs I met in USA were not happy with say splitting Chandigarh.
>Punjab and Haryana have different dominant languages
A lot of Punjabi-speaking Hindus "chose" Hindi for that to be true IIRC.
> I would think they were settling, if they got a more compact state.
It is not like any land exchange happened. Sure, some resources got divided but I wouldn't see it as settling. If you read analysis about management of big states, even now a lot of analysts believe some of the other big states should be split up.
> What I will say is that Sikhs I met in USA were not happy with say splitting Chandigarh.
Well, that's not representative of them, no? I have also met people who are not happy with that decision and also people who are indifferent to it.
> A lot of Punjabi-speaking Hindus "chose" Hindi for that to be true IIRC.
Not really, look at any language census from before as well in the districts that became the new state.
But the linguistic issue is not just limited to that state. Look at the northern Himalayan states and look at what has happened to their languages. Hindi has just subsumed their languages with its words and now most people speak Hindi only. This situation is made worse because of the necessity of English as a language, their own mother tongue kind of becomes third in the priority list.
>an estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred.
yes. you are right. i do remember displacement but it does not hold a candle to 1947 jammu massacres.
what do you think? who are more important? 100k deaths or 219?
SO you're justifying 1990 killings and displacement of Pandits as a revenge for 1947? From the same Wikipedia article you linked also has a similar justification then for 1947 Jamu vilence:
> the Jammu province which was contiguous to Punjab, experienced mass migration that led to violent inter-religious activity. Large numbers of Hindus and Sikhs from Rawalpindi and Sialkot started arriving since March 1947, bringing "harrowing stories of Muslim atrocities in West Punjab". According to scholar Ilyas Chattha, this provoked counter-violence on Jammu Muslims, which had "many parallels with that in Sialkot". He writes, "the Kashmiri Muslims were to pay a heavy price in September–October 1947 for the earlier violence of West Punjab."
Additionally, Pandits have been on the receiving end - once a majority of the Kashmiri population about 600 years ago. Seven times at least they've been forced to exit, countless killed or forcefully converted to Islam https://www.quora.com/What-atrocities-were-committed-on-Kash...
But despite all this, Pandits have never opted for taking arms in hands and become terrorist killing civilians.
what is wrong with you.... i am explaining how there are even bigger attrocities committed on either side. besides, pandits in kashmir are ethnically different from jammu dogras, ones who committed 1947 massacres so why would you even think i'd justify something. this is the kind of vile thinking that is of no direct consequence to you that is causing immeasurable harm to kashmiris
Sadly, it is unrealistic to hope that my country will also ban Twitter.
Details of the software behind an online forum make a big difference to how the forum affects its participants and the society they are part of. It would take a long article to begin to describe exactly how the details of Twitter are bad, but as a start we might notice how difficult it is for a reader to find the responses to a particular contribution (tweet) and how difficult it is for the writer of a response to predict which readers will see the response -- making Twitter a worse tool for arriving at collective truth than are most online fora or at least worse than most pre-social-media online fora. We might notice that (probably for complicated reasons, perhaps partly because it is a bad tool for online truth-finding) experience has revealed that Twitter is more likely to assist in the formation of an online mob than other online fora are.
It's an article post on the paywalled site platformer.news (Alexa Rank 57,888, most of the sites visitors coming from cnewton.org) by the San Francisco based founder and writer of platformer.news Casey Newton, the article title ends in a question mark.
The current party in power in India is removing minimum purchase prices for produce. This is akin to removing minimum wage for farmers in a market where it would be financial ruin for most farmers and give way to corporate farms leading the way.
The farmers were peacefully protesting and the government has reacted by attacking them quite brutally etc.. recently they've also issued FIRs (effectively arrest warrants) for foreigners who've voiced their support for the farmers on Twitter.
Generally the government is trying to keep exposure to these events as low as possible. Twitter is obviously not beholden to their wishes.
Well my dads a farmer and he has no problem with these laws and you will find the same with majority of the farmers in India. They support the law, literally every economist is giving their approval to these laws. There will naturally be some opposing the law and the government has held a dozen meetings with the small number of farmers to discuss each and every point, but they are hell bent on repealing the law instead of amending, which imo is not very constructive.
Whether your dad is okay with it or not is irrelevant though.
The fact remains though that many are unhappy about it and have been attacked violently. The fact is that the police have filed FIRs against people for voicing support.
Those are the salient points to this discussion on whether India will ban Twitter or not
It's true that considerable number of farmers are unhappy with the new farm laws. But an even larger number of farmers are just fine with those. Ideally, this should be implemented differently in each state, as situation in each state is different. Violence does not help in anyway - either by the farmers or the police.
The other point is about involvement of shady organizations.
There is evidence that the protests were planned in advance. Greta Thunberg seems to be involved. I have read the document which was published on Cryptpad. While the document is not really encouraging violence, it does have phrases which clearly intend to malign India's image. A Canadian outfit called 'poetic justice' is also involved.
while the toolkit does not directly incite violence , it clearly mentions that the plan was followed per schedule. the protests were already planned despite the leaders of protests giving their word that the protests would be peaceful on the republic day.
the toolkit reveals intentions to malign India by asking people all over the world to protest infront of Indian embassies
"Malign India's image" is a typical response when someone outside says what wrong is going on. Whatever that toolkit and organisation is doing is creating awareness among people about farmer's protest. Where is the malign India part?
Anybody can spread awareness like this. John Oliver did like this many times e.g. during net neutrality, he asked all trolls to write complain to FCC.
This is how less powerful can organise online. Meanwhile Indian govt and it's cyber gang is the one who is making sportsperson and celebrities to post some copy paste tweet to counter this. This is what gov propaganda looks like.
The accusation that Indian govt is asking celebrities to copy paste tweet could be true.
but did you consider the possibility that some of those celebrities truly want things to be settled peacefully?
could Mia , Rihanna and Greta be also not part of a propaganda?
Even if both sides are using propaganda as a weapon, atleast celebrities like Sachin Tendulkar are not spreading lies. They are only giving a positive message. They want the whole matter to be solved and for that it's the Indian government and the Indian farmers who have to work together.
Tendulkr is spreading lies as the tweet (which is a copy paste job) makes it look like thing are going well on farmers side and gov is thinking about them. Where did rihanna and greta lied? You are also spreading propaganda here or just biased like sachn.
Gov doesn't want to work together, they made the law and want everyone to obey them.
Exactly. Not all farmers are protesting. It can be good for some, but it's definitely risky for people who are already doing well with the existing MSP system. But social platforms show you what you previously liked, and people get conditioned to not see both sides of the coin. It can be good for poor states who are already throwing their crops due to low MSP rates.
please read the document before dismissing it as a consiparcy theory. It clearly mentions to people in other countries to protest in front of Indian embassies.
What does someone from UK understand about Indian farmers?
By all means protest in India - without resorting to violence.
No point in protesting in other country unless you think that will create external pressure on the Indian government.
Here the government is willing to talk further, even put a stay on the laws for 18 months , but the protestors just do not want to collaborate.
I agree that the government should have been transparent from the beginning. The stubbornness of ruling government escalated situation. But atleast now they are ready to talk.
Why do the protesters still want to keep escalating by resorting to violence?
Most farmers don't get proper money for their crop, much less than what protesting farmers are getting. These farmers have something like minimum wage that protects them. These laws will remove these protection.
Those who are ok with it, don't have that protection, already get much lower payment than what they should, law does not effect them. This is the vast majority of farmers btw. So they don't care.
But saying just because vast majority ok without knowing what is going on is very shellfish. Educate yourself before making allegations.
Just to add the context - the law does't target MSP directly. They are basically saying that now all farmers of the country can sell their produce without the control of government owned marketplaces called 'mandis'. In 'mandis' there is a minimum support price, so farmers have a guarentee of getting atleast that much for their produce. Now when market will be opened, this will probably kill the MSP system, as now this will be an open market where farmers will directly deal with corporates or their consumers. Right now the produce has to be strictly sold with government owned mandis, which I think is causing government financial losses.
The protests were generally peaceful, but recently on our republic day we cannot say it remained peaceful. I think government should have first spent time in making people understand the pros/cons of the changes and take their feedback if they are ready. Any protests long drawn, can turn violent.
My personal take on this is that farmers are not ready yet to face the corporate world as buyers. This law should come, but not now. And Government can build an intermediary organization to work with both mandis and corporates - but again, whenever government builds something in India, the officers appointed use corruption to take it from useful to useless. So that also won't work. I don't know, what can solve this issue apart from government holding off the laws. They are saying they can put the law on hold for 1.5 years, but the protest is at a stage where they want it to be totally taken back. The case is also in supreme court of India where I think they have made a committee to solve this. But I believe protesters are very concerned about livelihood post these laws. I guess that's the trouble with big changes like this, it can impact people positively/negatively in short term but might boost the economy in long run. It's important to protect people during these major changes also. May be NGOs can be used to first raise awareness - small A/B test can be done with experiment group. I don't know why governments don't do incremental changes slowly.
I share the same fear farmers have in regards to corporations taking over things. I have seen documentaries about how the 3-5 corporate monopolies in USA are abusing the chicken farmers. So I don't know if the Indian farmers fear about corporations are entirely wrong.
Having said that, I think the new laws are good for India. These are the arguments I have heard in favor of the new laws:
India introduced the current MSP related system back in 1960 to inspire farmers to grow those crops when India had a huge shortage of food grains, and was importing food directly from US (google 'ship to mouth india'). That is not the case now. India actually has a surplus of those grains.
Also, MSP covers only something like 15-26 food crops produced in India. For example, we all saw how onion prices dropped to insanely low prices last 2 years. There was no MSP for them. Just yesterday, there was news of a farmer in UP dumping 1000 kg cauliflower because of low prices.
Also, I believe this MSP cover is available only in certain states, which puts other states at a disadvantage. To make things complicated, there is a law that guarantees certain grains at low price for the poor. For example, the govt will give rice at 3 rupees to the poor. Govt has to buy the rice from the farmers because of the MSP system (say at Rs 20), and then in turn sell them to the poor at Rs.3 in a state which doesn't have MSP, thus putting the farmers in the non MSP states at a huge disadvantage.
Another reason I heard is that farmers are producing huge amounts of MSP crops such as rice and wheat because the price is guaranteed, while ignoring other crops that India has to heavily import (such as ground nut). The govt has to purchase the MSP grains no matter what, and the godowns have way more in stock than India could distribute (almost double or more last year).
Also, some of these MSP crops like rice require lot of water for cultivation, and considering the shortage of water in most places in India, govt wants to reduce the farming of such crops.
I agree to your points. For India's future growth opening of such markets is very crucial. But government could have just introduced corporate mandis where regulators would be there, and corporates will also be present. The regulators will plan the next season according to corporate demand. Slowly, the corporate mandis would have gotten more share and farmers would have felt safer. Nobody likes abrupt changes when they are at the receiving end of uncertainty. and that's what is happening.
Also, the world is seeing rise of social media platforms over governments where a celebrity can tweet and ask their followers to attack a building or start a protest. In such a novel volatile environment it's very important for governments to adapt and understand their population. And I also read that this change was in discussion already from a decade and also present in manifesto of the opposition party. It's a loss making system for government and the taxes we are paying are balancing that loss. As far as I can deduce, MSP has become a welfare scheme now. I wish, it would have not become the mess it is now and farmers could have also feel safer to move to open market and compete globally.
Yes they've been constantly attacked since the early days of the protest, from last year. There's a lot of footage online of it from November/December.
I am from Kerala, which is currently ruled by the communists. I see protesters getting lathi charged and water cannoned pretty much every month (pre covid). So, honestly I can't say the farmers were treated badly based on the image in the BBC article. I am not saying violence is good, but police were lathi charging people during the corona lockdowns also.
1. The protest on the republic day was not peaceful. Some groups among protesters hoisted a different flag on the Red fort, Delhi
2. Not all farmers across the country are protesting. Some are. Mainly Punjab, Haryana, few from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, Rajasthan.
3. It's true that the government has not been totally transparent. But they put a stay on implementation of farm laws for the next 18 months and offered to continue further discussion. However, the protesters continued the protests and vandalised Red fort, a historic building in New Delhi. The protests did become violent on the Republic day where the police were injured.
The law is also removing mandatory middle men who had a lot of sway over the farmers who had to go through them to sell their produce. Effectively going towards a free-er market.
It is more nuanced. The peaceful protestors got violent. They attacked the Red fort and flew flags for a separatist movement after bringing down the Indian flag.
Such an attack on democracy should not be allowed.
Indian flag was not even touched. Stop spreading lies.
There's not even a single other instance where flag was disrespected during last 4+ months. So, why it happened only there? It was conspired and scripted by govt to malign the movement. The entry gates were also not secure.
given how much Twitter influences elections and has clearly demonstrated the degree to which they put their thumb on the scale, countries will be making their own and/or block it. it would be stupid not to.
With all this outrage generated on Twitter, I really wonder how much of a role Twitter is playing in incitement(s). Would I be sad to see Twitter go? To some extent... there are some great people I follow on Twitter. But the platform itself, I tend to see as a force of evil.