[HN Gopher] Indian government empowers itself to "fact check," d...
___________________________________________________________________
Indian government empowers itself to "fact check," delete social
media posts
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 110 points
Date : 2023-04-17 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| dahwolf wrote:
| ...which pretty much ends democracy. Without the ability to
| criticize a government in power, one cannot build opposition.
| Hence, there is no democracy.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| 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?
|
| [1] https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-
| punja...
| jutrewag wrote:
| 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.
| azifali wrote:
| A clear case of inmates running the asylum.
| hdesh wrote:
| Interestingly Germany has a similar law
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act). Based on
| a cursory read the Indian counterpart seems quite similar.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| India has some previous experience with censorship. Maybe we will
| end up with "The Emergency: Part II"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India)
| shasts wrote:
| Interesting, because Indian Government recently jailed an
| independent fact checker for a tweet he made 4 years ago.
|
| This new body seems to be a tool to suppress dissent and promote
| the fake news machinery Government and the ruling party is
| notorious for.
|
| https://www.cnbctv18.com/india/alt-news-pratik-sinha-mohamma...
| throwaway_9120 wrote:
| The "independent fact checker" you are talking about is well
| known for whitewashing horrific crimes done by radical Muslims
| in India and abroad. He was the one who manipulated a video and
| single handedly unleashed terrorists gunning for Nupur Sharma's
| blood. Imagine a spokesperson of the ruling party is in hiding
| for more than 8-9 months now!
| shasts wrote:
| You got sources for this claim? If he has done anything
| wrong, why is he not in jail for that?
| mentli wrote:
| [dead]
| AverageDude wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61716241.amp
|
| It says that the fact checker shared a video of what she
| said.
| throwaway_9120 wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway_9120 wrote:
| Sure. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bjps-nupur-
| sharma-...
| CommanderData wrote:
| India has one of the most robust Internet trolling,
| astroturfing apparatus in the world.
|
| You will not be treated well if you criticise the government.
| screye wrote:
| 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.
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| It is supposed to be against dissent, the current ruling party
| is straight up unironically fascist and descends from the same
| political party that inspired the german nationalist socialist
| party.
|
| They constantly lie to the indian people to promote a possible
| genocide against the muslim minority.
|
| The ruling bjp party is just another fascist party following
| the fascist playbook.
|
| The ruling party promotes laughable lies like india having had
| nuclear technology and satellites in antiquity.
|
| Modi and his cronies just want control, nothing else.
| nsenifty wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Golwalkar
|
| [1] https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/britain-
| ado...
|
| [2] https://time.com/5414055/american-nazi-sympathy-book/
| throwaway_9120 wrote:
| Since Modi came to power in 2014 there has been no civilian-
| terror incident anywhere across the country. During the
| earlier regime, bomb blasts became a quarterly event. They
| were so busy with corruption filling their coffers, didn't
| bother about national security.
|
| If this is "fascism" as you say, majority of the Indians are
| happy living under it.
| honkler wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway_9120 wrote:
| 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.
| honkler wrote:
| Great that you poured your heart out for others to read.
| Made my job much easier.
| cubefox wrote:
| > They constantly lie to the indian people to promote a
| possible genocide against the muslim minority.
|
| What evidence do you have for that?
| nsenifty wrote:
| 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.
| honkler wrote:
| That India is on the highest level alert as per
| GenocideWatch, and plenty other institutions.
| yutijke wrote:
| 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?
|
| Something else?
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| 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.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| rektide wrote:
| 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.
| corbulo wrote:
| 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.
| yutijke wrote:
| But most people do not think critically. Even if we try we do
| not have access to perfect information.
|
| You read a news article. Is it fact? Is it a tilted spin? Is
| it truth that omits strategic nuances?
|
| No matter how critically I approach it, I will not be able
| derive objective truth from biased and fuzzy information.
|
| At some point you will need to trust someone to curate.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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.
| preommr wrote:
| 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.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| 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.
| standardUser wrote:
| 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.
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| [dead]
| indy wrote:
| Why label this 'rightward'? Plenty of left-leaning governments
| throughout history have used censorship.
| jutrewag wrote:
| Banning hate speech is not censorship.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Censorship:
|
| 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
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censors
| h...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm not sure that definition is relevant; it's too
| extreme to apply to the situation.
|
| By that definition the US censors speech such as
| incitement to violence, fraud, slander, and intellectual
| property. No place has ever been uncensored.
|
| Like everything in life, there's a matter of degree to it
| and a question of what is censored.
| jutrewag wrote:
| Then banning bomb making is censorship but there's no
| opposition to that.
| drdeca wrote:
| Banning instructions on how to make bombs would be
| censorship.
|
| Banning the making of bombs is not censorship.
| Delk wrote:
| "Throughout history".
|
| 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.
| beisner wrote:
| authoritarian is probably the right word, rather than
| left/right.
| jtode wrote:
| Authoritarian is also probably the rightward.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Plenty of left-leaning governments throughout history have
| used censorship.
|
| What does that have to do with Modi? Modi's government has
| moved far to the right.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| You're right, I think "illiberal" lurch is a better
| description.
| VLM wrote:
| Better to have "the government" do it rather than a single
| political party like its done in the USA.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| Ten years ago I would have agreed.
|
| 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.
| fear_and_coffee wrote:
| [dead]
| standardUser wrote:
| > Yes, state censorship can be abused.
|
| 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.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| 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.
| sammalloy wrote:
| 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.
| johndhi wrote:
| Why is the government well suited to declare what it and
| isn't misinformation though?
|
| Shouldn't we farm that out to a third party?
| autoexec wrote:
| > 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.
| gus_massa wrote:
| What about weapons of mass destruction?
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| code_chimp wrote:
| 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'".
| citizen_friend wrote:
| 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?
| imperio59 wrote:
| This makes no sense.
|
| 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.
| jen20 wrote:
| > Democracy is not going to die because people spread false
| information.
|
| That is exactly what is going to happen. People do not have
| the tools to discern truth given plausible misinformation.
|
| > you are free to have an open debate and correct the
| record.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
|
| > The government having the power to decide who can say
| what and what is "true" or "false"...
|
| Indeed, that is a risk, but not the only risk.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| "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.
| t-3 wrote:
| If people are incapable of determining true and false how
| are people supposed to determine true and false to remove
| misinformation?
| jutrewag wrote:
| Democracy will definitely die if you spread false
| information because everyone is making decisions based on
| falsehoods.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| [flagged]
| jaldhar wrote:
| 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?
| uoaei wrote:
| 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.
| eynsham wrote:
| And how much do you know about the Indian government?
| mattigames wrote:
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I'm not sure what the real answer should be.
|
| 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).
| thewanderer1983 wrote:
| >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.
| gus_massa wrote:
| 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).
| demindiro wrote:
| 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?
| hackerlight wrote:
| > 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.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| I mean, have you seen the common folk?
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYTQ7__NNDI
| SllX wrote:
| 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.
| Xelbair wrote:
| and what makes you think you are better than them?
| rdfgtdffsdaf wrote:
| He's on Hacker News lol, he's better than everyone. It's
| a condition of membership in this secret club.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the
| community._" It's reliably a marker of bad comments and
| worse threads.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| autoexec wrote:
| > 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 and 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they
| have been fooled"
| corbulo wrote:
| Ill admit I don't know a ton about India's constitution. Do they
| have freedom of speech? How is it phrased?
| nsenifty wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_of_the_Constit...
| honkler wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| riffic wrote:
| 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.
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