India To Require Social Media Firms Rely on Government's Own Fact Checking (techcrunch.com) 48
India amended its IT law on Thursday to prohibit Facebook, Twitter and other social media firms from publishing, hosting or sharing false or misleading information about "any business" of the government and said the firms will be required to rely on New Delhi's own fact-check unit to determine the authenticity of any claim in a blow to many American giants that identify the South Asian market as their largest by users. From a report: Failure to comply with the rule, which also impacts internet service providers such as Jio and Airtel, risks the firms losing their safe harbour protections. The rule, first proposed in January this year, gives a unit of the government arbitrary and overbroad powers to determine the authenticity of online content and bypasses the principles of natural justice, said New Delhi-headquartered digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation.
Because government is so trustworthy... (Score:5, Insightful)
...especially when it comes to fact-checking itself.
Government is political, i.e., run by politicians. What the person (or group) in charge says, is correct. What anyone else says, is wrong.
Prelude to censorship, in C-minor...
Re:Because government is so trustworthy... (Score:4, Insightful)
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By that definition, every single implementation of communism we had would also be fascist.
Re: Because government is so trustworthy... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Bingo. It is. Fascism and communism are both side of a coin.
They're actually not, but since both seem to lead to dictatorship, it's easy to think that they are.
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Fascism and communism are both side of a coin.
They're actually not, but since both seem to lead to dictatorship, it's easy to think that they are.
They actually are. Just saying they are not is a good argument.
They actually are not. Just saying they are is not a good argument: since you made the assertion that they are; it's your burden [fallacyinlogic.com] to defend it.
There are many places you can go to find definitions of communism and fascism.
I demonstrated how they are the same philosophy (of central control of a domain), applied to two different domains (economics and society).
There's your first flaw. "A philosophy of central control of a domain" is not the definition of communism [merriam-webster.com].
In any case, though, saying "two different things are actually the same because they both have central control, although in different domains" is a useless argument. By that argument, a
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Bingo. It is. Fascism and communism are both side of a coin. One is economic doctrine and one is social doctrine.
That would make them orthogonal. They are measured along different axis.
Every society can be plotted as a point in a multi axis graph of social, economic, and political systems.
Re:Because government is so trustworthy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not accurate. Fascism is an economic system whereby corporatism and crony capitalism are the methodology for running the economy, leaving capital in the hands of the wealthy, however acquired. Communism substitutes central planning by the state for the capitalist elements, presuming that group ownership by the proletariat is the correct fate of the means of production. Both can be as authoritarian as desired, though imposing either one essentially mandates an authoritarian or even totalitarian system of government, as both presume totalized societies and run against the grain of human nature, hence why neither ever fully escapes dissident protest. Therefore, implementing authoritarian controls on speech doesn't presume any particular outcome in terms of economic system, though i'd judge that India's future doesn't look very Marxist at this time.
It's interesting that forms of government (loose, federalist, democratic) that accommodate human nature and avoid most dissident protest seem to be going out of style all over, to the extent they were ever IN style. Control of information and keeping the plebs all fired up with (individually) meaningless internal polarization and/or nationalism seem to be the methods of choice.
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forms of government (loose, federalist, democratic) that accommodate human nature and avoid most dissident protest
I don't understand. You're free to be a dissident and to protest under those systems. So people do. How is that "avoiding" dissident protest? There's probably more dissident protest under those systems than in "disagree and we'll kill your whole family" systems. I'm not trying to straw-man you. I just don't follow what you're saying.
Communism substitutes central planning by the state for the capitalist elements, [...] Both can be as authoritarian as desired,
I'm also somewhat befuddled as to a non-authoritarian communist central planning of production. Is it like Production for 2024 shall consist of 0.03% Brooms; 0.00001% Cars; 0.00
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Whenever you're ready. I'm not interested in a politics fight on the internet, but I am looking forward to reading your thoughts. If this article's comments get locked, reply to me on a future post and I'll generate an anonymous email to send to me.
Re:Because government is so trustworthy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you've summarized the orthodox view on this... which is totally wrong.
Communism as an economic system has never existed. It is simply a facade for fascism, eg rule by fiat by an unelected few.
The Bolshevik Revolution resulted in mass murder and dictatorship.
The Chinese Communist Revolution resulted in mass murder and dictatorship.
Ditto for Cuba. Ditto for Venezuela.
Anyone actually advocating for 'Communism' today is basically a tool or useful idiot, there to be used and cast aside.
As a side note, there are actually two dimensions to government; it is an overwhelming misconception that there is only the Liberal - Conservative spectrum with 'communism' (or more correctly socialism) being on the extreme left and 'fascism' being on the extreme right.
In fact the second dimension ranges from Anarchy to Totalitarianism. Right now Europe tends to have governments that are both totalitarian and liberal while the United States and Canada have governments that are totalitarian and centrist on the liberal-conservative axis. I'm not too familiar with India, but it seems to be a highly conservative, theocratic, totalitarian government
Any talk of 'communism' is simply code for the fact that the totalitarian elements want to rachet up the level of control.
Curious what kind of government (Score:2)
i.e. For a ball-park scenario, assume chronic, structural unemployment level approaches 50%, as automated processes become more cost-effective than labor.
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Well, I don't agree with your prediction... among other things AI research has a massive reproduceability problem. However, let's put that aside and assume your predictions come true:
If the automation-AI revolution happened quickly, chances are that civilization would fragment and collapse. The company owners would control too many resources and the 50% unemployed would lose hope of a better life, riot and rebel, urban centers would become death zones, and civilization would continue in small, self-suffic
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While you are right about the end result of Communist revolutions, a big part is Communism is an easier sell to poor farmers who don't own their land, and they're often hijacked early in the revolution by totalitarians. Russia was a good example, the revolution started out well with lots of small democratic soviets, and then the authoritarians like Lenin took over, with Stalin taking it to an even worse level.
Fascism seems to get into power more through coups then revolution.
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All it boils down to is the mechanism by which the Few seek to control and enslave the Many.
I just find "Communism" to be the most preposterous, thinly transparent lie of them all. Satan has historically been thought of as the father of lies, but it is like Evil is not even trying that hard these days... I wonder if it's because they are forced to employ the Iphone generation?
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All it boils down to is the mechanism by which the Few seek to control and enslave the Many.
Well, that's how it ends up, contrary to how the majority thought it would end up.
I just find "Communism" to be the most preposterous, thinly transparent lie of them all. Satan has historically been thought of as the father of lies, but it is like Evil is not even trying that hard these days... I wonder if it's because they are forced to employ the Iphone generation?
Why, is it that evil word commune, as in community? The ideal of not having a government doesn't seem that bad, even if it is impracticable/impossible on any type of scale. The real problem is authoritarianism, which ever economic system they pretend to favour. Look at this article, extremely right wing authoritarians removing freedoms. Up the page is someone claiming the right never does that, else where I'm sure there is som
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Well, Mussolini really didn't have a clearly articulated ideology for his original Fascism except to be strong and do a lot of strutting. Hitler's version was mostlly "blame someone else for all your problems", and Franco's was "I hate socialists" and his support was the upper class, church, professionals, and land owners. And those three are the classic fascist regimes, and their biggest commonality was to have a firm hand, a strong leader above reproach, and allowing no dissent. Which sounds a lot like
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...especially when it comes to fact-checking itself.
Government is political, i.e., run by politicians. What the person (or group) in charge says, is correct. What anyone else says, is wrong.
Prelude to censorship, in C-minor...
Nope. Just flat out censorship. It may be a prelude to more control overall, but it is censorship.
Re: Because government is so trustworthy... (Score:2)
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Prelude to censorship, in C-minor...
Forcing corporations to say only what the government tells them to say, at the risk of being legally punished. That's not a prelude. That's already direct censorship.
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In theory it sounds like an absolute nightmare. In practice, will it be any worse than FB and old Twitter's "Fact Checking"?
I doubt it.
LK
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In India's case, they've been actively pursuing critics of Narendra Modi & the self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk has been compliant & complicit
https://theintercept.com/2023/... [theintercept.com]
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Come back when the U.S. makes it LAW that you can't publish any stats other than the ones they provide.
And shame on you for trying to make out that this is some racist hate mongering, instead of the very real fear of fascist government control.
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America did vote out the wanna be Fascist.
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I think you are missing the significance of the words "require" and "rely." I don't have a problem with the Indian government fact-checking whatever it wants to. I do mind that it is considered the sole authoritative source.
I would have similar reservations about the U.S. government. It's free to say "this is false" all it wants. Where it runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution is preventing others from disagreeing or YouTube from showing those dissenting assertions.
But sure, "racism" or something.
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Take your race-baiting elsewhere, troll
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because usually US government fact checking comes from non political bodies (and is called into question by both major parties). And their facts are allowed to be checked; no one gets tossed into jail for disagreeing with the government facts. There's no law that says media must use the government facts. You can insult the government and government officials without ending up in jail.
Under the BJP party however, free speech becomes very difficult. This law in particular says they must use the government facts. People are arrested primarily because of dissent (usually with trumped up charges but it's obvious what the real reasons were), while media organizations are punished or censored for giving contrary ideas from the government.
There's a world of difference between the US government and a proto-dictatorship, you can't rationally claim they're equivalent.
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The issue isn't that the BJP is bad, but that Facebook is trying to call out India for doing the same thing they've been doing for years. Yet we have people who believe that fascism and censorship somehow lose their detestable qualities when performed by private companies instead of by government(s). Now that Facebook has shown governments what is possible through total control of speech, does it surprise anyone that government wants a share of the control?
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For years, Facebook, YouTube, etc... have been content to use the US government for fact-checking
Huh?
No they haven't. They use well-respected experts and reputable sources to fact-check. They don't use "the US Government."
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Huh? What law made those two particular sites do such a thing? Even if what you're describing had happened (it didn't), they did what they did because they wanted to. There was no law making them do it. Anyone who thinks there was, can prove their point by linking to the statute. And I think we all know that nobody is going to do that.
And Facebook and Youtube are just two sites. The other few million sites haven't done anything like that at all. You can't make generalizations about social networking from th
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please name it (Score:5, Funny)
I sure do hope they name it the Ministry of Truth.
Re:please name it [the MoT] (Score:2, Interesting)
Mod parent funny as the closest approach to the joke I was looking for. Earlier branches seemed to mostly be missing the point. Something like "It ain't free speech if no one is allowed to hear it."
However these days it will suffice to control the search engines. If no one can find it, then that's even better than trying to suppress it. The police state in question gets to collect all the evidence of the crime, but there's no actual harm done--though anyone searching for the evidence itself becomes evidence
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Mod parent ++Good.
It's time to relocate (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fact Checking" (Score:3, Insightful)
What happened in India? (Score:1)
They like to talk about how they are the world's largest democracy but as of late they have been doing a lot of things that go against the idea of a free and open and democratic society...
Are we doomed? (Score:2)
Authoritarian misinformation (Score:2)
Idea: Declare all social media posts "art" (Score:2)
Facebook et al can just put a large disclaimer up every time you log in, which states that all posts are the artistic creations of their authors, and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is entirely co-incidental.
Then the whole social-media doom-scroll experience can be likened to experiencing a post-modern alternative-theatre play.
No claim or expectation of truth applies.