[HN Gopher] India ruling party's IT cell used AI to show smile o...
___________________________________________________________________
India ruling party's IT cell used AI to show smile on arrested
protesters' faces
Author : throwaway384629
Score : 697 points
Date : 2023-05-29 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.altnews.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.altnews.in)
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Someone should make a movie on an alternate history of the civil
| rights movement failing because of technology like this.
| cookieperson wrote:
| The problem with all civil rights movements is, any ground
| gained can be easily removed later. Technology like this is
| almost the perfect tool for doing so. Buckle up it's not going
| to be pretty.
| jeswin wrote:
| This has devolved into a political discussion unfit for HN. The
| OP's submission history[1] is almost entirely political, and
| promoting a specific viewpoint.
|
| While I believe it's ok to discuss politics on HN, my view is
| that accounts that exist solely for political propaganda should
| be discouraged.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=throwaway384629
| archagon wrote:
| If politics emergent from SV technology can't be discussed on
| HN, then I'd call this community an abject failure.
| jeswin wrote:
| My point was that submitters who only submit political
| articles (in line with their biases) are detrimental to the
| site. Such articles attract more politically charged
| engagement, and over time draw in people who care more about
| politics than tech.
|
| The article btw is of questionable newsworthiness; and is a
| link to a propoganda blog. It's not really an accredited news
| organization.
| archagon wrote:
| That may be true, but most of OP's posts did not get any
| traction at all. This one did because it's relevant to the
| community.
| hotsauceror wrote:
| Why? "This community" worked extremely hard to bring this
| technology to fruition, and got handsomely rewarded for doing
| so. The "success" already happened. At least Mr. Altman had
| the decency to wait until his product had been released
| before getting up on his moral high horse about the risks of
| what he'd built, whereas poor Google did the hard work of
| firing all their AI ethicists and making their priorities
| clear a while ago, only for them to get scooped on their own
| technology.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| In your opinion...
|
| I think AI manipulation of public opinion is a great topic for
| HN, IMNSHO
| sanmon3186 wrote:
| Also the post has been editorialised. Sure parties have IT
| cells doing all kind of things to build narratives, but I am
| not so sure if there are basis for the inference in this case.
|
| Even if political, I personally expect better on HN.
| viewtransform wrote:
| I think this is relevant to HN because this is technology that
| many of us are working on and having an real life example of
| misuse should make us pause and think how to address the issue.
| jtode wrote:
| We're either going to improve our collective critical thinking,
| or we are... not.
| temp9807 wrote:
| [flagged]
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| just wait until tomorrow!
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| The title is wrong.
| prhrb wrote:
| Context: The day this happened was the inauguration of new
| Parliament building of India.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| The inauguration of the new Parliament building where:
|
| - None of the major opposition parties attended
|
| - The President and other constitutional heads were not invited
|
| - The protesting athletes were arrested
|
| - One religion was in the spotlight, as opposed to the Indian
| brand of secularism where ceremonies of all religions should
| have been conducted
|
| - On the day of Savarkar's (Hindu nationalist) birth
| anniversary
|
| - The PM treating it as a vanity project/personal PR photoshoot
| kalam_throw wrote:
| - Using a symbol of Monarchy as the center piece of this
| inauguration.
| ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote:
| [flagged]
| praveen9920 wrote:
| Ever wondered why these "laws" were not repealed or even
| questioned by the ruling party in the last 9 years, even
| with an overwhelming majority in parliament?
| ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote:
| For the same reason that the Republicans continue
| believing, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that
| they have a chance with black voters.
|
| No matter what the BJP tries, they will never get more
| than 10-15% of the Muslim vote. Hindus accept laws
| contrary to their interests. Muslims come out on the
| streets and arm twist their political beneficiaries into
| reversing judgements and acts that they perceive to be
| against their interests.[1]
|
| [1] Shah Bano case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohd._A
| hmed_Khan_v._Shah_Bano_...)
| praveen9920 wrote:
| There are ways of engaging with communities in democracy,
| rather than creating laws which one group ( majority )
| think is right. which is not a great suite of the current
| ruling party, to be honest. Farmer laws, demonetization
| etc are some of examples.
|
| BTW, If a party cannot do what is required for the
| country, they probably are not right for ruling the
| country.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > It is only in "secular" India that organized religious
| conversions were allowed that led to Christians going from
| less that 1% of the population 100 years ago to 90% today
| in some states
|
| But all that happened before India was even fully
| independent so how is it relevant? Are you saying Christian
| should be forcibly converted back to Hinduism?
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| I'd partly disagree, there are reports of forced
| conversions to Islam in Kashmir, and women being raped
| and murdered on refusing to do so long after
| independence, as recent as 2021.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| Thank you for raising this! it definitely isn't talked
| about as much as it should, especially in western spheres
| of dicussion like here on hn
| ephemeralkey wrote:
| > Secularism in modern India is a synonym for Hinduphobia
| ... 1. Secularism is a constitutional
| principle enshrined in fundamental rights in the Indian
| constitution. The fundamental *Right to Equality* in the
| Indian constitution already implies this. Although, the
| word *secular* was added explicitly to the constitution
| through the 42nd Amendment (in 1976), it has been implictly
| read in through various Supreme Court rulings. The
| dishonest equivalence of secularism with Hinduphobia is by
| those who want to attack the Right to Equality.
| 2. The comment mentions polygamy permitted under Muslim
| personal law. Marriages in India are governed by personal
| laws. There was a time when inter-religion/inter-caste
| marriages were illegal. Polygamy among Hindus was legal
| until 1956 when the Hindu Marriage Act (a personal law) was
| amended to outlaw polygamy. There is a landmark case
| currently underway on the equality of marriage sought by
| LGBTQ+ individuals to bring same-sex marriage the same
| legal protections as marriage between a man and a woman.
| This is an evolving legal area. The courts are quite
| conscious of the fact that not everyone, including Hindus
| want personal laws to be overturned (as it also impacts
| succession, property rights etc.,). There will be broad
| based support for overturning some anachronistic personal
| laws due to intersectionality (eg: Hindu gay men wanting to
| marry or Muslim women wanting triple-Talaq (divorce) law
| overtuned).
|
| > It is only in "secular" India that organized religious
| conversions were _allowed_ (emphasis added) ...
| 3. It is right there in the constitution. Article 25 (1)
| states that: *Subject to public order, morality and health
| and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are
| equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right
| freely to profess, practise and propagate religion*
| 4. The word *propagate religion* includes religious
| conversions. So, proselytizing is covered by the
| constituion. The law also says *forcible conversions* are
| illegal since it infringes on right to freely practice
| one's religion. Of course, the fascists will equate all
| proselytizing with forcible conversions.
| ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote:
| > Secularism is a constitutional principle
|
| The constitution can say whatever it wants. The only
| thing that matters is what actually happens on the
| ground. Successive governments have adopted Hinduphobic
| positions and laws while claiming to be secular. Why are
| only Hindu temples under the control of various state
| governments? Why don't governments take similar control
| of cathedrals, churches and mosques?
|
| There is example after example proving my position. All
| you have is some words in a document that are belied by
| the actions of those meant to observe it.
|
| > Right to Equality
|
| Religious minorities can run their own schools where they
| can teach their children their way of life? Can Hindus do
| this _qua_ Hindus? Again, words in a document that
| contradict other words in the same document.
|
| > Hindu Marriage Act (a personal law) was amended to
| outlaw polygamy
|
| Why were Muslims not given the same benefits or punished
| in the same manner (whichever way you want to look at
| it)? How can you be secular and equal if two men or two
| women are treated differently before the law for the
| exact same action? This is a joke masquerading as
| justice.
|
| > Of course, the fascists will equate all proselytizing
| with forcible conversions.
|
| You can believe that Christianity is so superior to local
| religious practices that an entire state almost
| completely adopted the religion voluntarily in 3-4
| generations. Given the history of Christian missionaries
| in India, South America and other parts of the world and
| the tactics they adopted, this is a simplistic
| argument/position.
|
| There is literature available from Missionaries, in their
| own words, as to their opinions about Indian religious
| traditions and the people practicing them. Arun Shourie
| has written a couple of books on the subject.[1][2]
|
| An individual here or there converting to a different
| faith is one thing. When religions conversions are used
| to shift demography, this has national security
| implications. Separatist movements grew in Kashmir and
| Nagaland. The partition of India was done on Muslim vs.
| non-Muslim lines where Muslim-majority provinces became
| Pakistan. Onlygodists will always be in conflict with
| Manygodists because their worldviews are fundamentally
| different.
|
| Organized conversions must be banned. If the constitution
| has to be amended to do it, so be it.
|
| [1] Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes,
| Dilemmas
|
| [2] Harvesting Our Souls: Missionaries, Their Design,
| Their Claims
| ephemeralkey wrote:
| > Why are only Hindu temples under the control of various
| state governments?
|
| That is because historically, a lot of the land (farm and
| non-farm) came under the Hindu temples when the temples
| were under the administration of kings. The British East
| India Company took over the administration which then
| transferred to the provinces (prior to independence) and
| then the states post-independence. Different states then
| passed laws. For eg: See
| https://hrce.tn.gov.in/hrcehome/hrce_about.php for
| Tamilnadu state's Hindu religious and charitable
| endowments department.
|
| > Religious minorities can run their own schools where
| they can teach their children their way of life? Can
| Hindus do this qua Hindus?
|
| Ofcourse they do. I studied in a school ran by a Hindu
| trust and we had students from all religions. There was
| morning devotional prayers (Hindu hymns), friday bhajans
| (singing religious hymns) etc., and everyone attended.
| Stop spreading this hate about _us_ vs _them_.
|
| > When religions conversions are used to shift
| demography, this has national security implications
|
| Ah, the national security bogeyman! Why don't you try
| _shifting the demography_ of the armed forces to address
| that? I think men and women in defence forces from all
| religious backgrounds would have something to say about
| that.
| ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote:
| > Different states then passed laws.
|
| A "secular" state will treat all places of prayer and
| worship the same. If it controls _only_ Hindu temples but
| not churches and mosques, it is not "secular."
|
| > Ofcourse they do.
|
| The constitution and the RTE act treat minority and non-
| minority institutions differently. Everything from the
| funding structure, to what can be taught, to how the
| teachers are appointed, to whether religious education
| can be imparted differs. Hindu institutions can do
| certain things but under restrictions that are not
| applicable to minorities. Again, this second-class
| treatment is considered to be "secular."
|
| > Stop spreading this hate about _us_ vs _them_.
|
| I am not the Onlygodist here. It is Onlygodism that
| creates _us_ vs _them_.
|
| > national security bogeyman
|
| So the insurgency in Kashmir and Nagaland does not have
| religious characteristics and is purely secular in
| nature? The partition of India was done on a purely
| secular basis?
| rtbathula wrote:
| 1) First of all, state shouldn't involve in any type of
| religious activities let alone giving priority to one
| particular religion. It's written in the Constitution and
| it's the base for any modern society(Especially US's First
| Amendment). You should foresee the consequences of this.
| What if a muslim PM get elected in the long future and he
| invites all Islamic priests?
|
| 2) Yes, you have mentioned some of the things that India
| did on secular grounds. But that doesn't refute the present
| context. Still wrong doings are happening. Instead of
| focusing on those, should we remember all the past events
| and be silent?
|
| 3) Islam invades Hindus, then let's Hindus mob-lynch
| Muslims. Always stuck in who slaughters who. No progress
| towards right secular habits.
|
| John Lock: https://www.amazon.com/Locke-Treatises-
| Government-Cambridge-...
| otikik wrote:
| Why is that relevant? People should not get arrested for
| protesting sexual harassment, even if others are inaugurating a
| new Taj Mahal.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| It is relevant because the PM is touting the new parliament
| building as ushering Indian into a new age of democracy,
| calling the building a temple of democracy; while dissenting
| voices outside are being stifled as the wrestlers are being
| arrested.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| PM Modi was literally giving a speech on "how we are the
| coolest democracy in the world" few kilo-meters away from
| where the protesters were arrested.
| juujian wrote:
| That is getting real freaking dystopian. Sure, we would have been
| able to do this before, and the Soviet Union did a ton of photo
| editing. But doing this particular edit must have been so easy.
| No cost at all, no mental barrier. You would almost think 'why
| bother'. And before anyone says 'yeah, but the truth came out'.
| Well, we saw it, but how many of the particular audience of
| whatever that outlet was will never see the original photo and
| will never question the narrative they were sold?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Nah, this is fine.
| EscapeFromNY wrote:
| > yeah, but the truth came out
|
| The truth came out this time. To borrow from Ozark: this isn't
| the only time they doctored photos, it's the only time they got
| caught.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| The truth came out too late anyway. The fact that it's been
| fact checked doesn't matter. People wo want to believe in a
| certain agenda have already got the misinformation they need,
| and it's not like they're seeking out other sources to fact
| check their information. They're not even the target audience
| of people who are fact checking this misinformation so the
| damage is already done.
| matsemann wrote:
| And those having seen the doctored images wont know (or care)
| that they were fake.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Exactly. Even when a major TV channels was busting fake
| news in my country, people just switched to other govt-
| sponsored (bribed?) channel to hear what they wanted to
| hear. It became a common meme to say that major TV channel
| has an agenda (and either silence or whataboustism ensues
| once people are questioned about the actual fake news).
| ryandrake wrote:
| People will always switch to the brand of media that
| shows the truth that validates their existing beliefs.
| Today, there are a handful of "belief buckets" to choose
| from. In the USA, you have conservative news channels and
| mainstream news channels. You can pick your favorite
| source of truth, but they come as a package deal. If you
| strongly believe X is factual, you'll tune in to the
| channel that presents X as factual. That channel will
| also present Y and Z as factual, so you may slowly start
| believing Y and Z, too.
|
| The obvious end state of this all will be news channels
| customized per-person. It's already starting with the
| custom-tailored Facebook/Twitter feeds. If you personally
| believe A, Y, and C, but not X, B, or Z, your news
| reports will be customized to show A, Y, and C as factual
| and ridicule X, B, and Z. Someone else will get presented
| an entirely different set of facts. Once the algorithm
| knows your beliefs, AI can produce an unlimited number of
| articles confirming those beliefs, complete with photos,
| videos, sources, fact checks, official reports and
| references.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Just use the word "Filter Bubble". It's cleaner.
| /Facebook meme
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I kind of knew that. But I didn't realize how bad it was
| until the last few years.
|
| The WSJ, Forbes and the National Review were what I
| considered reliably conservative sites that I use to be
| able to quote to conservative friends. Once they turned
| against Trump, they became part of the untrusted
| "mainstream media".
|
| Then when FoxNews called the 2020 election fairly, then
| they became sellouts and people started flocking to
| NewsMax. Whatever I thought of FoxNews over the years, I
| always thought their election night coverage was straight
| down the line.
|
| RedState kicked out all of their neverTrumpers because
| they were losing readers.
|
| Then conservatives started criticizing NewsMax when they
| would slightly push back against the "election was
| stolen" claims.
| jsheard wrote:
| Also the truth came out _here,_ but I wonder if the truth
| will get out on Indian Twitter given that the Indian
| government is one of the most prolific issuers of Twitter
| takedowns, and the odds of them being approved has supposedly
| spiked from about 50% under the old leadership to about 99%
| since Elon took over. Previously governments had to expect
| some pushback against over-reaching takedown requests, but
| the new policy of rubber stamping nearly any request without
| a second thought means it 's open season for them to censor
| anything inconvenient.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/2/twitter-
| fulfillin...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Mm, can't wait to live on Mars with chairman Elon.
| shaan7 wrote:
| I am hoping that AI tooling like this becomes even more
| widespread (Google Photos is doing that) that more people will
| finally understand that they cannot trust everything they see
| online. I hope.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That is not an improvement, because it turns "online" (which
| is basically everything everywhere - all news media, TV,
| newspapers) into a politically useless wasteland.
| tdehnel wrote:
| It could just as well be an improvement that makes people
| smarter, because they will learn not to just believe what
| they see/hear/read.
|
| Instead, they will have to learn to identify good
| explanations and rule out bad explanations.
| lolinder wrote:
| "Online" is already a useless, trustless wasteland and has
| been since at least 2014. If this causes people to finally
| _see it_ then maybe we can collectively build something
| better.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| But the conclusion becomes "you can't trust _anything_ ". I
| worry about a civilization that can't agree on even the most
| basic of facts.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Welcome ... to the desert of the real.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| It's not "you can't trust anything". It's "you can't trust
| anything _you 're told_".
|
| And that's nothing new. We have been lying since we figured
| out how to talk.
|
| The sky is _not_ falling.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Just wait until POWs start denouncing their former armies, or
| KIAs magically return home, or Ukrainian children in Russian
| families start magically saying how much better it is, etc etc.
| The demoralizing effect of watching a loved one do this would
| be immense.
| lolinder wrote:
| This phase won't last long in the grand scheme of things. We've
| had about 150 years in which people have been conditioned to
| trust anything that they see in a photograph, but it's always
| been possible to fake it and for the last 30 years it's been
| getting dramatically easier. AI just brings us full circle back
| to the era of woodcuts--just because you see a photorealistic
| image or hear an audio recording does not mean it's real.
|
| We're likely going to see a few cases like this that take off
| while people are adapting, but this naivete won't last forever.
| There will always be a few gullible people, but, just like with
| Photoshop, we'll get to the point where most people understand
| what's possible and adapt their reactions accordingly.
| [deleted]
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Won't the same apply to public online conversations (social
| media, forums)? Anyone can be a bot, and thus I think
| something like conversing digitally with only those whom you
| exchanged keys with their phone via bluetooth or NFC irl will
| be more and more common? I know no solution besides web of
| trust architecture + irl exchanged keys.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _We 've had about 150 years in which people have been
| conditioned to trust anything that they see in a photograph_
|
| This is also about as long as we've had popular democracy.
| (Something like a fifth of Indians are functionally
| illiterate [1][2].)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
|
| [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363173220_LITERA
| CY_....
| api wrote:
| The era of easy to reproduce but hard to fake media is
| actually the historical outlier.
|
| Before that media was written text and everyone knows anyone
| can make up anything they want in that domain. Before that
| most people were illiterate so it didn't matter much. Media
| wasn't even much of a thing.
|
| We are headed for the post-media era when any arbitrary piece
| of media depicting anything can be created for little or no
| money by anyone with a computer. Nothing can be believed
| unless you were there or hear it from a known reliable source
| that was there.
|
| There's going to be an ugly transition period when we have
| tons of people who haven't gotten this memo yet. These people
| are going to be manipulated en masse with tremendous
| effectiveness. The push to deplatform misinformation is
| largely an attempt to stop this, but I think it's futile.
| People just have to learn that media is dead and they can't
| trust anything anymore.
|
| Hunter Thompson was ahead of his time. The only journalism
| worth doing in this future is individual gonzo journalism
| where you go and experience and tell the tale directly to
| your audience. That of course is vulnerable to spin by the
| teller, but so are all tales. It's the best we have.
| Hopefully honest tellers of first hand tales will exist and
| get the reputation for honesty they deserve.
| juujian wrote:
| > Before that media was written text and everyone knows
| anyone can make up anything they want in that domain.
|
| From what I gather, Julius Caesar's _Commentarii de Bello
| Gallico_ was pretty much fanfiction (had somebody write?)
| about himself. This problem may be older than I thought.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Anyone doing history knows that all the sources are
| biased. You have to corroborate evidence and adjust for
| knowing the context in which the work was produced to
| determine how reliable it is.
| api wrote:
| Sure. But there was an era that lasted around 100 years
| when a photo alone was pretty reliable. Photos and
| especially videos were at least hard to fake. That era is
| over. Absolutely anything can be faked cheaply and
| easily.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Really early photography was so poor compared to modern
| HD images that obvious fakes fooled "serious" people
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies vs
| Arthur Conan Doyle, for example. But yes, it required
| more effort, and the effort reduction for fakes offered
| by AI is extremely powerful.
|
| (There is also the sad business of the 1932 Pulitzer
| https://www.pulitzer.org/news/statement-walter-duranty )
| lolinder wrote:
| Photography has always been less reliable than many
| people thought it was, even without considering photo
| doctoring. Like statistics, the frame you choose in a
| photo can completely alter the story it's telling. It
| might be that entering an era where _complete_
| fabrication is easy will make people more resistant to
| the subtler tricks that have worked well hitherto.
|
| Bill Watterson had a series of strips about this in
| Calvin and Hobbes in 1992 [0].
|
| > CALVIN: This is what I like about photography. People
| think cameras always tell the truth.
|
| > CALVIN: They think the camera is a dispassionate
| machine that records only facts. But really, cameras lie
| all the time! Select the facts and you manipulate the
| truth!
|
| > CALVIN: For example, I've cleared off this corner of my
| bed. Take a picture of me here, but crop out all the mess
| around me, so it looks like I keep my room tidy.
|
| > HOBBES: Is this even legal?
|
| > CALVIN: Wait, let me comb my hair and put on a tie.
|
| [0] This is the one I quoted, but the one before and
| after it are related:
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/09/17
| skinnymuch wrote:
| [flagged]
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Is there something dystopian about India or Soviet Union
| that is unlike the Global North?"
|
| Actually, I would place the soviet union in the global north
| (you cannot go much further north, than russia is). And the
| difference is the extent, what they did to rewrite history.
| The famous removal of Trotzki out of revolution pictures,
| after he was not with the main party anymore. Stuff like
| this, did not happen in the west. Lots of other manipulation
| and misinformation, sure, but not blatantly rewriting
| history.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Geographic location isn't the only aspect of "Global
| North/South". Australia is considered part of the North
| grouping.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Sure, same with west/east
|
| https://xkcd.com/503/
|
| But it still makes no sense to me, to exclude russia from
| the global north.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's a pretty clear split between Russia and the
| nations in the "Global North". Almost all of them have
| Russia under severe sanctions right now.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There also was never a clear political union between
| geographical west and east. I think it just makes no
| sense using these terminology.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| East and west is effectively deprecated with the current
| world order. We use Global North/South sometimes now. The
| reason we have this terminology is because of the
| colonization, imperialism, elitism, and racism set forth
| by the Global North. The point isn't to find the perfect
| terminology. It's bigger with a ton of history and
| material conditions attached to it.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| That's not why the term Global North exists. A historical
| analysis of modern history shows why Slavs are not included
| in the Global North.
|
| Some one said the west cares about social rights and
| freedom vs Soviets or Indian people. Both societies were
| better with many forms of expression including gender and
| sexuality.
|
| This is a good example of history being rewritten for the
| Global North as the vanguards of social justice and liberal
| freedom. IE India has been better with trans people and
| Soviets with gay people.
|
| The Trotsky stuff is a big deal in the context of socialist
| states. Not the Global North. I fail to see the difference
| of the extent with some victims of COINTELPRO or the
| rewritten history of figures like Ho Chi, Ernesto Guevara,
| Cuba (Castros), Allende, Lumumba, Mao, Sankara, Kabil,
| Bhutto, Tito, and so on.
| juujian wrote:
| Yup, it's not unique to the Soviet union, the Soviet union
| is just a particularly salient example. I wouldn't have
| anything like Trotsky being edited out at hand for the us.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| What is the closest example to Trotsky for the US that
| you have at hand? Otherwise I don't understand the
| differences between Fred Hampton, Allende, Lumumba,
| Bhutto vs Trotsky.
|
| What about stolen land. Along with the death, destruction
| that ensues. Would stolen land that is "edited out" in
| the US or caused because of the US come close?
| pjc50 wrote:
| That is what a lot of us think the real threat of "AI" is: not
| that it will autonomously produce bad outcomes for humanity,
| but because it's a tool that's indifferent to truth or
| falsehood it allows any kind of truth or reality based politics
| to be totally flooded out of the public sphere. Everyone ends
| up fighting in the hall of mirrors.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yeah. The postmodernists (as I understand them) have been
| talking about "post truth" and "claims of truth are just
| assertions of power". And I've always thought that their
| position was insane.
|
| Now they look more like prophets. That world is increasingly
| the world we live in. The question becomes, how can we stay
| sane in that world? How can we find enough actual truth
| (truth that is actually _true_ , true in the old sense of
| corresponding to the reality of what is) in order to
| function? To function as individuals, and to function as a
| society? How do we deal with this?
| deno wrote:
| You suggest giving up. Instead, we just need better
| security to combat the AI threat. Cameras and especially
| smartphone cameras could easily be trusted and produce
| signed images, that are verified to not have been edited.
| We do this already to an extent for authentication purposes
| (Windows Hello et al). Any postprocessing/photoshop work
| would need to reference the original image hash to also be
| considered authenticated. Same with CCTV footage, there's
| no reason we can't have trusted cameras and NVRs.
| Technology to do this exists already.
|
| We don't give up on encryption when GPUs and ASICs and even
| quantum computers present a challenge, why should AI be any
| different.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > You suggest giving up.
|
| Not at all. I'm not sure what I said that makes you think
| that.
|
| What I say, though, is that we don't know (either
| individually or as a society) how to operate in this new
| environment. It's making it hard to stay sane as an
| individual, and to stay functioning as a society.
| JieJie wrote:
| Maybe we don't know how do operate in this environment,
| because we don't really know how to collectively operate
| in _any_ environment?
|
| Humanity is, after all, crawling out of at least the last
| 3000 years of recorded history of rulers telling everyone
| else how to live, like it or not.
|
| We've only really been doing this democracy thing semi-
| successfully for a handful of centuries.
|
| In the overall scheme of things, we're still pretty new
| at not being ordered around by people stronger than us.
| It's a hard habit to break on both sides.
| deno wrote:
| I have read your comment as we just have to accept this
| new environment and just 'cope' with it, whereas my
| feeling is we don't have to accept it at all. I don't
| want to cope with AI and question if what I see everyday
| is in fact real. Instead, anything produced by AI should
| have an asterisk next to it. But this is impossible to
| enforce, so verifying what's real by default is the next
| best thing.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Technical solution to a social problem. It's not that
| it's impossible to tell the difference between real and
| fake, it's that there's no consequences for posting
| fakes.
|
| (A "solution" which requires end users to authenticate
| everything themselves is going to have the same level of
| adoption as pgp, i.e. near zero)
| deno wrote:
| I like a green checkmark next to a photo better than
| giving more power to whoever you think should be the one
| determining and enforcing those consequences.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The consequences I mean are those of the public: proving
| that the ruling party forged images isn't going to get
| people to change their votes. You can build the green
| checkmark, but you can't get people to care about it.
| deno wrote:
| I see this as completely different issues. Whether AI
| exists or not this is and was a problem. I'm proposing
| technical solution because AI fakes are a technical
| problem. And yeah if people get used to green checkmark
| you can't just pump fakes willy nilly, you actually have
| to put some effort, as before AI. I guess the problem I
| want to solve is having to live in a world where you have
| to assume absolutely everything is 100% fake all the
| time. Because this just puts everyone in their respective
| truth bubbles even more. Any objectivity we can return to
| the world is a good thing, IMO.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| First you have to solve the collect action problem of
| getting everyone to care about the green checkmark, then
| you have to solve the new technical problem of just
| making photographs of high-quality altered images.
| pmontra wrote:
| I take an authentic image with a camera, crop out the
| part of it that it's not aligned with my goals, put a
| reference to the authentic image. How do you get the
| authentic image to compare it with my edit?
|
| And how do you solve the problem of a powerful entity
| telling you that the cropped image is authentic, or there
| will be consequences? People know what's going on, they
| bend for fear of breaking. No technology is changing
| that.
| deno wrote:
| You have to provide authentic image with your image for
| it to validate, just as you have to supply any
| intermediate certificates in TLS. If you want to crop to
| hide information you have to do this while taking the
| photo in the camera app.
|
| Powerful entity can tell you to install their root
| certificate just like it happens in China. This is a
| different problem.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Just to provide some context : The reason people believe
| this particular doctored (or AI enhanced) image "could be
| true" is because this "toolkit approach" has been
| employed by the Left Wing in India. The Right Wing in
| India regularly points it out on Twitter. So if both
| sides are slinging mud, its race to the bottom for the
| getting lowest common denominator on their side. I
| sometimes wish why can't we unbundle these left vs right
| issues and decide stuff case by case. Hence I support
| TruthGPT by Elon.
| hnthrowaway8860 wrote:
| > I sometimes wish why can't we unbundle these left vs
| right issues and decide stuff case by case.
|
| That's the opposite of what we should do. If you do case
| by case then people will always find reasons why it's no
| big deal if "their" side did it while it's really bad
| when the other side did it.
|
| No, we need to universally condemn this. No matter who
| did it and when and how. This is lying and propaganda,
| and it's bad even if I agree with the ends. But the means
| are to be condemned by everybody.
|
| Kind of the dual to "I disagree with what you are saying
| but I'll fight for your right to say it." It's now "I
| agree with what you are trying to achieve but I'll fight
| against the way in which you are trying to achieve it."
| politician wrote:
| If browsers require authenticated images as suggested,
| then CSS will probably grow the ability to apply a
| masking layer to crop, filter, transform the image.
|
| Advertisers are going to want to postprocess images and
| have the green check.
| deno wrote:
| Well I don't think all images would have to be signed,
| just photos for which you want to prove authenticity.
| Probably social media and dating apps seem like a good
| target. Maybe some advertising, sure. I bet McDonalds
| wouldn't mind green checkmark since they go through all
| that effort to fake food in real life.
|
| You could of course fake green checkmark in CSS but this
| is already an issue with faking other browser UI
| elements, including address bar-it's a known problem.
|
| One way to solve this is having a browser picker, that is
| a button you click in trusted area of browser UI that
| lets you inspect any image on the page. Similar thing is
| possible with smartphone UI, you go to app
| overview/carousel and long press on an image in app, this
| launches photo inspection portal.
| CountHackulus wrote:
| What if I just reframe my picture instead of cropping?
| Every photo is a choice. A choice of what to show and
| what not to show.
| deno wrote:
| I think you're missing the point, this is not a
| technology to create politically neutral photos. The way
| you take a photo and even the way you edit it later will
| all be your choice. It's also your choice what to take
| photos of or not in the first place. All this does is it
| proves the photo was created by
|
| (1) a trusted application
|
| (2) using a builtin device camera
|
| (3) of a device running attested trusted operating system
|
| (4) and any subsequent edits reference such photo's
| original hash.
|
| Hopefully stronger assertions could come in the future.
| This is just to combat digital forgeries and
| synthetically generated images. It also does nothing
| against real-world forgeries like actors wearing costumes
| or makeup.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > I take an authentic image with a camera, crop out the
| part of it that it's not aligned with my goals
|
| If it is cropped, then it would not be provably
| authentic. So anyone seeing it, could see that it is
| modified.
|
| > how do you solve the problem of a powerful entity
| telling you that the cropped image is authentic
|
| Well, because you can check. You verify the image
| yourself, see that it is not authenticated, and then you
| know.
| gray_-_wolf wrote:
| How will this protect (the first "workaround" that popped
| into my head) against modifying/AI generating an image,
| printing it on high-quality printer and taking a photo of
| that image in good (or maybe bad?) lighting?
| deno wrote:
| You can harden against it using stereo cameras (3D) and
| different type of cameras, e.g. IR, verify with for
| example LIDAR, since some new premium smartphones are
| getting it already, this will tell you if you're looking
| at a projection. Also see what smartphones are already
| doing for face authentication tech. Now, that said, you
| can never defend against it 100%. The most obvious is you
| can always fallback to just hiring actors/makeup/etc. If
| someone is determined enough (major actor) they can
| probably still produce fake pictures and authenticate
| them, but it would be significantly harder, and basically
| impossible for majority of people.
| algo646464 wrote:
| Photos have authenticated timestamps.
|
| Older photo is the real one.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| Playing whack-a-mole with technologies that have
| fundamental risks baked into the system itself seems like
| a losing game. We're inventing new technologies simply
| because we can, ignoring and papering over the social
| impact, then chasing even more complex solutions to the
| new problems created.
| hnthrowaway8860 wrote:
| Geez. Techies trying to come up with tech solutions to
| fundamentally non-tech problems. The photogtapher can
| just zoom in or get closer to the object to crop the
| image before it's even taken.
|
| Oh you now want a 360 degree shot to prove this didn't
| happen? Well then they stand behind a tree or a car or
| some other object to hide parts of the scene behind. etc.
| etc. There is no technical solution to this problem.
| deno wrote:
| It makes the attack in article not possible and
| eliminates common fakes in existence right now. Perfect
| is the enemy of good.
| hnthrowaway8860 wrote:
| At huge cost and essentially nonexistent benefit I'd say
| that crappy is also an enemy of good.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| So I mean, postmodernism is a pretty "diverse" field, and
| while there are some who would claim to be full
| relativists, they aren't usually taken very seriously.
|
| What someone like Herbert Marcuse would claim is that there
| is something like a "definite negation," or Jacques Derrida
| would call a "trace;" that is, there, sitting behind every
| signifier (of de Saussure's structural linguistics) its
| negation of _another_ signifier that defines its position
| in an ordered chain or a symbolic network. They would not
| argue that things are relative; rather, social life is
| regulated by these vast signifying networks that one
| becomes "subjectivated" in (begins to understand oneself
| as a subject), where one's "agency" also stands at the
| limits of this intelligibility: as they say, everything you
| "decide" is already pre-conscious; every notion of what is
| "possible," is limited by what is already "intelligible,"
| i.e. what operates in the social-symbolic function as it,
| like an algorithm, constantly moves and exchanges its
| various symbolic orderings in what we call the "economy."
| To be a true agent means to do something which radically
| restructures this network and radically redefines all its
| terms: Foucault's "fearless speech," Badiou's "Event." The
| latter thinker actually explicitly rejects relativism (and
| is in some ways a platonist--actually many so-called
| "postmodern" thinkers, Whitehead among them, are considered
| platonists.)
|
| The position you claim is from "post-modernism":
|
| >"claims of truth are just assertions of power"
|
| finds its origins in Nietzsche, who famously claimed that
| truth, morality, beauty, etc. were invented by the weak
| because they feared the powerful and they were jealous of
| the fact that they couldn't kill their enemies, eat fully,
| and have sex all the time (Master Morality, which was just
| doing whatever you wanted). So they rose up, took over, and
| invented these categories and systems of valuation in order
| to justify a new regime of power where _nobody_ was able to
| do what they wanted, and everything was regulated by vast
| systems of control justified by these metaphysical notions
| (he refers to this as "Christian Morality.") He claims
| that Christian morality, after centuries of struggle, has
| finally won out in the Bourgeois revolutions of the 18th
| and 19th centuries, but now "God" has been subordinated to
| "Science" while retaining all the metaphysical baggage of
| christianity "truth, beauty, morality," etc. This is from
| Nietzsche's _Genealogy of Morals_ , the argument from which
| was expanded in Foucault's _Discipline and Punishment_ (the
| most widely read book from what most people would call
| "postmodernism").
|
| >truth that is actually true, true in the old sense of
| corresponding to the reality of what is
|
| The so-called "correspondence theory of truth" is
| considered a fallacy of the layman in academic philosophy.
| Truth has always been, in logic, a category: a value,
| specifically a boolean value. One can make claims about the
| structure and order of logic and the relation of that to
| psychological, social-processes (as Frege, Husserl, and
| many other "anti-psychologists" of the 19th and 20th
| centuries did); but to claim that language, a signifying
| act, somehow directly corresponds to the physical objects
| that it categorizes, can't really be valid: as Shakespeare
| said "a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet."
| There is no reason why the words we use have any
| correspondence to experience--even if there is surely some
| reason why words can evoke experiences, emotions, like when
| one hears the name of a past-lover. But that can be
| attributed to what the "postmodernists" claim: the name
| evokes an entire symbolic structure and brings it to the
| surface of consciousness.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > The so-called "correspondence theory of truth" is
| considered a fallacy of the layman in academic
| philosophy. Truth has always been, in logic, a category:
| a value, specifically a boolean value.
|
| Perenially underappreciated in online discussions.
|
| Very nice summary.
| xk_id wrote:
| > The so-called "correspondence theory of truth" is
| considered a fallacy of the layman in academic
| philosophy.
|
| So in your understanding of academic philosophy, how do
| you account for the critical difference between the two
| statements below?
|
| "Earth is flat."
|
| "Earth is a spheroid."
|
| I don't see what is fallacious about accepting the second
| statement as corresponding to facts and dismissing the
| former for not corresponding. If it's merely a matter of
| semantics regarding the words "correspondence" and
| "truth", an alternative verbalisation of the critical
| distinction between those two statements must nonetheless
| be available; and it should be prioritised in discourse.
| horeszko wrote:
| I don't have any prescriptions for society as a whole but I
| can tell you what has worked for me.
|
| Basically I rely on my own observations and experiences:
| don't trust and verify, to adapt the old saying.
|
| Second I limit myself to trusted sources of information and
| if I can't find one then I just don't get information on
| that topic: no information is better than false
| information.
|
| In practice what this means is no algorithmic news feeds,
| I'm still looking for a good news source for my local city
| (haven't found one yet, I moved recently), I think a lot
| about incentive structures and how that might bias an
| information source, I (try) to apply skepticism to what I
| read, I block as much noise as possible (for example I
| don't pay attention to surface level political news because
| its all noise and virtually no signal), I focus on long
| term trends rather than "points" in the timeline.
|
| This is far from perfect but its what has evolved as my
| approach over time.
| prox wrote:
| Disconnect and build a network of trust.
| flir wrote:
| Or build walled gardens inside the connected world.
| Dunbar's number, right?
| prox wrote:
| Interesting, what are your views on that?
| flir wrote:
| I've only thought about it superficially. I think web of
| trust is a better model for how humans work, but whenever
| someone tries to translate it to the digital world it
| fails.
|
| (Lets call this approach digital villages for the sake of
| argument).
|
| We have lots of examples of digital villages working -
| forums, subreddits, chatrooms, MUDs, etc etc. Maybe it's
| a case of worse is better? Or maybe everyone who
| implements web of trust immediately tries to jam crypto
| in there and turns off all the normal people? What do you
| think?
| prox wrote:
| I tend to think the small scale worked better for more
| _meaningful_ connections (high signal to noise, content
| to interest, less counting likes and subs, less ads) My
| best experiences online aren't Big Social : it's small
| forums, IRC chatrooms with high engagement, high trust
| scenarios like people being themselves immediately
| without anonymity.
|
| I tend to think lots of social spaces have been
| engineered by engineers, not people. The tech has been
| more important than the value it can bring in a human
| context. (Exaggerating for emphasis here, it's not black
| and white but functionally true)
|
| Big fan of the Six Idea's (M.J. Adler) for meaningful
| life that is fairly universal: Truth, Goodness, and
| Beauty - the ideas we judge by; and Liberty, Equality and
| Justice - the ideas we act on.
|
| I feel a food online social space should strive for high
| marks in these areas.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Doesn't that just create echo chambers?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Sure, what of it? There's no rule saying people can't
| eblong to more than one echo chamber.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| You can make a distinction between empirical truths and
| things (often claims) that are right and wrong. The former
| has no 'history'; while the latter is contextual and tied
| up in the practice and expression of _reasons_ , which is
| to say, it is essentially historical and cultural.
|
| That's really all that postmodern thought says really.
| Naturally, for a government to be right or wrong, requires
| that citizens be critical of it, almost actively
| antagonistic in their demands for reasons, evidence (be it
| empirical or otherwise) and clarification. Postmodern
| thought is a critical tool. So that's not that different
| than what we have right now (most of HN for instance is
| _hyper-critical_ of nearly all government truth claims),
| only the demands on citizens are likely outpacing their
| resources and abilities.
| jfengel wrote:
| Even empirical truth has a remarkable degree of social
| construction. Consider the notion of "force", as
| empirical as it gets. But then you look at relativity or
| even just centrifugal force. Scientific revolutions
| consist of reinterpreting objective facts.
|
| It's not just "nothing is real", which is just
| intellectual laziness. It's noting that we always
| interpret the world; we can't avoid it. Ordinary
| interactions usually arrive at similar interpretations,
| but people have a remarkable way of being influenced in
| that judgment. And sometimes that can lead to some really
| bad outcomes. It's important to recognize that the
| potential is always there even in things that seem
| obvious.
| [deleted]
| tsss wrote:
| They have always been crooks. Just because lying has become
| even easier doesn't mean that there is no truth.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| A lot of what enables this is centralized infrastructure.
| If you have your messages and browsing history and files on
| your own device, and you make end-to-end encrypted
| connections to the people you talk to, it's a lot harder to
| do this kind of thing. Because you have your own personal
| copy of the thing from when it first happened and if you
| remember it you can go back and verify it yourself. Then
| you can point that out, and anyone else can go into their
| own copy from however long ago and see that the fake
| doesn't match the original.
|
| Social media companies notoriously blocked users from
| sending a story to each other _in DMs_ a couple of years
| ago. It 's not a stretch to go from there to deleting past
| messages in order to memory hole something. And the
| companies may not even be doing it by choice if they're
| being pressured by a government.
|
| They can't do that if your data is yours and they can't
| read it, instead of the only copy being on their servers.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And governments in Australia and the EU are trying to
| pass laws that make e2e encryption without a back door
| illegal...
| hnthrowaway8860 wrote:
| I don't think that Tucker Carlsen style BS machines have
| anything to do with governments censoring your private
| messages. You are talking about an entirely different
| threat model here.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > That world is increasingly the world we live in
|
| I think the point of the postmodernists was that was
| _always_ the world we live in, it 's just that the Internet
| has made it much more visible and we can see the fraying
| and the contradictions. It's just that, for a fairly narrow
| window of time and societies, there was enough of an honor
| culture about being caught lying that the discourse-reality
| matched fairly well the actual reality. But even in the
| 20th century that required hiding a lot of perspectives, or
| only slowly and begrudgingly acknowledging them.
|
| There's a distinction of degree but not of kind between
| "presenting the version of events most favourable to
| yourself" vs "presenting an entirely fictional version". I
| don't know how we get that back.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I think you capture it, but to make it clear, post-
| modernism existed before the Internet.
|
| I've never considered the post-truth perspective as
| having anything to do with intentional misrepresentation,
| but rather relativism (which is dangerous in other ways,
| imho). Outright lying has been used by authoritarians,
| but it really seems like we need a term to describe
| societies controlled by blatant, obvious lies (which is
| where I would consider the US at the moment). People like
| to use fascism, Marxism, etc., but those used similar
| techniques, for very different ends.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I wrote up a much longer reply to this, but I can't get
| myself to submit it. tl;dr is there are some basic things
| you cannot say in public today without getting cancelled.
| And I'm not talking about kiddy porn or extreme
| Trumpisms.
|
| Edit: Literally took 5 minutes for the first downvote,
| despite not mentioning a single "issue". What's that old
| phrase? QED?
| quesera wrote:
| I suspect your comment is downvoted because it's ominous
| and substance-free. Reasonably so, I think. Your comment
| is in fact a negative drag on the quality of conversation
| here.
|
| Live a little. Go ahead and share your perspectives. The
| maximum downvote damage is -5 points. You'll survive.
| I'll upvote you even if I disagree. Unless they're just
| the standard talking points from one side or another on
| some contentious topic, which is too boring to upvote.
| 13of40 wrote:
| OK, here's an example: A couple of months ago they were
| tossing around the idea of "retaking Crimea". I believe
| that any effort to do that should be based on a best
| effort assessment of the will of the people living there,
| because those are the people who will be getting
| artillery shells in their livingroom in exchange for it.
| Based on my own experience with expats from there and
| Donbas, who still have family in the area, those people
| are happy being Russian again. Show me on CNN or NPR
| where their voices and perspectives are being shared.
|
| Again, this is just an example, not my personal agenda.
| What I want to point out is that we've normalized that
| there are a handful of forbidden topics that you will get
| punched for if you approach them with anything but a pre-
| formed opinion that matches the status quo.
|
| Edit: And just as a turn of the screw, I'm going to say
| that the COVID vaccines are pretty shit compared to ones
| like smallpox, polio, and rabies vaccines, which actually
| (and sometimes retroactively) prevent you from getting
| the disease you were vaccinated against. Oh heck, I'm not
| allowed to say that thing that we all know. I mean if you
| take a high level view of it, they take the edge off the
| problem, but they still kind of suck.
| quesera wrote:
| To your edit:
|
| There's nothing controversial about saying that it'd be
| better if the COVID vaccines were better!
|
| The COVID vaccines we have are measurably better than not
| having a COVID vaccine, and people had worse health
| outcomes if they believed (acted) otherwise.
|
| Some narratives allow nuance and some do not. Public
| health communication is a very problematic place for
| nuance, and the natural nuance of science was weaponized
| to serve an agenda (which was sometimes blatantly
| dishonest) -- so avoiding nuance became a pragmatic
| approach to achieving better outcomes under existing
| circumstances.
|
| If you felt cancelled for holding out for the complicated
| nuanced reality, I can sympathize with that feeling. I
| can also sympathize with those who believed that
| _focusing_ on the nuance would, broadly, harm people!
| FabHK wrote:
| > those people are happy being Russian again. Show me on
| CNN or NPR where their voices and perspectives are being
| shared.
|
| Here we go, as requested:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-
| cris...
|
| > One voter, Grigory Illarionovich, told CNN, "I'm for
| restoring Crimea to Russia. Returning what Khrushchev
| took away."
|
| > Another voter in Perevalnoye, Viktor Savchenko, said he
| would never vote for the government in Kiev. "I want us
| to join Russia, and live like Russians, with all their
| rights," he said.
|
| > Victoria Khudyakova said she also had voted to join
| Russia, which she sees as being "spiritually close" to
| Crimea. "For me, Russia is an opportunity for our Crimea
| to develop, to bloom. And I believe that it will be so,"
| she said.
|
| [...]
|
| > CNN analyst and Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner
| similarly stressed that Sunday's vote was in no way
| staged. "When you look at the celebrations, you can't
| doubt that these people really are very happy," he said.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2018/03/06/591266939/how-people-in-
| crime...
|
| > DEMID KUPAYEV: (Through interpreter) I witnessed how
| babushkas came up and said, thank God the time has come
| for Crimea to return to its historic homeland.
|
| > KIM: Kupayev says international sanctions have made
| finding work in commercial shipping harder. But like many
| Crimeans, he calls economic hardship the acceptable price
| of joining Russia.
| 13of40 wrote:
| Yep, 2014 and 2018. Meanwhile, for the second one, if you
| scroll down to the "More Stories from NPR" section:
|
| - Two dead, 23 wounded in a Russian strike on a Ukrainian
| medical clinic
|
| - Ukraine secured military aid, including advanced
| fighter jets, at the G-7 summit
|
| - Zelenskyy arrives at G-7 summit in Japan as leaders
| ramp up pressure on Russia
|
| - Russia attacked the hometown of Ukraine's Eurovision
| band just before its performance
|
| Fair and balanced reporting, right there. The first and
| last bullet points aren't at all the bald-faced examples
| of atrocity propaganda that we've just accepted as part
| of our daily feed.
|
| Next, they're going to be raping nuns on tables[1] and
| throwing babies out of their incubators[2].
|
| [1] http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/C
| omeingU...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony#:~:te
| xt=In%2....
| quesera wrote:
| OK, I think that's a valid consideration. I don't think
| you'll get much pushback for prioritizing the will of the
| people, and their disinterest in living in a war zone. I
| have not read anything on NPR or CNN calling for the
| expansion of war in the Baltics. But they run opinion
| pieces too, just like most other media outlets.
|
| I was expecting something controversial. :)
|
| The counterargument of course is that the region was
| annexed by aggression, which is dangerous to legitimize.
| Letting the bullies win is a recipe for creating more and
| bigger bullies.
|
| But sometimes there are no good answers. I don't know any
| trustworthy sources of information from that area (only
| expats and news reporting which are all various degrees
| of clueless and biased).
|
| Avoiding inflicting war on a reluctant people sounds
| humane. Restoring national sovereignty to a conquered
| people sounds noble. Impeding the spread of territorial
| aggression and natural resource theft sounds righteous.
|
| Personal opinion, pragmatic I think: You can't retake
| Crimea without obliterating Russia. You can't obliterate
| Russia without horrifying consequences. Don't retake
| Crimea, but draw a very clear and public line, and allow
| no concessions regarding the next Crimea (Ukraine). This
| turns out to be very close to the foreign policy of most
| of the world.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Ah, like the red lines drawn up for Assad in Syria.
|
| And Crimea is strategic. Look at a map. Without it, the
| Ukraine and its ports are always under threat from the
| whims of Russia.
|
| It's probably true that you can't crush Russia without
| serious consequences. Unfortunately, you can't let it win
| territory without _very_ serious consequences either.
|
| This follows its own tragic logic now and you (we) can't
| wish for a nice solution that has no consequences down
| the line. Letting Russia off the hook is a terrible
| precedent.
| quesera wrote:
| I agree completely.
|
| We were asleep when Russia took Crimea, and unprepared to
| react with anything more than stern words. We were not
| ready for Putin. He obviously saw the opportunity, took
| the risk, and he won.
|
| It would be tragic to return to a world where aggressive
| expansionism is the norm.
|
| But fighting back through Crimea would be tragic also.
| And it's not clear we would have the support of the
| locals. That's courting disaster even before you
| contemplate that the opposing leader is mercurial and
| nuclear.
|
| My opinion is that we have to take the L on Crimea, but
| make it clear that the world is not sleeping any more,
| and that Ukraine is not next on the menu.
|
| Syria is an important example. US bluster doesn't carry
| much weight in the world these days.
|
| But the situation in Ukraine is very different. It
| astonishes me that there's political disagreement on
| Russia's aggression toward neighbors, but if we fail
| Ukraine it will be squarely the fault of one group of
| people, and it will be incredibly damaging to US
| interests in the world.
| [deleted]
| fweimer wrote:
| This is a more recent article that offers a more nuanced
| perspective, even down to the title:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/15/why-crimea-
| is-...
|
| (The Guardian is pretty much pro-Ukraine, pro-war in
| general.)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I haven't downvoted you but I was tempted. Either submit
| it, submit anonymously, or don't. As it is your comment
| asks for attention while providing only frustration in
| return; it's just noise.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I have a suggestion for the word to describe the current
| situation in the US:
|
| Agitprop.
|
| It's not just blatant, obvious lies. It's lies *designed
| to agitate people". I mean, the goal is "media
| engagement" (and secondarily, "political engagement"),
| but that comes downstream from getting everybody stirred
| up.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| There are 330 million people in the US, and 1.4 billion
| in India. You don't need lies for agitprop - such numbers
| will furnish you with enough real incidents to drive
| whatever narrative you wish, if you're in a position to
| pick what gets publicity. Cherrypicking. I'm sure you can
| think of a few recent examples.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That's some kind of meta-lying, too. By cherrypicking,
| you are implicitly saying, "these are the issues of our
| times, why would I else present this important issue"
| 666satanhimself wrote:
| [dead]
| tdehnel wrote:
| There is nothing in principle which prevents us from
| solving this problem. We cannot predict which new knowledge
| will solve it. But we can say that if we don't solve it, it
| will be our fault for not producing the required knowledge
| fast enough.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| Alternatively, it could be our fault for creating a world
| in which that fast growth in knowledge is required. We
| didn't have to pursue technologies that make the
| centralization of power and control easier and easier.
| salawat wrote:
| _Centralization is technology._
|
| There will always be people looking at any advancement
| and figuring out how to leverage it to expand their
| personal capability to project power. Nothing is immune
| to it. Even primitives of decentralization can be
| leveraged in a way that defacto centralization is the
| inevitable outcome.
|
| You don't research things that can't be centralized. You
| just don't centralize. The cost there though. Is then you
| have to accept certain things just ain't gonna happen.
| JieJie wrote:
| Watching Mastodon and the Fediverse expand is an
| experiment we can watch in real time.
|
| Newcomers to the technology clamoring for it to be more
| centralized is a daily occurrence. It seems almost
| entropic, the push towards centralization. It seems to
| require constant effort to keep it decentralized.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I've always wondered if the push towards centralization
| is a reaction to fear of the lack of control.
|
| True decentralization and censorship resistance requires
| taking the bad with the good. I'm the case of Mastodon,
| if I can't be censored for sharing my views on
| technology, politics, or sports then the person wishing
| to sharing illegal photographs of threats that may be
| illegal in some jurisdictions can't be censored either.
|
| It raises the very interesting question of whether
| freedom of speech is an all our nothing concept. Very few
| people would support the idea of being able to say
| literally whatever you want, but can you really have
| freedom of speech at all if someone else gets to draw the
| bounds with which your speech much stay?
| tdehnel wrote:
| Eventually, some thing that we cannot control (e.g. Giant
| meteor, pandemic, etc) will come to destroy us.
|
| If it does, it will be our fault for not progressing fast
| enough in terms of knowledge.
|
| There is no world in which we could, or would want to
| limit our growth in terms of scientific knowledge. Not to
| mention the fact that to do so would mean ceding full
| totalitarian control.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| Are you really arguing that we should have no boundries
| on progress for fear of a rogue asteroid destroying us
| all? Shouldn't we consider the risks of what we may
| accidentally break or purposely misuse along the way?
| Scientific knowledge comes with risks, both in how the
| tools can be used as well as errogant or misguided belief
| that we know enough to understand all meaningful
| implications of wielding said knowledge.
|
| Even the concept of progress as a goal seems misguided
| and risky. We shouldn't assume something is better simply
| because it isn't what we had before. "Not worse than what
| we had before" is a great goal but one that requires
| effort and focus, it isn't a given law of the universe
| that all change is good simply because it's change.
| jahewson wrote:
| > Now they look more like prophets.
|
| Not to me. They just look like another group claiming grand
| and sweeping theories of truth.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| That's somewhat ironic since "postmodernism is an
| intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by
| skepticism toward the 'grand narratives' of
| modernism."[1]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
| tsss wrote:
| Postmodernism is ironic exactly because it is such a
| "grand narrative" that it is supposedly trying to avoid.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| It will probably do both of those things through autonomous
| weapons systems and through disinformation.
|
| Some doors were maybe better left unopened, we opened this
| one. Let's see how it goes.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 100%. And the thing I've personally found quite shocking is
| how the past 5-10 years or so have shown that even when the
| truth _does_ come out, there are enough "mirrors" as you put
| it so that people can question anything and believe whatever
| they want to believe, facts be damned.
|
| A couple weeks ago when the Patriot Front had a white
| supremacist rally and march in front of the Washington
| Monument (now of the "red bike guy" fame), many prominent
| right wing Twitter talking heads tweeted that it _must_ be a
| left wing conspiracy to make conservatives look bad and that
| the marchers were federal agents, despite 0 evidence of this,
| and indeed despite plenty of evidence that they were just
| actual Patriot Front members. It was difficult for me to tell
| if they actually believed that fairy tale, or of they felt
| that _it didn 't really matter_ because they knew if they
| shouted "fake news" loud enough they could get enough like
| minded people to upvote it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _It was difficult for me to tell if they actually believed
| that fairy tale, or of they felt that it didn 't really
| matter because they knew if they shouted "fake news" loud
| enough they could get enough like minded people to upvote
| it._
|
| It's a tactic to call everything a false flag, even your
| own ops. It requires virtually zero time, effort, or
| education to get everyone on your side doing it. Liberals
| fall for this trick frequently because they are obsessed
| with being seen to have to correct answer, so they invest
| for more effort in debunking than the liars did in making
| their claim.
| jeezfrk wrote:
| haha. they don't get all this delishus Kool aid that is
| to die for!
|
| I know my good good friend Conservative Fearless Leader
| will never let me go to jail or die of preventable
| disease or banish my rites when I want defending.
|
| oops... too late. at least I didn't need to be right.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Liberals fall for this trick frequently because they
| are obsessed with being seen to have to correct answer,
| so they invest for more effort in debunking than the
| liars did in making their claim.
|
| Excuse me while my eyes roll into the back of my head.
|
| Whether "liberal" or "conservative", some of us still
| care that facts matter. And honestly I would never have
| worried so much about calling out so much bullshit in the
| past until I saw so many of my fellow (voting) citizens
| actually believe this BS and take it to dangerous
| extremes. For example, when QAnon first came out, I just
| smiled a bit and laughed - "This doesn't even reach the
| level of _bad_ fan fiction " I thought. Yet, lo and
| behold, significant swaths of the US population believe
| this, and I find that frightening.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Sorry for not expressing my point more clearly. It's not
| that nobody should ever engage in debunking, but that
| deliberately bullshit statements are often introduced on
| social media to steal the time of well-meaning debunkers.
|
| I realized Qanon was going to be a problem from when it
| first appeared, but that's because I've spent about 20
| years paying close attention to mis- and disinformation
| and political influence groups. What I'm pointing out
| here is that the time costs of lying vs debunking favor
| liars, especially when aggregated across communities.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Ah, gotcha, understood.
| remote_phone wrote:
| The Dallas shopping center shooting was the first time in my
| life I couldn't tell the difference between online truth and
| lies. I'm very good as finding out the truth vs lies but this
| time I couldn't. Usually disinformation is easy to spot but
| this time it came out so fast that I had no idea what was
| real vs fake. It's a scary time to be living in when you have
| no idea what is real anymore.
| Roark66 wrote:
| Personally after I was involved with some "news" that was
| then reported completely wrong (not by malice, but pure
| incompetence) I've stopped believing anything I read or
| hear in the media. This was 25 years ago and the trend has
| only increased. Yes, there is quite a bit of fakery, but
| 99% of "bad news" is a result of the: 1. No expectation by
| the public credible sources are quoted when news are
| reported. 2. Reporters not knowing their arse from their
| elbow. 2. Their editor/writers"trying to spice it up a
| little". 3. The speakers making bloody mistake after
| mistake when reading from a teleprompter in the most
| important stuff. 4. Other media picking it up and adding
| their own spin.
|
| It's like "Chinese whisper". I can't count the number of
| times my partner tells me when I come home "have you heard,
| there is this horribly stupid law that is coming into
| effect next month". Then I check, and it's not a law, but a
| proposal, it hasn't been even accepted to be discussed yet
| and the details are completely different too.
|
| I understand, not many smart people these days go into
| "traditional news reporting". It's a pity, because good
| news reporting is a prerequisite of a well functioning
| democratic society
|
| It will only get worse, as revenue from traditional news
| drops they'll be more and more dssperate to make money the
| only way they can, by increasing the emotional load of the
| stuff they report. Everything has to be extreme, outraging,
| horrible etc.
| quesera wrote:
| > _I can 't count the number of times my partner tells me
| when I come home "have you heard, there is this horribly
| stupid law that is coming into effect next month". Then I
| check, and it's not a law, but a proposal, it hasn't been
| even accepted to be discussed yet and the details are
| completely different too._
|
| It's certainly not the only source of error, but I find
| that the answer to my first question ("What, where did
| you read about that?") is almost always "Facebook".
|
| It's become a running joke in my household. It turns out
| though that some people read news as entertainment, and
| don't really care if it's particularly true. This is
| probably fine, but it breaks down when the evoked
| response is outrage instead of a laugh.
| EGreg wrote:
| [flagged]
| iinnPP wrote:
| Im glad you mentioned this because I thought I was going a
| bit nuts.
|
| It's like thinking beyond today is impossible and that
| using logic to predict behavior is akin to being a
| conspiracy theorist.
|
| Some now popular conclusions around AI were flagged
| comments ~3 months ago.
|
| No wonder software is so terrible today.
| EGreg wrote:
| It's like that in general, with authority-based and
| cargo-cult based thinking.
|
| Look at how the "Wuhan lab leak theory" was flagged and
| buried, how it took Jon Stewart to voice it and take a
| lot of heat before anyone paid any attention, and now
| it's mainstream and the Federal government is supposedly
| officially investigating it.
| https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/jon-stewart-recalls-
| outrage-af...
|
| Sometimes governments use it to gaslight everyone:
| https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-
| carter-...
|
| On HN, the orthodoxy was that you shall not talk about
| everyday causes of depression or ADD. But then in 2022 we
| had this meta analysis that found no evidence supporting
| the serotonin theory and SSRIs: https://www.sciencedaily.
| com/releases/2022/07/220720080145.h...
|
| Now it's OK to talk about it, whereas before it was not.
| So now we have a lot of taboos to talk about
| overdiagnosis of ADHD and gender dysphoria, talking about
| the DSM V criteria etc:
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/feb/04/adhd-
| diet-fo...
|
| So yes.. right now the thing is to hate on Web3 and to do
| strawmen like "how will it fix AI". It won't fix AI, it's
| just that Web3 may be roughly a zero-sum game for
| society, or at least not nearly as negative-sum as AI.
| smoldesu wrote:
| From HN "Guidelines" page:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or
| sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some
| interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or
| disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on
| TV news, it's probably off-topic.
|
| As much as you're entirely right that HN's readership
| decides what succeeds or not, pretty much every example
| you've furnished is defined clearly as "off topic"
| submissions. The Wuhan lab leak theory, regardless of how
| we view it in hindsight, was paraded as a sensational
| event up and down party lines. It never had a chance on
| this site, like Donald Trump drama or "Ask HN: What did
| you think of _Kardashians_ last night? ". Maybe it _is_
| relevant - but framing it sensationally is like toxic
| waste to this site 's readers.
|
| > the orthodoxy was that you shall not talk about
| everyday causes of depression or ADD
|
| > So now we have a lot of taboos to talk about
| overdiagnosis of ADHD and gender dysphoria, talking about
| the DSM V criteria
|
| They're not taboo. They're just not appropriate
| conversation topics for a hacking/finance website. The
| few times that it _has_ become a big discussion topic has
| been through the lens of engineering lifestyles and
| personal experience. Even that is arguably too sappy for
| a non-Reddit website.
|
| > Now it's OK to talk about it
|
| > So yes.. right now the thing is to hate on Web3
|
| Very subtle foreshadowing - you almost make it sound like
| Web3 has a second chance or something.
|
| Truth is, like I said at the beginning - HN chooses what
| they want to hear. Most websites that give their users
| any degree of control over their experience let this
| happen (see Twitter, where users block the verified
| users). If you demand engagement on a topic nobody cares
| about, it stands to reason that you'll feel repeatedly
| disappointed by this website.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Maybe it is relevant
|
| I think it absolutely is relevant, given that the
| conversation itself was about changing narratives, as a
| meta point.
|
| > you almost make it sound like Web3 has a second chance
| or something.
|
| This thread itself, is one of the rare ones where
| bringing up web3 actually is relevant, yes. It is
| reasonable for him to make that argument, because the
| topic is literally about how to authenticate things when
| you have an opposing central authority.
|
| > If you demand engagement on a topic nobody cares about
|
| His point wasn't about engagement. Instead his point was
| about how unpopular opinions are being proved correct,
| and that people were way to quick to dismiss ideas.
|
| His point was that people should be able to look ahead,
| into the future, instead of immediately dismissing things
| out of hand, just because the thing isn't directly
| effecting the world right now.
|
| IE, if you were downvoting/disagreeing with opinions
| about how AI is going to make it hard to authenticate
| information online, then you were wrong and were way to
| quick to dismiss an opinion out of hand.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > as a meta point.
|
| I mean, it's a stretch. I could use that stretching
| metaphor as an excuse to talk about taffy for 4
| paragraphs, but it doesn't contribute anything meaningful
| to the conversation. Scrounging up discussion about Web3
| on an Indian government expose is off-topic, and readers
| will flag it. It's equally substantial as those "this is
| good for Bitcoin" posts that get flagged under every
| article about a government treasury.
|
| > the topic is literally about how to authenticate things
| when you have an opposing central authority.
|
| If so, his flagged post didn't reflect it. It was a vapid
| comment that made no attempt to reconcile either topic.
|
| > his point was about how unpopular opinions are being
| proved correct
|
| If you want to argue that the Blockchain could have
| prevented this from happening, then by all means - write
| that comment. But that's not what his flagged post was.
| It detracted from the conversation and _quite literally_
| read as flamebait.
|
| > if you were downvoting/disagreeing with opinions about
| how AI is going to make it hard to authenticate
| information online, then you were wrong
|
| Spoilers: it has been hard to authenticate information
| online for as long as the internet has been around. In
| fact, the most significant events are corroborated with
| _real life occurrences_ that challenge these lies. These
| women can attest that they did not do this in the photo.
| If government officials insist that the version with them
| smiling is the true master copy, then you 're the fool
| for believing them.
|
| I'm baffled that this is even being used as a platform to
| discuss Web3, a collection of technologies mostly reputed
| for... being manipulated and exploited by bad actors that
| cannot be incentivized to stop.
| EGreg wrote:
| Somehow AI fans can't seem to understand how scale
| changes things.
|
| Bombs have been around for a long time. What if everyone
| could have many, cheaply and easily? Why, since nothing
| happens with N of them, then 20,000 x N is just a little
| more of the same. And so what if the bots are now able to
| hold conversations and pass the Turing test 24x7 at
| scale? We have been able to hire humans to do that.
|
| Except... no. That's not how it works and you know it.
| Allowing _anyone_ to deploy swarms of bots with
| superhuman memory, strategy, coordination, and now the
| ability to do many tasks with acceptable or good results
| at scale, is a game-changer and the question is whether
| it will make society better off.
|
| The same questions asked of Web3's _downsides_ should be
| asked of AI. Not upsides, downsides. The fact that the
| guy in charge of safety at OpenAI says he thinks there's
| a 20% chance of human extinction and you choose to shrug
| it off and focus on some other part -- is the issue.
|
| This isn't just an academic discussion. It is like the
| people who profit off of coal and other things,
| regardless of their emissions or effect on people or
| climate. It matters and should be regulated.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Scrounging up discussion about Web3 on an Indian
| government expose is off-topic
|
| It really isn't. Because it is one of the normally very
| rare use cases for web 3 stuff, and the topic is directly
| about a case where such a thing would be needed.
|
| > it has been hard to authenticate information online
|
| That's nice and all. But the claim was that people were
| previously dismissing opinions about AI that are now
| mainstream.
|
| So yes, you'd be wrong if you were outright dismissing
| these opinions about AI before, which are now popular.
|
| And it is useful and interesting to point out how
| previous opinions that were dismissed out of hand, are
| now mainstream, using this situation as an example.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Because it is one of the normally very rare use cases
| for web 3 stuff
|
| > a case where such a thing would be needed.
|
| So... suggest a solution. What is your magical Blockchain
| panacea for this situation? To plug all digital cameras
| into an online ledger and hash every image? I'd love to
| hear a non-pipe-dream based idea for this.
|
| > But the claim was that people were previously
| dismissing opinions about AI that are now mainstream.
|
| This could be said about just about everything. I still
| dismiss the flying car, even though I was "proved wrong"
| in the 60s and 70s when some coked up engineers built
| one. I still dismiss cryptocurrency, even though many
| coins will outlive me. There is no world in my lifetime
| where cryptocurrency obsoletes the IMF. Betting against
| the powers that be is like playing chicken against a
| shotgun.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > So... suggest a solution.
|
| I am not sure if you read the rest of the comments and
| suggestions in this whole post, but multiple people did,
| over multiple discussion threads.
|
| Feel free to go back and read them.
|
| Also, it is still interesting and useful to suggest part
| of the solution, without writing dozens of pages on the
| exact specific details of it. Even just recommending
| crypto, is interesting enough, due to the fact that real
| usecases for crypto are so rare.
|
| > This could be said about just about everything.
|
| Ok, well in this case, related to AI, lots of people were
| wrong. And those people who were wrong, should figure out
| what mistake they made, to be so wrong, and why they were
| so quick to incorrectly dismiss these arguments.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're arguing here?
| confoundcofound wrote:
| I suspect they're referring to using blockchain as a
| system of cryptographically-verified facts and shared
| reality to counteract the AI risk you mention.
|
| Why was GP flagged? They made a good point.
| EGreg wrote:
| It was flagged because it's a taboo on HN to say anything
| good about Web3, or even that Web3 is not as bad as
| something else, like AI that will destroy our trust in
| anything digital.
|
| The point was that Web3 was mildly zero-sum for society,
| while AI is shaping up to be massively negative-sum, as
| more people get access to it. It's like giving bombs to
| everybody and hoping no one will use them in bad ways. At
| least with nuclear bombs we knew who was enriching the
| plutonium. Here, everyone has access to weapons, to be
| used as they please.
|
| The key to when things go bad is swarms. When HN is
| overrun with swarms of bots a few years from now, you'll
| remember reading this. Web3 by contrast is just an
| immutable ledger, its worst applications are convincing
| people to voluntarily put some money into a buggy smart
| contract.
| dagmx wrote:
| How would the Web3 concept solve this?
| EGreg wrote:
| It wouldn't, that's not what is being claimed.
| dagmx wrote:
| I read your other post explaining what you meant after I
| asked. I don't think the initial claim was clear but I
| get where you're coming from.
| yalogin wrote:
| The truth comes out but the pro fascist people will have the
| ammo to keep lying about and repeating the lie. A percentage of
| the rest will believe it. They keep chipping away like that
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| IMO it doesn't even matter if the truth comes out, the truth
| wasn't first.
| Varqu wrote:
| I think the primary issue is that, while internet users usually
| question the authenticity of photos (as a normal practice),
| they tend to subconsciously trust what they see in videos.
|
| It will require a significant mental shift to now question
| practically every single piece of audiovisual content.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I'd hope that people don't like in a world where they believe
| they have to question the authenticity of everything they
| see. Why would they keep using the internet at all? And what
| psychological impact does that have when you view the world
| assuming everything may be a lie?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I used to think this problem would solve itself, in that once
| people were fooled a few times, they'd stop being so easy to
| fool. The Trump era shut down that quaint idealistic notion.
| Turns out a lot of people -- maybe all of us to some extent
| -- actively enjoy being fooled. It makes for a communal
| experience that we'd otherwise miss out on, or something.
| Varqu wrote:
| Yeah, the problem is that it's surprisingly easy to fall
| for the fake if it re-affirms your world view.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| > internet users usually question the authenticity of photos
|
| Maybe _you_ do that, but I would not generalize, and I would
| not necessarily think I'm always capable of doing that myself
| "by default"
| tjr225 wrote:
| [dead]
| wiseleo wrote:
| AI-assisted media manipulation will have an interesting effect on
| evidence becoming subject to reasonable doubt. Ten years ago,
| showing a video in court was damning evidence. I expect it to
| become less so.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Ten years ago, showing a video in court was damning evidence.
|
| Courts have dealt with issues of manipulation of content and
| falsification of provenance of video and photographic evidence
| for a long time, actually.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Verified account @wokeflix_ tweeted the same image in a meme
|
| > Verified account @randomsena tweeted the same image
|
| > Another verified account, @RealAtulsay, tweeted the same image
|
| Isn't "Verified" on Twitter just a subscription now, meaning it's
| just that these people have given Twitter money? Why it matters
| (in a journalistic sense) who has paid Twitter or not? And why
| are only some of the verified accounts mentioned as verified
| accounts, while others are verified but not mentioned as
| verified?
|
| Such a weird article overall.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| yeah verified only means you either gave your credit card
| name/number to them or someone gave them a stolen one. It's
| basically useless. However in this case I'm more apt to believe
| the government is manipulating photos than randos on twitter
| given the recent drive towards religious and ethnic minority
| discrimination by the Indian government.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Isn't Verified a feature to (supposedly) attest someone
| identity instead of attesting the trueness of their tweets?
|
| For my understanding the purpose was to help newcomers to
| distinguish @realDonaldTrump with @veryRealTrump. It is
| supposed to prevent impersonating, but that's just a shift of
| trust from your own judgement to the Twitter chosen fraud
| algorithm or whatever method they choose. Can't see how 10$ add
| more credibility.
| crooked-v wrote:
| They got rid of the identity part. Now all it indicates is
| that you pay Twitter.
| comprev wrote:
| I suspect there is considerable overlap in a Venn diagram of
| those who never hear about the image being manipulated and
| those who still think a blue tick is reserved for human-
| verified accounts.
| matsemann wrote:
| I think that's their point. It's a way of subtly pointing out
| that verification on Twitter is now useless, and shouldn't be
| trusted any more than claims from any other user. Even less, I
| guess, since it's not a equal distribution of people paying for
| verification, they all skew pretty hard to one side.
| tdehnel wrote:
| Would be great if they just came out and said it, instead of
| this passive aggressive nonsense.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| That's probably true for Twitter blue but there appears to be
| multiple forms of verification, including a government one
| and an organizations one.
| grecy wrote:
| Why do people care about Twitter at all?
|
| It doesn't matter what people say on 4chan or fox "news", why
| is twitter any different?
|
| It's all just opinions, not worth anyone's time. Ignore it.
| macintux wrote:
| The media we ignore still can have a huge impact on society,
| on elections, on basic human civility. Ignoring Fox News
| hasn't made it any less damaging.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Well let's see what Twitter says about their new blue program
|
| Your account must have no signs of being misleading or
| deceptive
|
| Your account must have no signs of engaging in platform
| manipulation and spam
|
| So Twitter is telling us that those accounts should not be
| deceiving. Yet, they are.
|
| https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...
| gpm wrote:
| If you're running an article on how Elon is changing twitter
| into a disinformation machine, the fact that they're
| verifying deceptive accounts would be relevant.
|
| If you're running an article on how the India ruling party
| used AI to paint protestors in a false light, it isn't
| relevant. Worse bringing attention to it like this could give
| less-informed readers the false impression that "verified"
| actually meant something like "verified by the government".
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Sounds more like regular ToS that gives Twitter the right to
| cancel paid services, not a magic method to fix the issue. I
| know a ton of verified politicians that lied weekly on
| Twitter pre Musk. It's an unsolvable issue.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| TOS only get used if you're a fly in the ointment in most
| cases.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| Pretty much the definition of "win-win situation" in Elmo's
| Abridged Dictionary, right?
| d3vmax wrote:
| I have seen so many pro-Russian bot accounts with blue verified
| symbol. These accounts also get priority on their replies,
| which are positioned at the start of the tweet conversation
| compared to non-blue / non paying twitter handles, giving them
| a bigger amplification.
|
| Whenever I see blue tick accounts now, I notice most of them
| have <1000 followers and have no authority in the subject
| matter and I ignore most of them. I have noticed a lot of
| right-wing handles, all having the blue tick and getting
| priority on spreading their misinformation as it was in this
| case.
|
| Elon has broken the verified system on purpose to fit his new
| anti-government / anti-"woke" agenda.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| This is wrong on most every level
| Freedom2 wrote:
| Agreed. There's a lot of claims that are unsubstantiated as
| well as full of anecodes. It's hard to discern how this can
| lead to 'curious' discussion.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Also, twitter shows the comments from "verified" handles on the
| top of other comments. Government sponsored trolls have
| unlimited flow of money to buy verified status and dominate the
| general public accounts.
|
| This is how BJP government uses public money to run troll
| campaigns on social media against opposition leaders. [1]
|
| Possibly hundreds or thousands of persons or "journalists" are
| getting funds from government to abuse the opposition leaders.
|
| [1] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/exclusive-silver-touch-
| behin...
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| The problem isn't money, it's unique phone numbers and credit
| card numbers. Over time there is much easier ways to detect
| and mass ban platform manipulation accounts.
|
| I'm sure the government of India can make as many numbers and
| cards as they want, but the problem is still that Twitter can
| know who issued both and a lot of information about them,
| including if they're burner numbers. It still helps
| tremendously
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's the promise. Whether they do anything with it is
| questionable.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/6blpTqF shows my recent advertiser
| blocks from about 10 mins of browsing. Clearly inauthentic
| accounts, some paying the $1k gold check fees.
| pityJuke wrote:
| > Also, twitter shows the comments from "verified" handles on
| the top of other comments.
|
| This is the exact main problem with paid Verification. Blue
| tweets surface to the top, disproportionate to the attention
| they actually receive, meaning you're more likely to see
| them. You're effectively paying for attention.
| codegeek wrote:
| Yea. the moment Elon started charging for the blue tick, it
| became useless and I wouldn't pay for it anymore unless I
| really want to use the extra goodies that it provides which I
| don't need personally.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Such a weird comment. Yes, what is wrong with emptying the
| label of any meaning and letting any misinformation trash
| account buy it for a few bucks? You might be terminally online
| but then not everyone is.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Verified" is now an anti-signal. It's more likely than not to
| indicate that the poster is a crank who's paying money to have
| their opinions disseminated.
| wussboy wrote:
| I would agree with this, except verified account posts still
| get shown first.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| So cranks and people trying to promote something.
| concordDance wrote:
| Not true of the organisation verification.
| tdehnel wrote:
| It was an anti-signal before.
| ryder9 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| It was never a signal for 99% of verified users. It as a
| game.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| What software was used?
| guenthert wrote:
| Flashback to The Laughing Man of Ghost in the Shell. Guess, we're
| getting there.
| [deleted]
| ChatGTP wrote:
| "Hey, we're just trying to democratize art.."
| kloc wrote:
| This account has been constantly submitting anti ruling party
| articles to demean India. Nothing in the article or proof
| otherwise which indicates that this was done by the rulling
| party. A lot of other articles submitted by this "throwaway"
| account are also questionable.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| I have backed everything with sources in my posts? Can you
| point out if anything is not correct? Or do you have a general
| issue when something is said against ruling party?
|
| If you really care about reputation of India, how about
| advising someone in BJP to prevent this type of things from
| happening at first place?
| collsni wrote:
| Just the beginning, what happens when it becomes impossible to
| parse fact and fiction?
|
| I mean rsa 2048 can be currently broken in 104 days, and we'll be
| at quantum levels sooner than we realize.
|
| How we validating anything after that? Biometric?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I wonder if we'll see analogue methods as the only reliable
| ones left.
| lightedman wrote:
| >I mean rsa 2048 can be currently broken in 104 days
|
| With what hardware? I've been CONSTANTLY trying to break
| Hermes2 ransomware (which uses RSA2048) for almost a solid
| decade.
| api wrote:
| Need a source on RSA 2048 being breakable. QC like that is
| still quite far off and it can't be conventionally breakable
| unless there has been some kind of mathematical breakthrough.
| collsni wrote:
| https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-
| re...
| dmbche wrote:
| We're good! It's a risk assessment - nothing has been
| broken, but they propose that with a computer with these
| specs it could be done.
|
| I wouldn't worry too much about encryption being easily
| broken soon.
| shagie wrote:
| For those who worry about it, it isn't that it's broken
| _soon_ , but that it _will_ be broken within a timeframe
| that the data is still useful.
|
| Veritasium : How Quantum Computers Break The Internet...
| Starting Now - https://youtu.be/-UrdExQW0cs
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_now,_decrypt_later
| dmbche wrote:
| I'm not sure what encrypted data produced today would be
| relevant in 40 years time? Thinking about how some cases
| can't be prosecuted since it's been too long since the
| offence
| garganzol wrote:
| > I mean rsa 2048 can be currently broken in 104 days
|
| Only if one has a sufficiently-large fault-tolerant quantum
| computer with 10,000 qubits and 2.23 trillion quantum gates
| [0]. Which is currently an unachivium.
|
| [0] https://www.itnews.com.au/news/quantum-computers-wont-
| break-...
| collsni wrote:
| With this whole AI push, there have been pretty serious
| advancements in technology. I wouldn't doubt in 5 to 10 years
| will have a vastly different threat landscape. Nation states
| can afford supercomputers, so can some private corporations.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| How is AI related to this? Did LLMs figure how crack
| encryptions?
| bogwog wrote:
| That doesn't seem too unbelievable. Maybe a sufficiently
| large LLM will be able to find a flaw in the algorithms
| or logic behind some encryption schemes which even our
| greatest monkey brains overlooked.
| carlitossway wrote:
| No, they cannot. LLMs are LANGUAGE models, not KNOWLDEGE
| models. They do not "know" what algorithms mean any more
| than they know what everything else they "talk about"
| mean.
|
| What they are more than capable of is to produce really
| convincing hype, which claims that LLMs can do anything
| and everything.
| tdehnel wrote:
| Most people think information is transmitted from source to
| receiver. This is actually wrong.
|
| What happens is the information is creatively formed in the
| mind of the receiver, by the receiver, in all cases.
|
| In other words, people form an explanation for the observation
| in their minds and judge it compared to other competing
| explanations.
|
| So instead of the post-truth, doom-and-gloom world that you
| fear, another possible outcome is that people get better at
| forming or identifying good explanatory knowledge. In other
| words, the bar for what you call truth actually goes up and
| people get smarter.
|
| An example of this happening would be door-to-door sales
| people. They basically no longer exist. Because people learned
| not to answer the door when a random person knocks.
|
| The old explanation "someone I want to talk to is here to see
| me" got replaced with a new better explanation of "some time
| wasting stranger is probably at the door."
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| That is an optimistic view, which I appreciate. The only
| issue I have is that I think we will need to mobilize as a
| culture to embrace it, in order for it to succeed.
|
| I don't think it is as simple as replacing one explanation
| with another (like your door-to-door salesman example)
| because it is such an open-ended problem. I think it is more
| like completing the Enlightenment as conceived by Kant and
| others.
|
| I think we could do it (i.e., philosophy classes beginning in
| elementary school, etc), but it would be tough to convince
| people to participate. It is hard, mind-bending, solitary
| work that is inherently alienating, which most people avoid.
|
| Additionally, there is also the inherent contradiction in
| developing your own independent mind by order of the
| government or teachers, as well as a host of other paradoxes.
|
| Maybe the best route is to try to make philosophy popular?
| Use social behavior for people to be attracted to it for the
| wrong reasons, but hope that a sizeable part of the
| population end up taking it seriously? And that sizeable
| chunk is enough to influence the group?
|
| I have no idea, but I like your comment and hope there is a
| silver-lining that we become deeper and more thoughtful
| people.
| isanjay wrote:
| BJP is proper Authoritarian.
|
| This is coming from a right leaning person.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| The sad thing is they will probably win again in 2024. The
| damage that 15 years of BJP has done to the social fabric of
| India, and the undermining of the core founding principles of
| the republic will last for generations. It's hard to imagine it
| going away :(
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Unfortunately BJP has compromised most of the pillars of
| democracy. Almost all the mainstream "journalist" openly
| support the BJP Government. You will find them insulting and
| fighting with opposition leaders in TV debates everyday. They
| will hold special TV shows to justify all the actions of
| government. They will show BJP as winning in most of the
| elections right till the last moment.
|
| The judges of courts are getting post retirement posts from
| the government. For example, Ranjan Gogoi, served as Chief
| Justice of India and gave many decisions in favour of ruling
| party and he got nominated to Rajaya Sabha by president after
| his retirement. [1] He was also accused of sexual harassment,
| and the lady was found to be a target of snooping by BJP
| government through her mobile phone by using pegasus spyware.
| [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranjan_Gogoi
|
| [2] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/pegasus-
| proje...
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| We are used to a time when constitutional rights were
| suspended and state governments were dismissed on the whim.
| Regardless of what happens to BJP, India will continue to
| move ahead.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| We also used to a time in Germany in 1940s. We should not
| let that happen again anywhere in the world.
| kalam_throw wrote:
| Most Indians were never secular. Before, they hadn't got a
| voice or representation. BJP came into power by tapping into
| the latent sentiment in majority of Indians.
|
| It's much like how Trump was elected.
|
| If you think that majority of Indians were ever secular, I
| think that you never left the bubble of upper middle class,
| city based society.
|
| Hindus are, generally much more advanced than Muslim in terms
| of education, finances, etc. and couldn't be bothered to
| cause communal violence because they have much more to lose.
| And the ones that are left behind, didn't have a uniting
| force. BJP/RSS has accomplished that.
|
| The people lynching Muslim for eating beef are very rural,
| very uneducated Hindus with much less to lose. And the rest
| of them openly support them.
|
| I will say, 80-95% of Hindus were never ever secular. BJP is
| _creating_ new zealots now, but they didn 't need to do so to
| come to power.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| BJP is also hard at work at creating a single, homogeneous
| Hindu and Indian identity, where something more of a
| cultural sphere existed, to create fanatics to their cause.
| They're re-engineering Indian society in a way that we've
| seen end up in tears for everyone in the past, in other
| places.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| >BJP is also hard at work at creating a single,
| homogeneous Hindu and Indian identity
|
| can you give particular examples of actions or
| legislation you think they've taken that exemplifies
| this?
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| BJP brought the Citizenship Act and the National Register
| of Citizens to act against the minority.
|
| >> "Will remove every single infiltrator, except
| Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs: Amit Shah" [1]
|
| Archive.org snapshot of now deleted tweet from BJP
| official account [2]
|
| [1] https://indianexpress.com/elections/will-remove-
| every-single...
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190520193044/https://tw
| itter.c...
| codersfocus wrote:
| I'm not Indian, but I heard that there is also a rift
| between south Indians (Tamil) and the northerners. Are
| Tamils Hindu as well? Where do they play into this?
| isanjay wrote:
| Tamil Nadu is also a majority Hindu state.
|
| Calling it rift is a bit of a stretch.
| dagmx wrote:
| I sadly don't see any true way to move past the BJP. They've
| really captured the minds of the majority.
|
| I don't think any other party has anywhere near the might to
| stand up to the sheer might the BJP has created, not without
| compromising their morals.
|
| How do you compete with a government that will distort
| reality like this, where the majority of people won't listen
| to the actual truth?
| isanjay wrote:
| It's not like other parties have any morals in the first
| place.
|
| Well none of my state parties have morals and sure as hell
| Congress doesn't have any morals
| lagolinguini wrote:
| > It's not like other parties have any morals in the
| first place.
|
| This is the line of thinking that has led to the BJPs
| success. The fact that people have been convinced that
| the opposition is not a viable alternative is a shame.
|
| While it's true that the opposition has many faults, no
| other party has undermined the core founding principles
| of the republic the way the BJP has, except for perhaps
| Indira Gandhi.
| dagmx wrote:
| While Congress and other parties have many faults,
| they're still a damn sight better than the party that is
| trying to degrade human rights for non-Hindus.
|
| Sometimes you just need to hold your nose and vote for
| the best option, even if they're flawed. The road to a
| better tomorrow is paved with compromises that get us
| there.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| >While Congress and other parties have many faults,
| they're still a damn sight better
|
| This is clearly an inflammatory opinion with no
| substantial backing provided, I'd love to hear your
| reasoning for coming to this conclusion. Indian politics
| isn't as black and white as you're making it out to be.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| I'm sorry, but OPs comment is not an inflammatory
| opinion. Congress does not stand opposed to the core
| founding principles of the republic.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| I think that any "Tom, Dick, and Harry" party is better
| than the Nazi party.
| khuss wrote:
| India, under its current leadership of Modi's Hindutva government
| is a near-term threat to its minorities, opposition and
| dissenting voices. If it goes unchecked, it won't be long before
| a global threat emerges. Modi himself is one of the propagators
| of fake news and hate speech. He dog-whistles his social media
| army to systematically spread communal division and consolidate
| Hindu votes. Most of the mainstream media is already under his
| cronies like Adani. The most recent one to fall is NDTV, which
| used to be an independent voice. If there is one country to watch
| out for the misuse of AI for political gains, it would be India
| especially with elections happening in the next year.
| joshspankit wrote:
| How will we verify photos and videos without dissolving in to
| endless speculation? I'm genuinely asking as this is something
| I've been worried about for a while.
|
| The only thing I can think of is storing a hash or "phash" with a
| trusted third party that can then be used to later verify which
| image is the original. For video, store the hash/phash of the
| frames with timestamps. But would that even work? How do you
| back-verify that something was captured at a specific time when
| the device was offline during capture?
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| No, that would not work. You can apply a filter and immediately
| after compute a hash. For now, the fake pictures are rather
| easy to spot to a trained eye.
| joshspankit wrote:
| > You can apply a filter and immediately after compute a
| hash.
|
| Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what wouldn't work
| kevincox wrote:
| You can't. All photos may be fake or manipulated. You can't
| trust a photo. You need to decide if you trust those who are
| vouching for a particular photo.
| thisisit wrote:
| I am amazed that the title is allowed to stand despite the
| original title and the content.
|
| The origin of the image is unclear. Sure, one can speculate that
| "India ruling party's IT cell" is behind the morphed image. This
| is what this comment section is for. But without hard proof the
| title is as much of an propaganda as are the morphed image.
|
| Are we going to tag everything a Democrat does as "US ruling
| party's" doing?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They just shared the pictures right? We aren't sure if they
| actually created the pictures, or who they obtained the altered
| pictures from.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| this, @dang please review the title
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Exactly. Only recently we had this fiasco (less than a year
| ago):
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/23/23419366/the-wire-meta-i...
|
| HN was fooled multiple times during that episode. It looks like
| HN likes being gullible when simple common sense would have
| prevented that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thewire.in
| passion__desire wrote:
| Do you think it is possible for one side to doctor images and
| make it viral by planting it in the opposition's filter bubble
| (possibly by your embedded twitter agents) only to be easily
| outed like Alan Sokal did. We live in interesting times.
| [deleted]
| borissk wrote:
| India slowly joining China, Russia and Turkey as a
| dictatorship...
| squarefoot wrote:
| Italy silently following. Quietly and slowly, so that frogs
| won't notice the temperature difference.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/23/italy-governme...
|
| The 1st step in turning a seemingly democratic country in a
| dictatorship is to control the media. Not the 1st time it
| happens, but this time it is way more serious. Of course the
| new dictatorship needs to be soft enough to be palatable for
| other EU members and NATO allies, therefore I don't expect
| black shirt patrols with batons attacking people unfriendly to
| the regime down the street or at their home, at least not in a
| systematic way like a century ago, yet things are going to suck
| badly over here if nobody stops those bastards in power ASAP.
| miohtama wrote:
| Here are two high quality The Economist pieces on India's state
| of democracy
|
| - https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/02/12/the-organs-of-
| indi...
|
| - https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/03/27/the-worlds-
| biggest...
| sremani wrote:
| Hold your horses, this is false equivalence. India is no where
| near China or Russia, Turkey may be closest thing but that is
| also kind of false. State governments in India are powerful and
| that complicates many things.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| Exactly this, The ruling party has literally lost elections
| in Karnataka, they're very far from exerting unilateral
| influence on the entire country, much less becoming a
| dictatorship
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| 1. BJP still control most of the mainstream media.
|
| 2. BJP has in past offered plum post retirement positions
| to judges after they delivered some controversial decisions
| in favour of BJP.
|
| 3. BJP has full control on Election commission, and the
| electronic voting machines. Despite multiple reposts of
| voting machines found in cars of BJP candidates, or videos
| of faulty machines showing votes in favour of BJP, and
| despite calls for letting opposition parties inspect
| machines, Election commission has never let them inspect
| the machines.
|
| 4. A large number of bigots are in various positions in
| various administrative services and in recent years they
| have started showing their hate in open.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| India is very much like Turkey, though perhaps no where as
| close to China or Russia.
|
| State governments in India are not powerful, and they never
| have been! The constitution of India grants much more power
| to the Central Government than it does to the State
| Governments. The BJP government has pushed the boundary of
| federalism again and again. Here are some concrete examples:
|
| 1. Denial of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.
|
| 2. Using the Centre-appointed governor to take down the Govt.
| of Maharashtra.
|
| 3. Constant pushback on policies and appointments made by the
| Govt. of Delhi.
| dagmx wrote:
| As an NRI, I continue to be disappointed by the country I called
| home for most of my life.
|
| Between the politics and the pollution in Delhi, I fear I can
| never really return home.
|
| The last time I was home, I was struggling every day to breathe
| because Delhi has crazy air in the winter. While high school
| friends were telling me about how they don't believe in equal
| rights, justifying any means to achieving a Hindu country. This
| is just one more nail in the coffin of a potentially great,
| secular country that once dared to vote place a great scientist
| as president. How far we've fallen since.
|
| I'm just heartbroken over what my country has become.
|
| Edit: for the countless fans of India that will show up to tell
| me how to feel about the country, please don't. I really don't
| care to hear the latest talking point on why Infrastructure is
| worth human rights abuses or whatever lets you sleep at night. My
| opinion is my own and you can please pound sand. You are part of
| what makes me mourn my country.
| kalam_throw wrote:
| [flagged]
| dagmx wrote:
| While those criticisms are true, and I won't dispute it, he
| was also a huge symbol for many to actually trust in science
| and push the country forward.
|
| Sometimes what the symbol represents is more important than
| the contents itself
| codegeek wrote:
| For non Indians, NRI = Non Resident Indian i.e. an Indian who
| lives outside India. In case someone wondered.
|
| It is easy to shit on the party in office which is BJP right
| now but show me a country that can have hundreds of languages,
| all religions and still survive for centuries as one country.
| Europe couldn't do it. They broke into EU (for better or
| worse). There are flaws but India is a complex country of
| various cultures and you have to understand the nuances.
|
| Congress party ruled India for decades after Independence in
| 1947 and all they could do was to keep India as a 3rd world
| country while other similar countries progressed economically.
| Fun fact: Until the early 1980s, India and China were same
| econonically when COngress ruled India for decades. And talk
| about authoritarianism ? Who was the one who declared emergency
| in 1974 and suspended all "civil rights". That was Indira
| Gandhi from Congress, the so called "secular" party.
|
| My point is that there is no saint and people in india like BJP
| because they are at least doing some work in various areas
| including infrastructure, economy and areas that have been
| neglected for decades. So yea, people wanted change and they
| got change with Modi as a strong leader.
|
| Source: Also an NRI who is a naturalized US Citizen and I see a
| lot of positives among all the negatives that Media loves to
| portray.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Europe couldn't do it
|
| When was Europe one country?
| dgellow wrote:
| > It is easy to shit on the party in office which is BJP
| right now but show me a country that can have hundreds of
| languages, all religions and still survive for centuries as
| one country. Europe couldn't do it. They broke into EU (for
| better or worse).
|
| I have no idea what you're referring to here. Europe has
| never been one country, and will likely never be. Having
| smaller countries isn't something bad, nobody would consider
| multiple Europeans countries to be a failure, or the result
| of a broken Europe. Even proponents of a United States of
| Europe (I am one) don't see having multiple European
| countries as a failure.
| screye wrote:
| The Balkans, Africa & the sub-continent are proven examples
| of the kind of blood that's shed during partition,
| secession and civil wars.
|
| If you're a proponent of the balkanization of India, then
| you're by default a proponent of of the biggest as-of-yet-
| unrealized genocide of the 21st century.
| webartisan wrote:
| Who talked about the balkanisation of India? The OP is
| pointing out an inaccurate fact -- Europe did not break
| up on religion.
|
| We could all use a little drama to support our points
| here.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Is "Congress party also bad!" still a primary defence of Mr.
| Modi who is in power for about 10 years now?
|
| I think NRIs are praising Modi because he is helping with the
| fall of Rupee as compared to other currencies so NRIs get
| maximum return when they send home USD.
|
| Will you be able to share some examples of "at least doing
| some work in various areas"?
|
| 1. I see BJP government as expert in data manipulator and
| creating smoke screens through their network of social media
| cell and mainstream TV channels. [1]
|
| 2. As per Govt data, over 80 crore people in India currently
| depend upon government for free food. [2]
|
| 3. Modi government manipulated the GDP calculation method to
| show higher GDP growth. [3]
|
| 4. Modi government changed the calculation method to measure
| the length of highways. Going by lane km, the total length of
| highways constructed during 2017-18 fiscal comes to 34,378 km
| as against 9829 km if counted linearly. [4]
|
| [1] https://zeenews.india.com/india/get-maths-lessons-bjp-
| faces-...
|
| [2] https://www.livemint.com/news/india/over-80-crore-people-
| to-...
|
| [3] https://scroll.in/article/954986/the-daily-fix-is-modi-
| gover...
|
| [4] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-
| concept-to...
| codegeek wrote:
| Ok I will bite. I travel to India once or twice a year for
| both pleasure and business. I can only tell you what I feel
| and see. I see incredible infrastructure changes even
| though India still has long way to go compared to other
| developed or even developing nations. Tons of airports
| being built and improved. Many highways being built and
| even completed in last few years.
|
| "changed the calculation method to measure the length of
| highways."
|
| Do I think Modi Govt doesn't manipulate some data ? Oh you
| bet they do. But I see real progress regardless and you
| cannot just throw some stats to change my mind. I see
| progress and I commend it and welcome it. Most people who
| live there don't care that Govt is manipulating how they
| measure the length of highways. They see that highways are
| being built. Congress didn't do shit for decades when my
| parents grew up in real shit 3rd world infrastructure. We
| are much better off in last decade or so.
|
| I will agree with you that India has a long way to go but
| change is happening no matter how slow.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| As per govt, out of 140 crore Indians, 80 crore rely on
| government for free food. That is 57% of Indians need
| government help for free food. [1]
|
| If You Earn Rs 25,000 (USD 300) Per Month, You're Among
| India's Top 10% Income Earners [2]
|
| >> I travel to India once or twice a year for both
| pleasure and business. I can only tell you what I feel
| and see.
|
| You may be able to travel to India and got 1 USD
| converted to INR 80, then may be its a win for you, but
| not for other Indians. I am not sure, but you might have
| been able to afford somewhat better way to
| travel/stay/eat than most of the Indians can. So what you
| feel and see might not be closer to reality for most of
| Indians.
|
| >> I see incredible infrastructure changes...
|
| So if a few private companies own most of India's infra,
| and building shopping malls, or if few politically
| connected builders building high rise buildings, or if
| roads/flyovers being built by private companies for which
| public will pay toll through their noses for years to
| come, then in my humble opinion, this is is not real
| development that you should give credit to the
| government. This is indeed the failure of the government.
|
| >> Tons of airports being built and improved.
|
| Government did sell a number of already built airports to
| Adani. Now Adani may make it a shiny new airpot and start
| charging fees for everything in airport but I don't see
| it as an achievement of Government. [3]
|
| [1] https://news.abplive.com/news/india/cabinet-
| decision-80-cror...
|
| [2] https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/if-you-earn-
| rs-25000-p...
|
| [3] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transpo
| rtation...
| chakravyuh wrote:
| The government changed the highway measuring methodology
| in 2018 [1].
|
| Under new methodology, highway stretch built = Number of
| lanes * kilometer stretch.
|
| This is actually the international standard. However,
| when the current government compares itself with prior
| government, it compares apples with oranges: new
| methodology numbers versus old methodology numbers.
|
| [1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-
| concept-to...
| chakravyuh wrote:
| Indian highway engineers still can't figure out how to
| design exists and have consistent road markings/safety
| signs. Let them come up with a standard or enforce the
| already existing one first.
|
| Very rare to see slip lanes even in normal roads of Tier
| 1 cities.
|
| Just laying down asphalt isn't building highways.
| [deleted]
| dagmx wrote:
| All I see is a lot of whataboutism to justify some truly
| heinous actions that have been committed in the past several
| years.
|
| Yeah, Indira Gandhi wasn't great either. Congress has its
| flaws.
|
| None of that justifies the actions of today. Yes, the BJP has
| done some good things, but that's true of many heinous
| authoritarians in the past as well.
|
| No number of good things simply wash their hands of the bad
| stuff along the way.
| sremani wrote:
| The right word would be 'Abuse of power', if every center-
| right politician is labeled Authoritarian -- it will become
| a meaningless word.
| neel8986 wrote:
| We are looking at a ruling government who uses AI to demean
| olympic winning athlete to protect a serial molester. Somehow
| even after all this heinous acts I can see bunch of so called
| educated techies defending that ruling class. Is the hate for
| "other" religion so strong?
| screye wrote:
| It is a conundrum, because the same NRIs oppose bills that
| would solve India's problems.
|
| The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution) was
| central to the farm bill. But protesting farmers (widely
| supported in the west) opposed it, and the bill died despite
| having democratic approval (both national opinion and
| sufficient votes)
|
| > dared to vote a great scientist to president
|
| We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president was
| selected by the ruling party (The same BJP as Modi) to be the
| ceremonial president. The same one that has now elected a
| tribal woman to President, to signify secular allegiances.
|
| > believe in equal rights
|
| If we are to use leaders as a yardstick to measure equality
| opportunities and rights, then the incompetent ~6th generation
| heir of the Nehru/Gandhi family leading the opposition is
| hardly a good look.
|
| > disappointed by the country I called home for most of my life
|
| As a fellow NRI, this is counter to what I hear from my fellow
| Indians. There is a ton of optimism around jobs, infrastructure
| growth and economic policies that are finally opening up the
| nation, as India embraces the US after decades spent close to
| the Russia.
|
| > potentially great, secular country
|
| Even as a big supporter of liberal (as in valuing liberty, low
| authoritarianism) democracies, the evidence for free-
| democracies industrializing is exactly zero. Every big nation
| that has successfully escaped poverty has done so through
| suffocatingly authoritarian means (SK, Japan, Taiwan, Chile,
| China, Thailand, Malaysia). Every single one of them only
| transitioned to a proper liberal democracy (if at all) AFTER
| industrialization had been achieved.
|
| It is depressing. But, the numbers don't lie.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Wow! Most of what you mentioned is plain wrong. Not sure if
| you are mistaken or lying knowingly.
|
| >> The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution)
| was central to the farm bill.
|
| Crop burning is already outlawed in India and enforced with
| fines. Why you need to make a new law for something which is
| already illegal? Below was the actual central idea of the
| farm bill:
|
| "The laws would have deregulated a system of government-run
| wholesale markets, allowing farmers to sell directly to food
| processors, but farmers feared that this would result in the
| end of government-guaranteed price floors, thereby reducing
| the prices they would receive for their crops."[1]
|
| >> We do not vote for Presidents in India.
|
| Again, wrong. The 2022 Indian presidential election was held
| on 18 July 2022 to elect the president of India. The election
| was the 16th presidential election in India since the
| Partition. [2]
|
| >> incompetent ~6th generation heir of the Nehru/Gandhi
| family
|
| Source please?
|
| >> There is a ton of optimism around jobs, infrastructure
| growth and economic policies
|
| Source please? You must be living in an alternate world.
|
| >> Every single one of them only transitioned to a proper
| liberal democracy
|
| So, China is a "proper liberal democracy" as per you? Also
| can you please share a source to support your claims?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Indian_agriculture_acts
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Indian_presidential_el
| ect...
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Stubble burning was long banned but it's still being
| practiced and contributes to Delhi's pollution. In fact,
| one of the demands of the farm protests was to release
| those who were arrested for stubble burning[1].
|
| > Again, wrong. The 2022 Indian presidential election was
| held on 18 July 2022 to elect the president of India.
|
| It's not a general election. Only MPs and MLAs get to vote
| for the president.
|
| > Source please? You must be living in an alternate world.
|
| There are indeed concerns on job growth but infrastructure
| growth and economic policies have caught pace in the last
| decade. There's a reason why Meta, Google and Aramco want
| to pour money into the country.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_f
| arme...
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Looks like you are trying to respond to be without
| understanding the topic first and your above comment does
| not relate.
|
| My reply was to this comment which said:
|
| 1. "The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's
| pollution) was central to the farm bill"
|
| 2. "We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president
| was selected by the ruling party"
|
| Can you please let me know how any of above 2 statements
| are correct?
|
| Also, to your other comment: >> There's a reason why
| Meta, Google and Aramco want to pour money into the
| country.
|
| Companies like Meta, Google and Aramco invest and try to
| invest in all the counties for their own growth. This is
| also to target the huge population of India. These
| companies also invested in China, that does not make
| China any better. Can you please share a source for
| "infrastructure growth and economic policies have caught
| pace"?
| lagolinguini wrote:
| > "We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president
| was selected by the ruling party"
|
| The President of India is voted by electoral college. We
| live in a representative democracy. Just because the
| President is voted by electoral college doesn't mean they
| are not elected. Keep in mind that the Prime Minister of
| India is also not directly elected, they are chosen by
| the Lok Sabha.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Exactly my point!
| chakravyuh wrote:
| Banning doesn't take care of the problem completely
| unless there is a mechanism to take stubble away from the
| farmers. If there is no mechanism, people will burn it to
| get rid.
| screye wrote:
| Did you even read my post ?
|
| > China is a "proper liberal democracy" as per you?
|
| The exact line you quoted, literally ends with an "if at
| all" in brackets right after.
|
| > Source please?
|
| That Rahul Gandhi is the 6th generation heir ?
|
| Motilal -> Jawaharlal -> Indira -> Rajiv -> Sonia -> Rahul.
| What's disputable here ?
|
| That he is incompetent ? I mean, even the most ardent
| congress fan won't deny that Rahul Gandhi is incompetent at
| best and a BJP plant at worst. He oversaw the downfall of
| the freest of wins in world politics anywhere.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| >> He oversaw the downfall of the freest of wins in world
| politics anywhere.
|
| BJP under Modi-Shah lost 8 states, 218 by-elections in
| last two years [1]
|
| Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh are the two states where
| the BJP has lost to Congress in the last six months. The
| BJP lost deposits in 38.4% of the seats it contested in
| Southern Karnataka. [2] [3]
|
| Modi was the face of election campaign and spent whole
| centre government money and machinery to campaign. Modi
| speaks a script written by someone else by using a
| teleprompter and has never given an open & live
| unscripted press conference in last 8 years ([4] [5]
| [6]). By your logic, are you trying to say Modi is also
| incompetent?
|
| >> The exact line you quoted, literally ends with an "if
| at all" in brackets right after.
|
| Got it. So you are hoping some day China will transition
| to democracy AFTER industrialization had been achieved,
| and you think India might need to convert to an
| authoritarian state in order to successfully escaped
| poverty? Is my understanding correct?
|
| Also, you haven's still answered my 2 questions:
|
| 1. How is "The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's
| pollution) was central to the farm bill."?
|
| 2. What do you mean about this: "We do not vote for
| Presidents in India. The president was selected by the
| ruling party"?
|
| [1] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/bjp-under-
| modi-sha...
|
| [2] https://time.com/6280139/india-modi-bjp-congress-
| karnataka-e...
|
| [3] https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-how-significant-
| is-bjps-d...
|
| [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-
| modi/at-his-f...
|
| [5] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rti-pmo-pm-
| narendra-mo...
|
| [6] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/why-
| hasnt-pm-mod...
| chakravyuh wrote:
| > The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution)
| was central to the farm bill. But protesting farmers (widely
| supported in the west) opposed it, and the bill died despite
| having democratic approval (both national opinion and
| sufficient votes)
|
| Then why is Delhi's air quality consistently poor, unhealthy,
| severe and hazardous even when there is no crop burning?
| https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/india/delhi/new-delhi
|
| Of course we need to do something about crop burning, but is
| it the "main" reason? Nope.
| dagmx wrote:
| I corrected the means by which the president is chosen (it's
| a vote by the electoral college so it wasn't completely
| incorrect to say vote though). Thanks for mentioning that.
|
| I don't think I agree with your other points. But I do hope
| your optimism pans out because right now things feel bleak.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| The reality on ground is different from what you read in
| the press or even online. We see the work being done. When
| work wasn't being done (recent example of Karnataka),
| people voted BJP out. The alternative (Congress) came to
| power promising loads of freebies. Now voters on the ground
| are pissed off (plenty of videos where people are not
| willing to pay electricity bills or public transport fares
| because Congress said it'll make all of that free but never
| did so till date). So this hyperbole on BJP being "evil" is
| largely overblown and it is quite persistent in the Hacker
| News circles. Ultimately the voter decides based on whether
| the Party in power delivers or not. BJP has been doing
| great work on the infrastructure/development front as well
| as attracting investment. That is visible on the ground.
| What BJP is lacking severely is in State level
| leadership/politics which needs to be fixed. Congress on
| the other hand has given up its National ambitions and
| pursuing weaknesses it sees in BJP's state level politics.
| This is vibrancy of democracy. Nothing to feel "bleak"
| about unless you are drowning yourself in anti-India
| Western media reports and thinking that is the truth. Maybe
| you need to ask yourself if you are also part of a
| misinformation bubble yourself without even realizing it?
| dagmx wrote:
| I absolutely hate the way fellow Indians will just try
| and deflect negative stories about India as western
| propaganda.
|
| You do a disservice to your country by following that
| tired playbook.
|
| Did you ever stop to consider that I am actually well
| informed and genuinely disappointed with my country.
|
| Criticism of the country and party doesn't mean I'm
| simply misinformed. I was critical of things when I lived
| there, I consume my news directly from Indian news sites.
|
| Maybe you need to ask yourself why you feel the need to
| assume it's western propaganda?
| shri_krishna wrote:
| [flagged]
| dagmx wrote:
| The sheer amount of hubris in your post is astounding.
|
| So any opinion other than your own is propaganda fed by
| the west, but the only true reality is the one you agree
| with that paints India in a flattering light.
|
| Using "the world happiness index" as some kind of gotcha
| propaganda is hilarious, when we're discussing actual
| issues like arresting protestors. Just ridiculous.
|
| I won't be replying again to you because I don't think
| you are capable of accepting that other people disagree
| with your world view. It's unhealthy and I really think
| you need to leave your own bubble.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Not OP (and not a fan of his whataboutism plus you don't
| deserve to be downvoted) but I think the issue is that
| India is so large and diverse that commentators can be
| right and wrong at the exact same time when painting a
| brush with the term "India".
|
| When social and political norms can vary within
| individual states, let alone the entire country, it
| causes people to feel reporting about very negative or
| very positive news is propaganda one way or the other.
|
| A lot of this is then further inflamed by IT Cells from
| parties across the board, especially because most NRIs
| are getting news about India via the internet plus social
| media.
|
| Add to that the fact that most Western media isn't biased
| (I've worked with them), but might write articles using a
| broad brush that pisses other NRIs off and then we all
| devolve into regionalist or casteist bickering.
|
| Eg. When the Unnao tragedy happened (which was horrible),
| it was reported in some western media that it was in
| India and broad brushed as an Indian issue. A number of
| Tamil and Malayali friends too offense to that and began
| saying "oh, it's actually Uttar Pradesh. Bhaiyyas are
| always like that" and regionalist shit like that, which
| obviously pissed off the UP+Bihari wale in my office.
|
| On the side, you can see propagandists like Agnihotri
| inflaming Hindu-Muslim tensions by bringing up the Kerala
| Story as if every single Malayali Muslim is a future
| Jihadi and inflaming Hindi-Southern tensions by making a
| number of idiots assume Malayalis are a 5th column, which
| is an extremely horrible broad brushed assertation
|
| And finally, a lot of people say that BJP voters are
| illiterate and illiteracy is pushing back India. As
| someone with family from small town India who has known
| illiterate people, they are smart as you and I. Just
| because they didn't get the opportunity to learn to
| read+write doesn't mean they can't think rationally and
| logically. So for NRIs from lower middle and working
| class (as a lot of NRIs increasingly are now), it feels
| very classist and insulting.
|
| Basically, what I'm getting at is that we use our prior
| experiences and background to understand a country, but
| when you are dealing with a country as large and diverse
| as India it automatically falls apart.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > Add to that the fact that most Western media isn't
| biased (I've worked with them)
|
| Have you forgotten the New York Times job ad for South
| Asia Business Correspondent for India?
|
| Since you say Western media isn't biased and that you
| have worked with them, I would like to see at least one
| huff piece published by Western media on Modi/BJP. Surely
| there has to be at least one article to counter all the
| anti-Modi/anti-BJP articles we keep seeing propping up in
| the Western media. If you can't find even one piece that
| can counter-balance the mainstream narrative about India
| and its ruling political party then it isn't actually
| "unbiased". The tilt towards one side of the political
| spectrum is pretty obvious to all those who have been
| seeing Western media play its game.
|
| > so large and diverse that commentators can be right and
| wrong at the exact same time when painting a brush with
| the term "India"
|
| Yeah and since when has Western media ever understood
| this nuance? The bias is deep seated and pretty obvious
| to observers like me who fall on the other side of the
| political spectrum.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Have you forgotten the New York Times job ad for South
| Asia Business Correspondent for India?
|
| The NYT is not the primary source of truth for
| policymakers in the United States.
|
| I agree there are a number of issues with the NYT's Delhi
| office, and a lot of that stems from bad pay.
|
| The media ecosystem in the US works the same way as how
| the media works pin India. I haven't seen very nuanced
| discussions about American institutions in the Dainik
| Jagran, Hindustan Times, or WION either.
|
| > Yeah and since when has Western media ever understood
| this nuance?
|
| In the Media that is actually consumed and read and used
| by policymakers like when I was on the Hill, as well as
| in the educational programs that bring future Americans
| into the Foreign Service.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > The NYT is not the primary source of truth for
| policymakers in the United States.
|
| I don't have any issue with most current policymakers in
| US (for the past decade at the very least). Surprisingly
| most US lawmakers have their own individual views on
| India (unaffected/not influenced by Western media) and
| have a good working relationship with the GoI (including
| Modi and more specifically Jaishankar). This includes
| policymakers from both sides of the political spectrum
| (Republicans as well as the Democrats). Thank God for
| that. Else if they actually believed half the articles
| that came out of papers like NYT or Washington Post, they
| would have a totally warped understanding of India. And a
| really negative one at that. Policymakers pre-Bush era
| got most things about India wrong (and paid a price for
| it too with WTC bombings, 9/11 and finding Osama Bin
| Laden hiding close to their Ally's military complex). US
| Policymakers have changed their outlook and very few
| actually hold on to the anti-India stance that they once
| had. That's welcome.
|
| My issue is with the common citizens getting a warped
| view of India. That's all.
|
| > In the Media that is actually consumed and read and
| used by policymakers like when I was on the Hill, as well
| as in the educational programs that bring future
| Americans into the Foreign Service.
|
| That's good to know. But Western Media still has a lot to
| catch up vis-a-vis being unbiased. They still heavily
| tilt towards parties that are non-BJP. That is fine if
| that is their intended outlook. But at least let it not
| pretend to be unbiased then.
|
| > The media ecosystem in the US works the same way as how
| the media works pin India. I haven't seen very nuanced
| discussions about American institutions in the Dainik
| Jagran, Hindustan Times, or WION either.
|
| Yes I agree with you that Indian media is biased too.
| Most of the media outlets are pro-Modi/pro-BJP. And in a
| way it should also be seen as a counter to Western media
| outlets and continuous disinformation/propaganda that
| kept coming from there. Let us not forget that people who
| work in Media organizations also have their own
| individual biases and they typically hire people who
| subscribe to their biases. It is not always necessarily a
| money thing (where the ruling party pays a media
| organization to speak in its favour). Many a times it is
| purely for ideological reasons.
|
| Much the same as NYT or WP. The only problem is when
| NYT/WP is that it proclaims itself to be unbiased. That's
| when I go "Come on man I know you aren't. Quit the
| pretence".
|
| Also Indian media typically is reactionary. We don't
| particularly have nuanced discussions about the West
| because first and foremost we don't have our own
| statistics bureau that can create all sorts of indexes
| that the West creates out of thin air. Some of the
| Western Indexes are based on factual research but most of
| them aren't. And we just typically counter them in a
| reactionary manner. We do not invest efforts into
| actually coming up with actual statistics or at least
| indulge in counter-propaganda. That appetite simply does
| not exist. Many of these Western statistics, stories and
| news articles go unrebutted.
|
| Like I gave an example of World Happiness Index. Let us
| take World Press Freedom Index. India ranks below
| Afghanistan in World Press Freedom Index. 11 spots behind
| Afghanistan. This is a total joke. Is the West actually
| trying to say that Taliban, which is ruling Afghanistan
| now, has more Press Freedom than India? You see how these
| nonsensical statistics go unchallenged? Because what
| would you even counter these with? It is that ridiculous!
| Surely if everything was so bad in India we wouldn't be a
| thriving and one of the fastest growing economies in the
| World today. We would all be on the streets rioting (like
| what happened in Sri Lanka) and storming Modi's
| residence. Most of it is hyperbole.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > The sheer amount of hubris in your post is astounding.
|
| Good to know you consider the World Happiness Index 2023
| as hubris. We can finally agree on something.
|
| > I won't be replying again to you because I don't think
| you are capable of accepting that other people disagree
| with your world view
|
| Funny how you believe "I don't think you are capable of
| accepting that other people disagree with your world
| view" and in the text rejected my valid argument which
| you had absolutely zero counter for.
|
| Either accept that the World Happiness Index is a
| fabrication of the West or rebut with facts as to why
| India ranks below Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. You
| got stumped with just this easiest piece of fact that you
| couldn't even counter. Tells me everything I need to
| know.
|
| > when we're discussing actual issues like arresting
| protestors
|
| Cry me a river. The West is so pristine it doesn't arrest
| protesters at all. Nor do Government agencies kill people
| randomly. Nor does it indulge in assassinations both
| within its own soil or in countries that it has no
| jurisdiction over. Nor does the West bomb other nations
| to bits. Nor does it arrest farmers and confiscate their
| properties and bank accounts. The West is epitome of
| truth, fairness and justice. While puny Indians back
| home, which you incidentally rejected because of the deep
| seated hatred, are the horrible ones who do not have
| capacity to discern truth from fiction and do not
| understand how a Democracy functions.
|
| Give me a break!
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| >> The West is so pristine it doesn't arrest protesters
| at all. Nor do Government agencies kill people randomly.
| Nor does it indulge in assassinations...
|
| Classic Example of whataboutery.
| webartisan wrote:
| Mate, you do realise that Whataboutery is simply another
| way to have a faux conversation with yourself?
| shri_krishna wrote:
| Yeah and what is wrong with whataboutery? I have no
| issues with sprinkling some whataboutery to expose the
| West for the ridiculous expectations it has from a
| developing country like India while at the same time
| indulging in worse acts itself. I mean at least don't
| effing preach if you can't show yourself to be a good
| example/role model. That's the least you can do.
| [deleted]
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| >> Take the World Happiness Index 2023 which ranked India
| lower than Pakistan ...
|
| May be World Happiness Index 2023 data is bit flawed. But
| I don't think that means whole world is sharing
| propaganda against India.
|
| >> Heck we get 100Mbps-1Gbps unlimited internet
| connectivity anywhere in India at the lowest rates
| possible in the entire World.
|
| How is it an achievement of Government while this was
| done by private companies like Reliance at the cost of
| public owned BSNL? Government actually let the loss of
| public tax payers money by giving favourable treatment to
| private companies.
|
| Modi and his fans always talk about low prices of
| internet in India, while its a failure of government to
| control Reliance where Reliance is using money raised
| from state bank to give dirt cheap internet connection to
| public and killing the competition. They have already
| started raising the prices now that several competitors
| are gone. [1]
|
| Reliance raises money from public banks, Reliance uses
| that money to get tower network of public owned BSNL,
| Reliance gets priority over BSNL to launch 4G, Reliance
| is in profit while BSNL is in loss, Government employee
| phone connections are transferred from BSNL to private
| entity Reliance. [2] [3] [4]
|
| >> I don't need some stupid organization in the West to
| tell me I am more unhappy than these countries.
|
| Why care about other stupid organizations while you have
| "Whatsapp university" to keep us informed. [5]
|
| [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/your-
| phone-b...
|
| [2] https://www.livemint.com/industry/telecom/reliance-
| jio-emerg...
|
| [3]
| https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/state-
| polic...
|
| [4] https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/forge
| t-5g-bs...
|
| [5] https://www.outlookindia.com/national/the-age-of-
| whatsapp-un...
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > How is it an achievement of Government while this was
| done by private companies like Reliance at the cost of
| public owned BSNL? Government actually let the loss of
| public tax payers money by giving favourable treatment to
| private companies.
|
| What nonsense. It is exact opposite of what you are
| saying. BSNL was always a loss making company that never
| innovated and was kept stagnant for decades. We all saw
| how shabby the 2G rollout was. And who subsidized BSNL?
| It was us, the tax payers. They never turned a profit
| even once. Even now they are "expected" to turn a profit
| in 2026-27.
|
| What you are advocating for is maximum Government. That
| almost always ends in disaster. What you should be aiming
| for is minimum Government. We, the People, have granted
| Government powers through the Constitution. The reason we
| did that is because somethings are best managed by the
| Government than either free markets or people themselves:
| building infrastructure, security, law and order,
| healthcare, protecting borders. Anything beyond this is
| not mandate of the Government. Government has no business
| being in business. The more private players are
| encouraged the better for growth of an country/economy.
| The less Government intervention the better.
|
| Reliance bought the licenses for 4G through an auction.
| And it was bought in 2010 (during Congress ruled UPA
| era). So your ridiculous accusation of "giving favourable
| treatment to private companies" applies to Congress more
| than anyone else. Either ways, I don't find anything
| wrong in it as it was a fair auction that did not go the
| ways of 2G scam. The auction happened during the Congress
| regime. Reliance won. But Congress failed to setup the
| infrastructure needed for Reliance to build the network.
| This is where the Government is needed to intervene and
| help out by building infrastructure. PPP partnerships are
| forged for this reason only. Government builds basic
| infrastructure (like connecting roads, electricity lines,
| plumbing etc), Private Companies build plants, machinery
| and in this case installing antennas and laying of fibre
| optic cables. It takes two to tango. Congress was missing
| in the picture as it was busy with corruption. It is only
| when BJP came to power that this project was fast
| tracked.
|
| > where Reliance is using money raised from state bank to
| give dirt cheap internet connection to public and killing
| the competition
|
| Lol you are talking as if Reliance had underdogs as
| competitors. Airtel, Vodafone, Idea etc are all billion
| dollar companies. They could have easily taken on
| Reliance. In fact they were quite content with their
| dominence in the sector and refused to innovate. It is
| not Reliance's fault if the competition was caught
| sleeping at the wheels.
|
| > They have already started raising the prices now that
| several competitors are gone.
|
| Welcome to Capitalism 101. This is how it works
| everywhere. Not just in India.
|
| > How is it an achievement of Government while this was
| done by private companies like Reliance
|
| Did I say it is achievement of the Government anywhere? I
| talked about positive changes that are happening in India
| and the infrastructure developmental projects that are
| shaping such outcomes. For Reliance to lay their antennas
| and fibre optic cables it requires Government to support
| through infrastructure development. By making connecting
| roads/highways and digging necessary lines for fibre
| optic cables to be laid. This is the work of the
| Government: infrastructure. The Government did not setup
| the network. I never said that anywhere.
|
| > Reliance raises money from public banks, Reliance uses
| that money to get tower network of public owned BSNL,
| Reliance gets priority over BSNL to launch 4G, Reliance
| is in profit while BSNL is in loss, Government employee
| phone connections are transferred from BSNL to private
| entity Reliance.
|
| Dude how different is it from the West? Even in the West
| you have Verizon, AT&T etc. Does the US have something
| equivalent to BSNL? Nope it doesn't. In fact I want Modi
| to shut down BSNL. It is a big drain on tax payer money.
| Just like US doesn't have any state owned telecom
| companies, India shouldn't have one either. Especially
| one which is stagnant and unable to innovate. We can use
| the tax payer money for other better causes.
|
| > Why care about other stupid organizations while you
| have "Whatsapp university" to keep us informed. [5]
|
| When you have no proper rebuttal this is the crap you
| come up with. This is why Opposition can never win the
| General Election in India. You guys suck at this. Most of
| your information is hollow at best. No proper study. Just
| a bunch of links from media stories. If you had known
| that Reliance won the 4G auction during UPA regime you
| wouldn't have even made this point.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| I haven't even included UPI in this which has been an
| absolute game changer. Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub
| together would know how transformational UPI has been to
| India and growth of India in the past few years. But yeah
| we should neglect all that because the West said so. Sure
| there are problems in India just like there are problems
| in every other country in the World. But when it comes to
| India, the problems are amplified to an unwarranted
| degree in the West. Maybe because we don't toe the
| Western line when it comes to many things (like staying
| non-aligned or not signing the non-proliferation treaty)
| and the West just doesn't like it. Has been holding a
| grudge since the 90s when India conducted reciprocal
| nuclear tests (after China conducted its own nuclear
| tests). Bill Clinton saw it fit to sanction Democratic
| India but not Authoritarian CCP. It is not something new.
| And pre-90s was even worse with the West supporting
| Dictatorial Islamic Republic of Pakistan against
| Democratic India.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| >> I haven't even included UPI in this which has been an
| absolute game changer.
|
| Wasn't the work on UPI started in 2009 and the vision
| statement was prepared in 2012, 2 years before Modi/BJP
| came to power?
|
| >> In April 2009, National Payment Corporation of India
| (NPCI) was formed to integrate all the payment mechanisms
| in India and make them uniform for all retail payments.
| RBI in 2012 released a vision statement for a period of
| four years that indicated commitment towards building a
| safe, efficient, accessible, inclusive, interoperable and
| authorized payment and settlement system in India. UPI
| was officially launched in 2016 for public use. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
| shri_krishna wrote:
| There were plenty of projects that were announced before
| BJP came to power and was never implemented. Congress was
| elected twice to implement these very things. Instead
| they spent all their time indulging in communal nonsense
| and high ticket corruption. To just put it into
| perspective: The Finance Minister P Chidambaram (during
| UPA era) castigated Modi for launching Digital India when
| he said it makes no sense considering India is not
| connected with Internet to the last village [1]. And that
| it will be a failure. The entire Opposition made fun of
| it in 2017.
|
| So no matter if you have great ideas, if you do not even
| believe in those ideas let alone execute on them it is as
| good as dead ideas.
|
| We would have progressed rapidly had UPA not indulged in
| corruption and working tirelessly to convict Modi in the
| Gujarat riots cases and instead focused its efforts on
| doing some actual developmental work, many of those ideas
| rightfully was thought of in its time (which i'll give
| credit for). But they lacked big time on execution. Modi
| had a proven track record in Gujarat which helped him
| beat Congress in 2014 elections. He just has brought most
| of Congress's plans to fruition which Congress doesn't
| like for obvious reasons.
|
| UPA losing power is its own doing more than BJP's coming
| to power. Heck even Modi keeps taunting Congress in the
| Parliament saying that most of the policies that Congress
| opposes today was all their own plans that they never
| brought to life. That's the reason the Opposition is
| unable to counter BJP. BJP is just doing exactly what the
| Opposition promised in its manifesto when it came to
| development but never delivered.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/qlky5t
| /mps_who...
| ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote:
| > Wasn't the work on UPI started in 2009 and the vision
| statement was prepared in 2012
|
| Is this[1] or is this not P. Chidambaram, Indian Finance
| Minister during the Congress-led UPA regime, criticizing
| the government's digital payment plans? You think such a
| pessimistic guy or his government would have done
| anything to make UPI a success except in a half-hearted
| fashion?
|
| There is a saying: success has many fathers while failure
| is an orphan. No wonder when UPI has turned out to be a
| resounding success, people either turn up to claim credit
| or to run down the success of the current government.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCnv8gwN0ug
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _rabid amount of hate will get you nowhere in life and
| will always keep you in a negative mood and disappointed_
|
| Wat.
|
| Honestly, this attitude--equating moderate criticism with
| "rabid hate"-- causes me to pause every time I get
| excited about India. There are democratic trade-offs in
| development. India has made them decently historically,
| and well recently. But the way you tank that balance is
| with blind jingoism.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > Honestly, this attitude--equating moderate criticism
| with "rabid hate"
|
| I was responding to this comment: "I absolutely hate the
| way fellow Indians will just try and deflect negative
| stories about India as western propaganda."
|
| Nice try trying to change the tone of his sentence (which
| was "I absolutely hate") to "moderate criticism". There
| is nothing "moderate" about "absolutely hating"
| something/someone. I was just responding to that
| "extreme" emotion he was projecting. Such extreme
| emotions might win you the mob but it won't change facts.
|
| > causes me to pause every time I get excited about India
|
| Okay. And? What difference would it make to India's
| growth trajectory if you lose your excitement? Is it
| going to make any dent?
|
| > But the way you tank that balance is with blind
| jingoism.
|
| Lol. As an Indian the only content I get to consume
| majority of the times, from Western media/press, is how
| shitty India is. And this has nothing to do with BJP/Modi
| but has to do with how India has always been projected in
| the Western media. Take literally any media clip of India
| showcased on Western news channels and you will have at
| least 1 clip of Mumbai slum (which is the smallest
| portion of Mumbai, a part of Maharashtra state in India)
| projected as India itself. It is like Indian channels
| showing Skid Row as USA. So if you feel some sort of
| "jingoism" coming from me it is purely a response to the
| nonsense I always see on Western media whenever India is
| talked about. As it almost always projects and enhances
| stereotypes already existing about India and Indians. And
| lets not forget the most common tropes: poverty,
| illiteracy, drinking water, sanitation, slums, education,
| electricity etc. No matter how much India improves and
| solves these issues (many of which are close to 100%) it
| still wouldn't satisfy West's craving for denigrating
| India just for kicks.
|
| So if I feel defensive about it, don't construe it as
| jingoism for the sake of it. I actually feel the
| difference in standard of living after being born here
| and lived for 34 years. I presume I have more experience
| about how much India has changed compared to Westerners
| or even NRIs who abandoned India for greener pastures and
| sit in the West and pontificate. Sorry if I sound
| jingoistic but I don't really care. Especially when the
| West doesn't really care about how India is denigrated
| repeatedly in their Media.
|
| And if anyone has even a mild amount of criticism of the
| West, they get banned/cancelled in the West or worse
| bombed out of existence (Iraq/Syria/Libya). So much for
| tolerance to free speech and human rights.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _nothing "moderate" about "absolutely hating"
| something/someone_
|
| Fair enough. "I hate" in American English is a
| complaining--not raging--tone, though I grant it's
| ambiguous and concede it shouldn't be used.
|
| > _What difference would it make to India 's growth
| trajectory if you lose your excitement?_
|
| Not much. Generally speaking, "fuck you, I'm beautiful"
| cultures that turn insecurity into a national sport have
| a common path.
|
| India's elites are savvy enough to build trade and
| diplomatic relationships, learn from others' successes
| and failures and show outward strength. But I've seen
| this dismissive attitude towards criticism of any kind in
| my own family, and it's paused at least my investing in
| India. (The only other places I see this, ironically, is
| in the U.K., Russia and rural American south.)
|
| > _I presume I have more experience about how much India
| has changed compared to Westerners or even NRIs who
| abandoned India for greener pastures and sit in the West
| and pontificate_
|
| Right. This attitude. It's limiting in its rejection of
| unexpected sources of information. Again, it's not
| common. Particularly among the elite and worldly. But as
| in America, when this attitude spreads, it diminishes
| prospects.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| Sadly this is the line that the BJP and their followers
| have taken. Any criticism from outside India is "western
| propaganda". Any criticism from within India is "anti-
| nationalism", "pakistani" or "tukde-tukde gang".
| lagolinguini wrote:
| I'm sorry, I don't understand why the other commenter
| thinks they are write and you are wrong? We live in a
| representative democracy. The Prime Minister is elected by
| proving a majority in the Lok Sabha, and the President is
| elected by electoral college, that doesn't mean that the
| President isn't elected? You are absolutely right to say
| that the President is elected.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| > We do not vote for Presidents in India.
|
| The fact that they are elected by electoral college does not
| make them non-democratic or non-elected. We live in a
| representative democracy.
|
| > As a fellow NRI, this is counter to what I hear from my
| fellow Indians. There is a ton of optimism around jobs,
| infrastructure growth and economic policies that are finally
| opening up the nation
|
| One wouldn't rely on anecdotal evidence to justify policy.
| For example my own experience is the opposite of yours. I
| hear complains about unemployment, lack of safety for women,
| cost of living crisis, lack of safety of Muslims.
|
| > Every big nation that has successfully escaped poverty has
| done so through suffocatingly authoritarian means
|
| Just because others failed doesn't mean we should too. Keep
| in Mind that the Republic of India has survived until now,
| and people at it's inception said it wouldn't.
| codegeek wrote:
| Funny you are being downvoted because you are speaking the
| truth. I have already said in another comment that people
| like the current party because they actually get shit done in
| various areas like infrastructure etc which was hugely
| neglected for decades. We all know that but some people
| wouldn't want to accept.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| May be you are on same page with the parent poster. But I
| answered to the parent comment mentioning most of the
| claims are wrong.
|
| Btw, selling government assets to private companies, or
| getting the new roads constructed and charging tolls on
| them does not exactly considered as a government
| achievement.
| chakravyuh wrote:
| The methodology for measuring highways built was changed in
| 2018 [1]. Read about it yourself.
|
| [1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-
| concept-to...
| pkphilip wrote:
| I agree. And unfortunately, I think we have reached an
| inflection point in India from which we cannot go back to the
| way things were just about 12-15 years ago.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I'm an NRI/US citizen, have worked/traveled in the country
| extensively, and have shared my thoughts on HN many times
| regarding my country of origin. There is a prevalent "Indian
| apologist" mentality both inside and outside the country, which
| applauds anyone spinning the "happy people living with less" or
| "beautiful ancient culture" montage and shouting down anyone
| trying to put the preponderance of societal problems into
| perspective.
| aluksi wrote:
| what tool was used for this ?
| https://twitter.com/vijaygajera/status/1662850993086943232?s...
| EchoReflection wrote:
| I saw this a few weeks ago and I keep coming back to it when I
| hear about news like this: https://youtu.be/zdlBFOp-jxE
| villgax wrote:
| Now you'll see how the unabashed right supporters will contort
| how they got caught as well...
| cornflake23 wrote:
| The intriguing part of such stuff is how the impact of these
| things is both short and long, such asymmetry of the individual
| vs the state. At the (population) scale of India, this is
| particularly heinous.
|
| In the near term, it is designed to mislead the public
| perception. In the long term, it both creates a chilling effect
| of what consequences protesting may have... and will anyone
| remember that these pictures were manipulated "for effect"
| decades from now? Will they fuel other echo chambers?
|
| I very much doubt the public understands the precipice (and
| precedents) that these malicious actions lead us all down.
| kebman wrote:
| You will be happy. :)
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Why would anyone be happy with atrocities being committed at
| people by the government? Do you like such stuff?
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Delhi Police arrested the protesting Indian women wrestlers.
|
| Various social media handles of IT cell of ruling party shared
| morphed picture of protesters to show that they were smiling in
| the police van.
|
| https://twitter.com/SakshiMalik/status/1662729269532065792
| dmix wrote:
| Is that an all female police squad?
| kalam_throw wrote:
| There is a law (maybe a Supreme Court judgement) that only
| lady officers can arrest women.
|
| And in these cases, a high powered officer, like the SP/DSP
| calls out for every lady police officers in all local police
| station to be present.
|
| It doesn't need to be a "all female squad".
| capableweb wrote:
| > Is that an all female police squad?
|
| Not to assume anyone's gender here, but does it look like a
| all female police squad? https://i.imgur.com/OSnyrFH.jpg
| dmix wrote:
| A squad can exist within a larger group of officers.
|
| I didn't ask if "there only female law enforcement at this
| event".
| ta1243 wrote:
| Unless some AI has doctored the images
| flangola7 wrote:
| shit on a stick we really can't trust anything
| ta1243 wrote:
| Journalism will have to go back to trusting individual
| creators. If Joe Bloggs signs an image then at least I
| know Joe Bloggs asserts that image was correct. If that's
| a trustworthy person (someone I find trustworthy), that's
| one way.
|
| Of course how well that scales is another matter, but if
| Joe Bloggs loses my trust then I remove him from my
| "trusted sources" list.
|
| The chain of integrity will be there, defined by more
| than just a byline. I may trust say Steve Rosenburg to
| tell me the truth if he posts a picture of something in
| Moscow, but if he misleads me then he loses that trust.
|
| Ultimately it's of no difference to trusting what someone
| writes or says. I might trust a story with a byline on
| www.cnn.com, that's one thing. I won't however trust a
| screen capture of something implying it was shown on CNN.
|
| Of course the main stream view for the last 15 years is
| to believe that journalists are always lying to you and
| always wrong, which is fine, you just have to accept that
| if you want to "do your own research" on say what's
| happening in Turkey with the election, you need to go to
| Turkey, spend a few years there getting to know and trust
| many different sources with many different world views.
| aluksi wrote:
| what about this ?
| https://twitter.com/vijaygajera/status/1662850993086943232?s...
| chakravyuh wrote:
| She is sarcastically saying, "Congratulations for this new
| country (India)."
| pimlottc wrote:
| I'm wondering if someone can comment on the cultural aspect here.
| It seems like adding the smiles was intended to discredit the
| protesters, by somehow suggesting the protest was insincere. But
| I feel like you could interpret this the other way too: even in
| the face of brutal treatment, they maintain a positive and
| peaceful attitude and don't let their opponents break their
| spirits.
|
| "Turn the other cheek" and "love your enemy" are very old
| philosophies, after all. So is there something different about
| this situation or about Indian politics in general that makes
| this a damaging attack?
| qazpot wrote:
| > I'm wondering if someone can comment on the cultural aspect
| here. It seems like adding the smiles was intended to discredit
| the protesters, by somehow suggesting the protest was
| insincere.
|
| This was to paint them as insincere and implying that
| protestors are on the payroll of <insert boogeyman here>.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's just "they're laughing at you". This is actually
| interesting to me: possibly the thing that is most annoying to
| most people, though not all, in most societies is to be
| suckered. Maybe the next highest is hypocrisy.
|
| I wonder if these are universal or if different societies have
| different "greatest sin". Like, does Japan, unbeknownst to me,
| have shamelessness as its?
| hiatus wrote:
| Think to yourself, would a captor modify the images of the
| imprisoned for a benevolent purpose?
| pimlottc wrote:
| Obviously not, that's not what I'm trying to suggest. Only
| that it seemed to me -- as a non-Indian western observer -
| like an odd way to discredit them.
| blackoil wrote:
| India is a fine specimen for anyone wanting to observe 1930s-40s
| first hand.
|
| A far right party with a popular/charismatic leader is using
| religion as a basis to all the problems India faces. We have
| extra-legal forces acting as vigilantes against people of a
| community. They have a very strong support in the majority. Media
| is in totality controlled by ruling party and social media is
| saturated with noise and false discourse. No other nation will
| speak against them because of geo-politics and honestly same
| religion is hated almost everywhere. Though lot more pragmatic
| and not a globe-capturing maniac, but rest of the world is
| complimenting for that.
|
| I believe we are on a strong path to revisit that event in late
| 30s though hopeful against it as now 6 million and 2 nukes are
| rookie numbers.
| [deleted]
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| The world has gotten well along with dictatorships like China,
| Saudi Arabia, and Russia (till they directly threatened the
| West). I am sure they can work with an authoritarian India.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| Some of us are Indian and aren't too happy about the
| authoritarianism...
| h2odragon wrote:
| [flagged]
| harryvederci wrote:
| So only the most dystopian news is newsworthy?
| h2odragon wrote:
| Alternately: The West can do no wrong?
| praveen9920 wrote:
| "They are doing wrong, We will do wrong too" is probably
| not a great defence.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| I would also like to share examples on how Modi Government Jails
| every honest opposition leader who does development work for
| general public and gets popular.
|
| 2 leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (a primary opponent to PM Modi) are
| lodged in Jail for months without trial. Same judge appointment
| by Modi government somehow gets all the cases related to Aam
| Aadmi Party and orders to extend the judicial custody month after
| month.
|
| Satyendra Jain, the man behind world famous Delhi Mohalla Clinic
| (Neighbourhood Clinic) is in jail awaiting trial since May 2022
| on allegations of money laundering. [1] [2] [3]
|
| Manish Sisodia, the man behind public education revolution in New
| Delhi is in jail awaiting trial since Feb 2023 on allegations of
| corruption in creating Delhi Excise Policy. [4] [5] [6]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Kumar_Jain
|
| [2] https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/former-un-chief-ban-
| ki...
|
| [3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/even-kasab-got-a-fair-
| trial-...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manish_Sisodia
|
| [5] https://www.timesnownews.com/delhi/nyt-report-lauds-delhi-
| go...
|
| [6]
| https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2023/mar/21/if...
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| All the leaders you mentioned have accumulated and hoarded cash
| which was disclosed in IT raids. There is an ongoing
| investigation on how they sold liquor licenses for cash. They
| are jailed as per court orders after investigation.
|
| [1] - https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/policy/story/liquor-
| scam...
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Pardon my language. But this is utter bull**t. Have you even
| read the link that you shared? It says:
|
| >> "Special CBI court allows ED to question Delhi Health
| Minister Satyendar Jain"
|
| >> "The ED is now probing the money-laundering angle"
|
| >> "Jain is currently in Delhi's Tihar jail in connection
| with a money-laundering case, which is also being probed by
| the ED."
|
| Do you know the difference between "jailed after
| investigation." and "jailed while being probed"?
|
| If tomorrow CBI arrests you on allegation of money laundering
| and then keeps you in jail for one year while investigating,
| are you fine with that?
|
| Can you please point me to a single news article which says
| they recovered any cash? And how much was it?
|
| Can you please also point me to a single BJP leader in whole
| country who has been jailed while being investigated?
|
| The SA accused BJP leader against whom women wrestlers are
| protesting was a BJP guest in yesterdays parliament event.
|
| I am just amazed at the analytical abilities of some of
| today's "engineers" and "entrepreneurs". :(
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| What's with India and the shift towards the right? I thought it
| had too many religions and different cultures to pull this off.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's with India and the shift towards the right?_
|
| Successful republics appear to waver between stable liberalism
| and dynamic authoritarianism. We were relatively authoritarian
| in the Pinkerton and New Deal eras. Modi is delivering on a
| proven enthnonationalism liberal-economic playbook. It's hard
| to argue against fattening pocketbooks and rising living
| standards.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| >> It's hard to argue against fattening pocketbooks and
| rising living standards.
|
| You mean Adani's? [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/gautam-s-
| ada...
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Religion is a force that pulls people in a conservative
| direction, particularly when there has been a history of inter-
| religion conflict like in India
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I think it's similar to the US. There's some kind of global
| push towards a flavor of fascism occurring in most democratic
| countries.
|
| https://fpif.org/fascisms-global-spread-is-real-as-real-as-t...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Ever since Partition (and indeed before) the Hindu vs Muslim
| conflict has been a powerful driver of both local violence and
| national politics.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| BJP in India does not fight elections based on any development
| agendas like education/healthcare or social security.
|
| They pretends to the majority Hindu public that "Hindus are in
| danger from Muslims" and only BJP can protect them. They also
| project themselves as true nationalists and anyone having anti-
| government views is declared a "Pakistani" or anti-national.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/7/spike-in-anti-muslim...
| Superblazer wrote:
| As terrible as the government is, i want the foreigners here
| to understand that op also has his own agenda, this above
| reply shows their intentions. All indian political parties
| are low quality trash in their own ways.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| I am playing a role that any well functioning journalist
| should play. Question the government and point out any
| wrong doings. Isn't is a core aspect of democracy? Do you
| see anything wrong in that?
|
| >> All indian political parties are low quality trash in
| their own ways. Agree. But the one having power currently
| is the focus. Be it any party.
| throwaway2305ax wrote:
| Ok, this is not entirely true.
|
| - India is the fastest growing large economy in the world
|
| - inflation is under control
|
| - The infrastructure spend is the largest ever. There's
| construction everywhere.
|
| - life expectancy is significantly up
|
| Of course there are issues, but it's a mixed bag. Not all
| religion.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| >> India is the fastest growing large economy in the world
|
| Source please?
|
| >> inflation is under control
|
| Cooking Gas cylinder price: [1] June 2017: 552.50 May 2023:
| 1103.00
|
| Petrol price (Even when India is importing dirt cheap crude
| oil from Russia): [2] Dec 2015: 60.00/litre May 2023:
| 100.00/litre
|
| >> - The infrastructure spend is the largest ever. There's
| construction everywhere.
|
| If certain companies and politically linked builders are
| building then that does not mean country is progressing.
|
| [1] https://www.bankbazaar.com/gas-connection/lpg-price-
| delhi.ht...
|
| [2] https://www.mypetrolprice.com/petrol-price-chart.aspx
| dartharva wrote:
| Which political party in India primarily fights elections
| "based on any development agendas like education/healthcare
| or social security"?
|
| If there was one, how much "development" has that party
| achieved when in power?
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Aam Aadmi Party is one such party. Here is their 70 points
| action plan that they promised in 2015:
|
| https://aamaadmiparty.org/delhi-government-2/aap-
| manifesto-2...
|
| And here is the public status check of each promise:
|
| https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/aap-s-5-year-report-
| card...
|
| Despite giving free electricity up to 200 Units/month, free
| water up to 20KL/month, free bus travel for women, the
| state budget is still surplus.
|
| The 2 leaders who made it possible are currently put in
| Jail by Modi Government. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.outlookindia.com/national/sisodia-jain-
| arrested-...
| tdehnel wrote:
| Why would diversity necessarily be associated with leftism?
| pjc50 wrote:
| People are bad with labels; diversity is associated with
| _liberalism_ , which often gets conflated with a whole
| spectrum of other positions from social-democrat to actual
| Marxists (who tend not to be all that pro-diversity,
| depending on how "tankie" they are)
| Drakim wrote:
| There is no "necessarily" about it, but it's obviously how
| history ended up unfolding. The big cultural-media-pop
| conflict in the west this very moment is centered around
| acceptance of diversity regarding gay and trans folks.
| eunos wrote:
| these days lots of Indian twitter accounts that shown on my
| feed are itching for Hindutva.
|
| P.S Not an Indian so Idk how they appeared on my feed.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| Here's the definition of Hindutva according to the Supreme
| Court, if anyone's curious
|
| "Hindutva is understood as a way of life of state of mind and
| is not to be equated with or understood as religious Hindu
| fundamentalism...it is a fallacy and error of law to proceed
| on the assumption...that the use of words Hindutva or
| Hinduism per se depicts an attitude hostile to all persons
| practicing any religion other than the Hindu religion."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the definition of Hindutva according to the Supreme
| Court_
|
| Legal definitions aren't relevant to Twitter accounts. What
| matters is what's animating the author.
| Utkarsh_Mood wrote:
| All the same, imo it's imperative people know what the
| actual definition is rather than misconstruing it for
| something else
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's imperative people know what the actual
| definition_
|
| This reminds me of the hacker/cracker and crypto qua
| -currency/-tography debates. Or, more pointedly, the
| Daughters of the Confederacy.
|
| Legal definitions aren't "actual definitions." Nobody
| likes a term they've adopted to be coopted. But it
| happens, and it's happened with _hindutva_ in English.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It has lots of religions and cultures, yeah. But there is a
| dominant one. And like the US is a Christian nation de-facto,
| India is a Hindu nation de-facto.
|
| The bigger driving thing is that the party in power has two
| massive things in their favour: widespread economic growth and
| prosperity.
|
| While India mostly runs through coalition politics, there are
| two broad bands: the nationalist religious-fundamentalist
| market-economics band and the high-regulation nominally-secular
| band.
|
| It's quite nuanced, but ultimately, India has raised 400
| million out of poverty in the last 20 years, electrified
| vastly, and built rail and road infrastructure at a crucial
| moment in their demographic transition.
|
| The resulting goodwill is of the "it's about the economy,
| stupid" sense but also a national feeling that perhaps the
| "others" were, after all, "holding us back" because the current
| opposition presided over a period of administration over many
| decades where setting up businesses required paying off the
| right guy, etc.
|
| To make it worse, the opposition coalition head is a dynastic
| scion who is not very smart.
|
| So, the shift to the right is natural because the right is the
| only one giving them anything.
| dagmx wrote:
| India's promise of secularism has always been fragile.
|
| The current party, the BJP, has strong roots in Hindu
| nationalism. It's basically taken over a decade but they've
| successfully distorted the promise enshrined in our national
| anthem of an India for all.
| adrr wrote:
| World has moved towards authoritarian governments. Haven't seen
| a good reason why this push but there seems to be correlated to
| the amount information people have access to(eg: social
| networks, digital media etc).
| throwaway2305ax wrote:
| The news is accurate, but not particularly newsworthy. This was
| posted by an unofficial, loosely defined group of accounts called
| the "IT cell" - not very different from MAGA folks or far-left
| account clusters. The linked news source (alt news) is an
| opposition news source/blog.
| throwaway384629 wrote:
| Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha are Indian journalists and the
| co-founders of Alt News, an Indian non-profit fact-checking
| website. They were nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
| They have fact checked the claims from all political parties.
| [1]
|
| >> Zubair was arrested and incarcerated by the Delhi Police for
| a month. His detention raised further concerns about the state
| of India's press freedom under Narendra Modi's premiership and
| was widely criticized by journalistic bodies, human rights
| organizations and the political opposition who allege that the
| arrest was an act of revenge against his role in Alt News' work
| of combating disinformation.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zubair_(journalist)
| kalam_throw wrote:
| Alt news also reported on the propaganda and falsehoods of
| Congress and AAP.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| This is not the first time they used AI. In
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbrpkxIfb0M they made their Delhi
| president speak a language he doesn't know.
| anonytrary wrote:
| Deep fakes were always a huge concern for me in AI. That's just
| one way AI can be weaponized, and this example is very clear on
| the damage caused. Thankfully Twitter quickly corrects the issue,
| but sadly only because it became viral. Sadly, Twitter won't be
| able to correct all of the little cases of AI misuse that don't
| go viral.
| thatsillyqaguy wrote:
| There was video too, could that be edited as well? What can
| current AI do?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| How do we know that the non-smiling images are not the fakes?
| part of an operation to foment discontent with the ruling party
| by making a false accusation of dystopian manipulation of
| photographic evidence?
|
| No, I don't think it likely. It's just we live in a world where
| this kind of stuff is _just_ so _easy_ to do now.
| jwond wrote:
| The article includes a video showing they were able to use
| FaceApp on the non-smiling photo to reproduce the smiling photo
| exactly.
|
| They also include analysis comparing the smiling photo to other
| existing photos of those people smiling and note that in the
| smiling photo some people are depicted with dimples that the
| person doesn't actually have.
| [deleted]
| yalogin wrote:
| We really need counter research to the commercial AI. Ability to
| identify or protect against AI modifications is a must have
| today, or well even yesterday.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| [flagged]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Are you asserting the smiling photo is the real one?
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| No.
| Nowado wrote:
| Pointing out the population size of India to suggest it's the
| measure to use when judging quality of a democracy has yet to
| be used in context of India behaving like a democracy.
| sxhunga wrote:
| If we consider this to be true, then this is a reprehensible act.
| To prevent this, it is necessary to have a completed legislation
| for AI (Artificial Intelligence)
| neel8986 wrote:
| To give more context to outsiders these are olympic medal winning
| athletes protesting against a serial molester who happens to be
| part of ruling government. To discredit these athletes ruling
| government's "IT Cell" is using AI to show they are not sincere
| enough even after police brutally stopped their protest. No media
| entity reported on this gross in justice as all of them have
| already sold their soul.
|
| Every time I think Modi's RW government can't go any lower they
| prove me wrong. World should be worried that soon to be third
| largest economy is going to ruled by a political force who are
| inspired by Nazi. These are some of the quotes from Golwalkar who
| was the brain behind the current militia Golwalkar
| https://twitter.com/jaskaransandhu_/status/10569508194997534...
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(page generated 2023-05-29 23:02 UTC)