This is the dark side of the same impulse that compels big tech companies to follow the GDPR even though they aren't headquartered in Europe: If a big enough market is run by an insane jackass, that insane jackassery will spread through the world on the wings of corporate policy. I really wonder what's going to happen when the India-China rivalry spreads to conflicting laws for tech companies that want to do business in both countries.
Companies want to profit. They'll either be forced to follow different local laws in different locations, or they'll avoid the situation altogether. Microsoft chose the second approach and now Windows doesn't have flag emojis.
Companies do want to profit, but a lot of them (eg. Microsoft, Google, Amazon) draw the line somewhere. Many of those companies refuse to do business in China because their demands are too extreme. Other businesses that choose to operate in China are forced to lie to their customers and directly jeopardize their user's data. Look at iOS, which needs constant radical changes to comply with CCP demands. Be it changing the Taiwanese flag, moving domestic iCloud data into mainland China, or stopping protestors from using Aidrop effectively, Apple is is pretty much at their beck and call now.
I think the better model is for companies to stand by their morals (even if they're weak) rather than bending to the unique tyrannical demands of each sovereign nation. Microsoft's choice here is honestly the most admirable to me, even though I despise them as a company.
Maybe tax the sh*t out of whatever profits they make in oppressive countries? "Go ahead and profit from dealing with Whateverstan, but we'll take most of it away from you."
Most tech companies are still making mountains of money in China, it's just that they are making a lot less than they'd like.
The advertising forms sell space to Chinese advertisers, the hardware forms sell their hardware, the software firms...
See their software used everywhere, but only sometimes getting paid for it, and are chomping at the bit to turn that around. SAAS vendors are largely getting the short end of the stick, but most of them also make money from one of the fields above.
Cultural exports, mostly in the form of films, of course, are also booming.
If the US, the EU, China, or India says 'jump', most of them will, after complaining about it, eventually ask 'how high'? That's just the nature of the business. (And is why they also have extensive lobbying operations.)
I don't see tech companies changing their practice in say Brazil to meet European laws.
If India make it illegal to host a video critical of their PM, and google block that video from access in India that's one thing
If Thailand make it illegal to slag of their king and google block users from Thailand watching a video about the king that's a similar thing
If Europe make it illegal to track users without their consent and google block users from Europe that's a similar thing
If China make it illegal to talk about Winnie the Pooh google block users from China searching, that's a similar thing
If America make it illegal to talk about tools to circumvent DVD copyright protection and block users from America searching, that's a similar thing
In all cases Google is obeying local law so they can do business in those countries, but that local law applies to local people.
Now copyright (not DMCA but Bern style copyright) is, so I could see why google would remove a BBC copyrighted film, although they tend to ignore copyrighted material unless the copyright holder complains.
Yes there is increasing threat to freedom of speech, but India is not new to this. The left leaning Congress had even worse norms when they imposed martial law (Emergency).
India has a robust sphere of public debate and draconian laws and acts of discrimination by the government are regularly criticised. In more cases than not the government embarrasses itself by its clumsy use of power to restrict opposition, like in the case of the BBC documentary which did not uncover anything new.
Constant vigilance is required. I am not a BJP supporter, but I don't think the intent of the BJP is to suppress debate. They seek legitimacy. BJP is clearly toning down its more radical elements and is getting more mature judging by the way it allowed the Bharat Jodo Yatra (Join India Campaign) and understands that a robust opposition is in national interest.
It is useful to realize that either side is moved by the allure of power, and it's a fool's errand to justify the current situation with whataboutism - either instance was wrong.
No one need to buy negative opinions or so but trying to suppress truly occurring issues is childish. One needs to be mature to accept criticism. Whether twitter or elsewhere...
Again as a OCI, pointing out any issue is treated by this govt more as unpatriotic. (This strategy was successfully used by Bush/Trump to polarize the US). It is not good in the long term to do that.
Again many of the complaints are not out of spite. It is truly from heart many have optimism and feel let down. This is even inside the Indian consulate - I once was told that visit us only if you want to give a positive vibe (when I politely asked them as they printed place of birth with typo).
Note that US citizens complain about NSA spying, abortion rights etc.
Given poor law/order people can disappear in India. Take citizens that are languishing in prison. Again US police are not perfect but there are due procedures in the DOJ-USA. And getting a driving license or registering a house in US/EU will not need bribes.
Listening to complaints is the first step.
One can politely disagree. By banning things they create a chilling effect.
and please do not all the time compare to Congress govt. This is similar to blaming British. Yes, all that happened - just move on - NOW do good to current citizens.
No point in having dirty beaches complaining about Congress or British.
. BJP is clearly toning down its more radical elements how exactly this is measured? do you have any stats to support your claim not the observation going whats printed on the media / social media.
What does "allowed the Bharat Jodo Yatra" mean? Free speech and assembly is constitutionally protected - there is nothing for the government to allow or disallow.
Applications of the internet are not the internet. However, more specifically, I don't think you can have more than one internet[1]. it is like the universe, by definition that is the whole thing[2]. The instant a network connects to the internet, it becomes part of the internet.
1. there are really two definitions of the internet. A. the set of networks that use the internet protocol. B. the sum of all interconnected networks.
2. But what about the multiverse? you loudly exclaim. Like I said by definition the universe is the whole thing. even once you expand your domain past it's original boundary the whole thing is still the universe. your original domain would now be considered a subverse.
There's increasingly little ground between what the US uses and the EU uses, and will be even less ground over time as well. Is transferring EU Citizen Personally Identifiable Information to the US, in any capacity, even legal? Privacy Shield has been invalidated, the US passed the CLOUD Act, and GDPR is in force. Many experts say... it isn't, at all, it would just be chaotic if fully enforced.
In 2 countries in Europe, Chromebooks have been ruled incompatible and schools have been prohibited from rolling them out under this rationale, with more countries likely to come with similar rulings. Just one example of the internet and tech splintering. EU also wants to do nonsense that would not fly in the US like Chat Control. What happens to US-based non-compliant services? Looks like some way of banning them needs to come next...
no way is the Chromebook an explanatory tale for all of the Internet. A Chromebook always has been an extension of one (powerful) US company.
As a US citizen and strong advocate of civilian relations across geography, I have to object to throwing out all possibilities in a bitter moment of finger pointing. "Increasingly" is weasel words, just say "know" :-)
How exactly could the EU have blocked Wikipedia, Apple, YouTube, Facebook, etc throughout the entire bloc? That seems politically unrealistic and contrary to the founding principles.
The EU tried to grow some local big techs with government subsidies but the results were predictably garbage. The Airbus business model doesn't transfer well to consumer technology. If the EU really wants homegrown big techs then they need to reduce employee protections, eliminate red tape, encourage venture capital markets, and make business bankruptcies easier.
To be fair, it's not like people leave the western segment of the internet much, even when other national "internets" are not isolated from the rest of the network.
Who has ever tried visiting any ru-net platforms, for example?
The main priority of "Big tech" is profitability not freedom. They're not "giving in" as much as they're following a business model to maximize revenue. Ultimately internet censorship will benefit the biggest companies who are able to keep up with the regulations. It will effectively grant them unofficial monopolies as smaller companies struggle to keep up.
Their morality is guided by the Overton window[1] of what most customers and employees find acceptable.
Being based out of mostly western countries, corporations like Google and Microsoft found the belief system of quitting Russian business initiatives as most acceptable to the public, and hence executed that plan. A western worldview where it may have been more acceptable for Russia to initiate a war would have resulted in a different outcome.
> big tech wouldn't have closed shop in Russia for their crimes
Do you really believe big tech cared about some wArCrImEs, instead of getting a call from their lobbyist/investor/gov.account advising them to play along, or else?
JFYI, YouTube (and the whole of Google) is still operational in Russia, I can still use my iPhone, pay for iCloud, and buy a new one as soon as I want.
Business is business, I don't understand why people ever suppose it would be fighting for their political goals.
A corporation trying to align with a specific belief system would mean some countries would fall outside of it.
This leaves them with two choices - either they stop doing business in said countries, or maximize profits by conducting business in those countries by loosening their belief system to include the countries' negatives, such as censorship of political discourse in this case.
I guess my question is if US tech companies don't comply with the Indian government and gets shut down, wouldn't an identical company who will comply with the Indian government just take its place?
The censorship is taking place either way right? Why not take the money?
Yes, and this is exactly why companies decide to stay in business in said regions and focus on what they do best - continue to offer products and services (or "maximize shareholder value" if you're cynical).
The documentary produced by the BBC "The Modi Question", was uploaded onto YouTube several times the week of release but taken down by request of the Indian Government.
I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something if they don't like it, it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.
It's quite sad, it's a generic "this video isn't allowed globally due to rights". That makes perfect sense when you're talking about last nights showing of Moanna, or even Eastenders (where background music in the pub might not be cleared for use outside the UK), but when it comes to a program like this you'd hope exceptions would be made.
These programs are often made by commercial entities (like BBC Worldwide, which is separate from the normal state funded BBC) who license their material to foreign streaming services like Netflix.
If every impactful documentary would be given away for free, there's no incentive for anyone to pay the company behind it to make more. Journalism is expensive and I don't think enough people would donate to a large corporation through Patreon.
I would love documentaries like these to be available without restriction, but when it comes to copyright and business model, it really does come close to Moanna or Eastenders.
Part of the BBC's remit is the world service, and serving India especially. There is a very large production office in Delhi which produces multiple TV programs each day in various languages.
> BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues.
BCC iPlayer doesn't work in any country other than the UK, so there isn't any question of it working in India. BTDigg is blocked in India, along with most piracy oriented websites, since long before the BBC documentary thing I think.
They make money selling the rights to stuff they produce in other parts of the world. Maybe not for this particular show, but in general.
They presumably treat everything on the service exactly the same, because it would cost them money to do otherwise, and also because they probably don't want to pay for the bandwidth for foreign users. I suspect you probably have to have a UK TV license to watch it, too, which means they're charging for it in the UK. It'd actually be surprising if they had a way to treat different content differently, as opposed to the whole service being all or nothing.
They probably also have foreign stuff on there that they've bought only the UK rights for.
At some point BBC needs to make a streaming service for everyone. Anyone with a 100 video content library is making their own, BBC is leaving money on the table I think. Unless licensing their content makes them way more money, the only other blockers I can think of are competence related and things being slow because of BBC's semi government organization.
They already tried it and it didn't go well. I remember it because I had a meeting with the man who was running the trial service. Granted this was a few years ago now, but you also have to remember that "the BBC" isn't allowed to do this, only it's commercial entity "BBC Worldwide" can, due to the way the BBC is funded.
Many of the best shows are co-produced with other broadcasters from countries, which means the BBC doesn't have the global rights for them. Also a decent proportion of BBC content is independently produced, which also means the BBC doesn't have the rights to that content. Lastly, the contracts for performing rights were often written before the concept of streaming, so you may have to go back to each credited performer and get the rights to distribute the show online. This has impacted DVD releases before, in one instance the BBC had to actually wait for someone to die before they could release a DVD box set, because one actor in just one episode refused to sign an updated agreement. So the list of content that's actually available is much smaller than you might think.
Maintaining a paid archive of "long tail" content has long been said to be the way forward. You can monetise that huge library of content from your past, right? Actually, it turns out that people don't actually watch that long tail. Outside the top, recent content, you'll get maybe a handful of people watching the archive each week. The cost of maintaining that archive online is non-zero and because the content is largely "cold", in terms of streaming, delivery of the archive costs you more than the popular content people are actually watching. And if you hadn't noticed, streaming services aren't renowned for being profitable in the first place.
Oh, and playback performance for cold assets is worse than fresh content. So watching an old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' in Indonesia will have relatively poor streaming performance without putting in significant global investment. That investment being difficult to justify.
It's cheaper to syndicate the popular shows (old and new) to the other streaming services and see what gets watched.
Credentials: >20 years in broadcast/media technology, now working in a senior role at a major streaming service.
Counterpoint: Nobody wants to subscribe to 100 services. If you're not in say somebody's top 3, that person is probably not going to buy your service. Therefore, if you don't believe that you will be in the top 3 for some fairly large number of people, you should not try to start your own consumer-facing service.
The BBC might correctly determine that, although it's a respected content producer, it doesn't have enough of that kind of power to make it work... except in the UK, where it already has a captive audience of "subscribers".
That applies at least until there is a universally adopted micropayment system, and maybe after that, too.
On edit, as a by-the-way: While it's true that everybody with a library is trying to do that, that only proves that it's trendy. Where are the numbers that say it's actually profitable?
The thing is, this is sort of the reality we are living in. People are subscribing to a 100 different services. Niche streaming services are very popular, but I do agree you have to be the best at your niche to be viable. The whole profitability point you made is completely valid. There are indeed no numbers that I am aware of that say these are profitable.
Really? I subscribe to maybe 10 services in my place. Energy, Internet, Mobile, VPS, and a couple of websites and patreons. No TV or streaming. And spotify I do on and off (when they have an offer for 3 months for 10 bucks).
As soon as a paid service goes subscription-only I drop it generally unless I really really need it.
I know not everyone is as anti-subscription as I am, but really, 100? Anything that pays "automatically" and auto-renews is something I have less control and visibility over so I'll do anything to avoid it.
Not outside of the UK without a VPN (And let's be honest, who buys one in a country which has restricted internet to begin with?) but if they haven't blocked this link in your locale here's an option to watch it as well:
Are there VPN services that reliably work with geo-blocked content? I haven't tried many but I have currently have a Mullvad subscription and I basically can't watch anything as all the IPs are blocked. I've also done some searches about the other big VPN providers and it seems like they are all blocked too. I wonder if I can spin up a VPS and roll my own? I kinda of assume all the major cloud provider IPs would be blocked as well.
> The pogrom is an internal matter. A hitjob is external interference.
I find myself continually dumbfounded by the kind of reasoning and justifications, the supporters BJP come up with. Thousands of people killed and in many cases, even worse. Terming it an "internal matter" is being cruel beyond my comprehension.
> Btw, I watched the documentary and it actually covers the Supreme court judgement, so the responding accounts are actually spreading misinformation.
So you're implying the Supreme Court has a "Ministry of Truth" type of thing going on? How many judges transferred, maligned and were even killed for clean chits? Institutions ceased being autonomous and ethical a long time ago in India.
The documentary did not even talk about how the Supreme Court of India investigated twice and the first one while the current opposition government was in power, and what conclusion they have reached. No witnesses from who were actually affected on both sides. Not sure if it should even be called a documentary.
For anyone wondering - the evidence implicating Modi "vanished". No court will convict someone without evidence and the Indian prosecution in general has a record of doing a shit job in gathering implicating evidence when influential folks are involved.
Also, the one member of the indian bureaucracy who dared to question Modi's role in the riots - Sanjiv Bhatt - was sentenced to life in prison.
I am not sure what the poster here is insinuating with the claim that the case was tried under a different government. In no reasonable democracy are the courts swayed by politics.
if courts aren’t swayed by politics, after 20 years of scrutiny and thousands of witnesses, so many days of investigations the court decided to arrest this person. We either trust the the sanctity of the court or we don’t. If anything, to be neutral the documentary should have kept a lot of time discussing the Supreme courts ruling and either bust it rulings or agree to it, but to totally ignore it.
Court judgements are made by humans and humans err. This is not the binary you are making it out to be. Indian courts are hamstrung by the rest of the Indian legal system and are routinely used to silence dissent and harass the small fry.
This is not true. Indian courts are very much functional and is not elected by politicians. So they are not as hamstrung as any US courts if you are going to start comparing. Only issue is the long delays involved.
Approved doesn't mean elected via political campaigning. So judges doesn't need to take any political stance to make any political party happy. Of course there is the issue of after retirement appointments. But not every judge does that. Things won't become better if people don't put pressure on representatives to make ethical laws.
The bigger (and richer) the market, the stronger a country is in negotiations. All those politicians who would like their country to leave the European Union should be reminded of this.
One solution (not an ideal solution) might be where every entity that wants to serve the citizens of a sovereign country have to have a local company that serves the local population, a local subsidiary like in most brick and mortar industries.
They may even require that all compute happen locally. And of course that all content and so on meet local regulations. Sort of like what we see with other telecommunication, be it T-mobile or other. Sure, they operate in many countries, but they have local staff and follow local rules.
India is kind of moving towards this? Data security is a big discussion in whatever policy discussion is left in the country. I think legislation is in the works to mandate that all data related to indian citizens need to be in India and not leave it's virtual borders.
What if Alphabet calls the bluff and stops serving all of their services in the market. The population would know why which wouldn't be a good look for leaders. Google is too invested in $earch to call a bluff though.
YouTube revenue got a huge bump in 2021 which is when that wildly profitable estimate was given.
I don’t have specific estimates I can link to, but I’ve seen statements like this fairly regularly: There are more questions around YouTube’s profitability, but he said the general view was that it was “modestly profitable but not dramatically so.”
Alphabet would be shooting themselves in the foot doing that, they'd be giving a local competitor a solid footing, which they could then expand from to the US
And Chinese entrepreneurs just kind of said, "SWEET!", then swept in with their own startups offering those services.
I'd imagine there are a lot of Indians, even here in the US, that would make a headlong rush back to India to start up web service companies if our companies said we won't service India any longer.
Mainland China already does this. The extent to which this is a real solution are pretty dubious.
When the local rules are reasonable and local everything is fine, but a large enough country the government can start trying to use its weight to encroach on the severity of other countries and push across whatever fence the company has set up.
What surprises me is that these kind of thing often get treated as "all or nothing". Why remove it, instead of a geo block? 451 HTTP code is a thing.
Stories like that always make me think that this is always some kind of a political play on the side of western media platforms, likely coming from ex-spooks they like to hire so much. Especially judging by how e.g. in Russia, YouTube has learned to play nice over time and generally doesn't act like it's "delete everywhere or leave as is" kind of choice.
I'm unsure but the original links are still available online on Twitter that go to YouTube error pages and the request from the Indian govnement is public too.
The original rush to remove the content was fueled by alot of publicity around the documentary.
Because they can?
Because they don't want it to be watched outside of India either?
By foreigners, by millions of Indians abroad, by millions in India on VPN?
> ...it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.
"Later today, I have the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prime Minister Modi to discuss how we are supporting small businesses and start-ups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, applying AI in sectors like agriculture and healthcare, and other priorities."
In the same vein, YouTube and the rest of big media (to virtually no fanfare or protest) blocked The RT for their supposed ties -- which would be fine except that RT's ties were covert. Sanctions are sanctions, but is RT to simply stop paying taxes? This is like wholesale embargo, jamming, and further insulates the Russian government from the reality of their actions.
I expect the high road from my country's communications sector on freedom of speech, and even though RT has always sucked, this behavior is distasteful.
Obviously the war is an abomination, but I'd prefer that in the interim, "platform" corporations stay the hell out of the 4D-chess.
> I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something
While I'm just as displeased with India censoring stuff for the rest of us, keep in mind that for most of the world, Google/YouTube is that censorious foreign entity.
Everyone's anti-bittorrenting until some asshole with more power but even more insecurity comes along and refuses to be legitimately criticized or questioned.
That documentary is based on fake news and intended to destabilize India's social harmony. The arguments it makes have been rejected by the supreme court of India.
Are you saying Supreme court of India is in bed with Modi? That is a very strong accusation. Modi didn't investigate himself and give himself a clean chit. He was been scrutinised by Supreme Court of India multiple times. And we have much better functioning courts. Many BJP party members who has been found guilty of various things have been punished by Courts. This BBC propaganda piece has been made now only because Modi didn't do as per the wishes of war mongering western governments.
If you have some proof, then just leak it to the Indian media. They love scandals. I don't think they are in bed with Modi. Not every supreme court judge is willing to do favors for post retirement benefits.
I don't know what bridge you are trying to sell here. The Indian media is known as modia for a reason. NDTV, the only center channel had a hostile takeover. The TV media is a joke focused 74% on stoking Hindu Muslim conflict and attacking anyone who passes a negative comment about Modi.
Well, as an Indian let me tell you this. We don't want a propaganda piece. I am not even a huge Modi fan, but he has been investigated by various courts including the Supreme Court of India and has not been found guilty. Will BBC make a documentary about the many crimes the British did in India? With the current geo political situation, the western nations sure want to taint his image, and even destabilize India if they can.
You can say whatever you want to. I haven't said Modi is India and India is Modi. It is far from that. I have faith that India's democracy will work. It has seen darker days during times of Indira Gandhi, but we didn't turn into a dictatorship. BJP started as an answer to bad ruling by the congress party. If in the future BJP becomes the new congress, a new political party or many of the thousands of existing political party will come into power. If you want to watch the documentary it is available in the internet. Just because it is removed from youtube doesn't mean its illegal to watch it. In fact, just because Modi banned it, in many states there has been public viewing of the documentary.
I have learnt a very valuable lesson about my country's people at the face of the fascist govt. Caste affinity triumphs anything and everything. No matter how cruel the BJP is, their core vote bank which is the Upper caste population are not going to deviate away from them. The BJP has perfected formulas to win elections using hook or crook in every state now.
Modi is going to do more fascist stuff and take away rights one after another. The supporters will keep inventing reasons every single time. It will always point to the caste order's interests
I’m not a bjp supporter by any chance, but this logic isn’t sound. if anything bjp wants to ignore the caste logic and combine all Hindu vote bank, I believe that’s how they won. Their religious arm even goes out and says this out loud that caste was only created after/during British colonization (true or not) and it didn’t exist in Vedas. They got 40 percent of the country’s vote in last election, do you mean 40 percent of the Country are upper caste Hindus and every single one of them voted for the bjp? Our current president from a scheduled tribe. Understanding bjp is the key to defeating them
I specifically mentioned that the upper castes are their 'core' vote bank and not their only vote bank.
They have a large support from other castes now because Muslims are the enemies now. Until this narrative stays they will stay.
This tribal president and the previous dalit president are exactly what I mean by their election winning formula. I'm not sure what's illogical in any of this because this is literally what they themselves speak about in every election meeting.
Ummm - Modi is from one of the backward classes. Amit Shah is a Jain not Hindu upper caste. The president is a tribal woman. This whole upper caste bashing doesn’t reflect reality.
Amit Shah is not a Jain. Agree otherwise. Caste is a very lazy lens to apply to the situation. Indian political parties are about power, every one of them has been illiberal. There’s BJP, but also DMK and Trinamool, who are just as intolerant of dissent at state level.
These are all parties that are opposed to the BJP. I wish there were parties that are committed to liberalism, rule of law and institution building in India. Not very optimistic at the moment.
Pardon me for interrupting in the middle of a “LITERALLY HITLER REEE!” but LOL if you don’t think every every other political party isn’t trying to appeal to some caste or the other particularly at the local level. Of course they do because democratic politics is about people first and ideas second. In India jati is the basic unit of society, in Ancient Greece it was the Demos (which is exactly the same thing) and in other countries yet other tribal groupings.
But that’s not the end of it. Sure Hindus (who are not nearly as monolithic as you think) appreciate that BJP seems to be supporting their values but that in itself would not have been enough. Modi’s success comes from being perceived as someone who gets things done. I was recently Gujarat UP and Delhi and talked to people from all walks of life. There’s a huge amount of optimism that life is getting better and rightly or wrongly Modi is getting credit for it. Maybe it’s a mirage. Maybe it would have been just as good with someone else but this is in fact the perception on the ground and those who want an alternative ignore it at their peril.
Dear Britto, can you elaborate on the pogrom with the facts please.
No hyperbole, no lies, no hearsay. Please provide all proper sources. Or else, apologize for spreading fake news, smearing a group of people and ignoring or denying actual pogroms like that happened in Kashmir.
If you cannot do either, you need to wear the garland of shame, lies and more.
Ok so your point has been proven. Now what’s the plan? You’re going to build a time machine and go back undo the “pogrom”?
If you have time travel technology I’ll definitely vote for you.
Meanwhile back in reality the one who has a compelling vision for the future and a plausible record in executing it will win the election. Do you have someone like that in mind?
Companies technologically focused or not have to comply with local regulations on a number of things: privacy, age restrictions, medical, gdpr, hipaa, etc. So you can't "just follow international norms" You have to follow local norms.
In the West we had tech coordinate Covid, election and other information with government.
But now the West is "uncomfortable" with others wanting to set their own narratives because we disagree with them for differing reasons.
One is hard pressed to say one is right and the other is wrong. They are the same coin showing different sides.
Someone who has been on the receiving end of this, I can say that they are VERY persuasive.
To a point they will lock you up for sedition,without trial for a decade and if you are really lucky, some stupid judge will be allowed to let you go on a planted technicality.
I am not bragging but I've survived been charged with "waging war against India" whatever the hell that means and having my wits in the moment saved my sorry ass. Most are not so lucky.
I am a dissenting voice that will keep dissenting. I've helped in various projects over the years in trying to "spread the voice" and its all I ever want to do.
There is a war between me the person and the government and its just a matter of who wins.
Let them try to control the internet, gfw is working but its not like its immune.
I will find a way to make the voices heard. If it means someone Better than me has to chance the reins if I fall, well that's what we do.
Just like conservatives/tory/UKIP from UK, the BJP have found way of blaming everyone else for issues. Of course, it works for a decade. Pretty sure once they have exhausted all cylinders, they will end up in same current UK situation.
At the end if the majority (mostly boomers) that do not want change continue to do this it is saddening for the young. But of course, when it bites them it may be too late.
I'd love to hear somebody from India explain it: my guess is that religious politics and political religion have been India's problem from before the partition, and it's a fissure that Congress typically tried to ignore, while, rather awkwardly, it's been sticking its elephantine trunk in everybody's drinks while taking up eight tenths of the room.
Modi drives straight at the problem, takes a position, then relies on the demographics to carry him through. There are more Hindus, so in a democracy, taking a Hindu-first perspective is sound electoral strategy.
Indian here. Simple answer is that there just isn't anyone left to stand against his behemoth of a party (BJP).
The Congress/UPA's reputation was severely trampled out when BJP/NDA rose to power in 2014, and it hasn't recovered since. BJP has perfected the art of media manipulation and public politics, and is extremely competent in directing and subverting public sentiment; they are one of the biggest populist forces in the world right now with a formidable and highly-skilled marketing force backing its brand (enough to get featured on Harvard whitepapers). More importantly, they learn and adapt quickly to changing environments. For example, after the JNU fiasco they now seem to recognise the importance of moderation and avoid going gung-ho on dissent in practice (e.g. their prolonged tolerance to the Farm Law protests) while keeping a public image of firebrand rightism to maintain their brand. They are intelligent, very intelligent.
Its opposition, meanwhile, has only gone downhill and keeps embarrassing itself. Opposition parties neither have a well-built plan or timeline, nor do they invoke any significant loyalty from voters. They keep infighting and bickering among themselves while retaining dynastic figureheads from an already disgraced family. They're all so in on themselves they still try to use the same half-baked strategies that used to work in the 2000s.
Yeah, the last two Ghandis in charge in the Congress party are a little baffling. I have no idea why they thought that would work, electorally.
Do you know why third parties haven't come to the fore? I can see that the Congress party has a bunch of problems that are pretty inherent to the party DNA, but did the people who used to vote Congress because they liked secularism and universalism just stop liking those things?
People did not vote Congress for "secularism and universalism". Most voters are not educated enough to bother about such things like political leanings and philosophies, their only outlook in choosing who to vote is their perception of what the candidate is bringing to the table for them at a local level. A lot of India's voter base does not have affiliations with "Left" or "Right" politics as we know it, and it's rather easily swayed by intelligent and targeted marketing campaigns.
BJP/NDA simply outclasses every other force in terms of its outreach and marketing prowess, and with the kind of control it now has over mainstream media, challenging them will be a herculean task at least for the time being (and filled with a very tangible risk of self-destruction).
Well, he was not found guilty of any of the accusations by the Supreme Court of India. As an Indian that is more than enough proof. Also Modi cannot be compared to Putin or Xi.
So if no one is safe from corruption just by becoming PM for one or more terms, then we should abolish all positions of power? That would be a really stupid thing to do. If you can't trust any system including the Supreme Court of the land, move to a country you find perfect (no such country exist, no country has perfect systems, if everything were transparent and if there were no propaganda, things would be easy to understand).
Well, in response, the US govt could (in theory) break up YouTube into YouTube and YouTube India, thus freeing the US version from foreign influence. Perhaps this is another reason why companies shouldn't be allowed to get so big.
I appreciate the thought behind this, but I don’t see how it would work when India would not saddle their own social media with the same antitrust restrictions. Imagine the Indian equivalent to TikTok or whatever, which would be (by virtue of being huge and having better network effects) competing against a field of weaker American competitors. You could of course ban the foreign product, but that feels like we’d just be trading one type of censorship for another.
Also, I suspect the US likes a monolithic YouTube from a “iPod diplomacy” perspective - being the cultural centre of the world is an advantage!
Historically, breaking up large companies has been good for innovation (AT&T for example) so I wouldn't assume a field of weaker American competitors, but I'll grant that perhaps social media has network effects that make for a different dynamic.
This goes beyond "just" social content, other types of data are also involved. I don't understand this policy direction.
In the cases I've been personally involved with, it added significant costs to comply to move processing and storage onto Indian territory data centers that are run by large US corporate cloud vendors anyways. If you're large enough, it doesn't matter. If your use case serves a small enough long tail where it ends up on the wrong side of that added cost burden cutoff, then it matters. And I think that is unfortunate, because I see lots of Indian innovation happening inside that long tail, and such restrictions disadvantage the smaller scale efforts where the novel propositions seem particularly rich.
But perhaps I simply don't have sufficient data and perspective, so I'd welcome Indians closer to the action to help me understand why this is in India's interests. If I had to guess, I suspect the thinking is similar to China's: it is too strategic an area to give up, and India has enough population where it doesn't matter they are ring fenced into a walled garden as "only" the domestic market is big enough to stand within its own island market.
Yes. The IT revolution that promised equal access to all of the world's information was first ignored and we - tech people - were left alone, to dream of our tech-crypto-quantum utopia. Then normal people joined, transforming the Internet into a loaded gun strapped to societies' collective heads. Efficient, personal channel of communication straight into people's brains (almost) - not weaponizing it was never an option. It didn't take long at all for someone to realize it and start pulling the trigger.
I think this government does not have problem with criticism, but opposition is doing very bad job of criticism itself. It fails to present proper solution/ better approach on things that matters to national security, policy and way forward for country and people dont appreciate such cynical thinking anymore. strawman arguments on high moral ground will not work after a while.
As for BBC "The Modi Question", comes from wrong place itself. India has left that issue long ago, but internal and external forces who doesn't much on Modi in politics plays same card again and again.
PS: Author AKASH BANERJEE is well know youtuber who extreme leftist. India's are not interested in people who cant represent them anymore. We lack centrist government / opposition.
I don't know why the parent is being down voted. Modi has not been found guilty. He was cleared of all charges by the Supreme Court of India after multiple scrutiny. As an Indian I have full faith in the Indian system of checks and balances. I am not even a huge Modi fan, and haven't voted for him, but I have to say these things.
If the government doesn't have problem with criticism, why do they censor people left and right and impose the draconian UAPA on any media which criticizes them?
Your linked videos are quite literally propaganda pieces by a well-known propaganda channel.
>Akash Banerjee is a leftist.
He isn't.
What has "that government" done to Muslims? Even if you assume the worst and take all main BJP leaders in power as downright islamophobes, what have they actually "done" to harm Muslims specifically?
The most I can see is fear-mongering and creating artificial victimhood against them for clout and political reasons, but that happens on both sides and has been happening since time immemorial.
If this is about Kashmir, their drastic steps, albeit excessively totalitarian and cruel to Kashmiris, are for retaining their sovereignty before anything else. They would have done the same had there been any other religion.
And don't get me started on Twitter. For every account banned for "misinformation" there are a thousand others that keep on shitting on the administration. It's Twitter for God's sake.
You aren't contributing anything with your ad hominem painting of the entire government as hateful to Muslims other than fear-mongering.
I once saw a former Swiss president answer to question about US gun problem (especially schools). He just answered, well if the majority decide do that then... it is your problem. Not ours.
Same here. If Indians, split from Internet - and if the majority (perhaps boomers etc), decide it is the right decision - may be OK - but likely they will lose in the long term - in terms of education, awareness, global participation etc.
In some ways, top Indian MNC can benefit from talent not leaving India.
Sure some will say, we have our own space program, etc - but lets be honest - it will take decades to even build a new operating system. Cooperation in science, tech benefits all humanity.
India has A LOT of skeletons in its closet that most people, not even Indians themselves know.
Outsiders' image of India is through the narrative of the media, which has no connection to reality. The Indian government is also actively engaging in fake news dissemination. Here is a tweet from Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute Director of The Wilson Center and writer of Foreign Policy's weekly South Asia Brief
Michael Kugelman on Twitter: "The scale and duration of the EU/UN-centered Indian disinformation campaign exposed by @DisinfoEU is staggering. Imagine how the world would be reacting if this were, say, a Russian or Chinese operation." / Twitter
The Indian people want the government to have total control over the internet.
You feel that's horrible? Sure, that's your right. But the moral universalism of the anglophone cultural sphere has long alienated a majority of Indians exposed to it, that at this point their opinions do not get any goodwill from Indians.
Progressive media has published enough news that run absolutely opposite to the lived experience of a majority of the Indians that at this point they don't give a crap.
I would even say that every report of far-right authoritarianism of Modu's India liberal media publishes, greater the support for Modi from Indians. I say this as someone who thinks of him as an absolutely mediocre administrator.
It seems to be a common issue among liberal anglophones to confuse democracy with liberal democracy.
An illiberal democracy can't be a true democracy. If power can control what news and data you get, showing only positive ones, you won't really be able to judge their administration skills. If so, elections will be unjust and unfair. Countries like India and Turkey can't be really considered as true democracies at the moment, people have no more power over their governments.
Hell, India's democracy damn well should be; it had a chance to learn from the US and others mistakes. That said, Indian democracy is a pale imitation to post WW2 European democracies.
Unlike the two-party democracy of US, India has a multitude of political parties holding power at the state level. Many of these parties (AAP, TMC, DMK, etc) whip BJP's arse in state elections. There are talks of a third party AAP gaining enough support to contest at a National level in the future.
There has been no evidence of BJP rigging National or state elections until now. In fact parties like TMC which progressive media often hail for opposing BJP have been found to indulge in electoral violence and rigging [1]. These parties run unhindered in what english media essentially calls the Nazi regime of Modi.
Where is the evidence for BJP winning due to suppressing political parties?
A political party or politician who you don't like being elected (in free and fair elections) does not qualify.
EDIT:
sidenote: Electoral violence seems to mainly be an issue in West Bengal. Other states have a lot of issues but the scale of gratuitous bloodshed that follows elections is a unique characteristic of the state. That no Indian government past or current has tackled this issue, only speaks for the inability of the Indian state to effectively project hard power.
> Unlike the two-party democracy of US, India has a multitude of political parties holding power at the state level. Many of these parties (AAP, TMC, DMK, etc) whip BJP's arse in state elections. There are talks of a third party AAP gaining enough support to contest at a National level in the future.
This is basically the state in Russia. I would not call Russia a democracy therefore your argument does not convince me India is one either.
The parent is correct. Control over media, and jailing witness who implicates top government employees is exactly what happened in Russia just before the invasion.
If there is a large scale pogrom of journalists who criticise the government then there would be a chilling effect on critical coverage of the government. Large scale protests wouldn't exist and wouldn't be successful.
Your statement does not jibe well with the lived reality of most Indians. We have plenty of access to critical coverage of the ruling party and its leader. Plenty of journalists are living their lives, paying rent and venting out their frustrations against the government on twitter without being arrested.
A sample of Indian publications that are critical of BJP:
https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/bjp-accused-of-using-app-tek-fo... and https://restofworld.org/2022/the-wire-vs-meta-india/ - This bit of critical journalism was found to be outright creative writing. But since you Anglos don't trust Indians on how their own country works maybe check out Alex Stamos of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center on this piece of news. I couldn't care less about the guy but maybe you will give his words weight. The reason I am giving this example is because this is a clear cut example of journalists publishing literal fake news critical of the governement and going about their lives without imprisonment and consequences.
Time to time a corrupt politician tries to throw around their weight and gets people arrested, but our legal system typically strikes down the case. This is a problem with every political party in India but we don't have mass imprisonment of journalists critical of BJP as some publications may want you to think.
> Your statement does not jibe well with the lived reality of most Indians. We have plenty of access to critical coverage of the ruling party and its leader.
Laughable to hear, considering I am from Russia, and have hands-on experience, that is very relatable with the treatment of student-led protests. Also considering, that you are coming from a state, that requests videos to be removed from YouTube for political reasons (BTW also 100% same as Russia), toward the state that does not.
> The reason I am giving this example is because this is a clear cut example of journalists publishing literal fake news critical of the government and going about their lives without imprisonment and consequences.
I hope you understand, that this argument has no logical bearing on the issue. E.g. from `P(A)`, `P(B)`, and `not B` it does not follow, than `not A`. I hope I don't need to explain what P, A and B in this case.
In regards for the video, it does not even present a one-sided story. E.g. it mentions the absolution of Modi by Supreme Court on the lack of evidence ground. But the rest of the video makes a compelling case why that absolution is hard to trust.
From the article you shared:
> Russia passes law to jail people for 15 days for 'disrespecting' government
Pick up any 24x7 Indian news channels, and you can find govt being disrespected by half of the panel. Sure that doesn't justify certain action by the govt but I too think, one needs to be in India to understand India.
Modi or no Modi, things have been same as far I recall. Only new we have now is free internet which has amplified everything.
Yeah, and if you read my comment carefully, this law to jail people was only instituted 9 years into the totalitarianism started. The first move (apart from rigging election) was labeling media as "foreign agents" circa 2012.
206 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 216 ms ] threadI think the better model is for companies to stand by their morals (even if they're weak) rather than bending to the unique tyrannical demands of each sovereign nation. Microsoft's choice here is honestly the most admirable to me, even though I despise them as a company.
Maybe tax the sh*t out of whatever profits they make in oppressive countries? "Go ahead and profit from dealing with Whateverstan, but we'll take most of it away from you."
The advertising forms sell space to Chinese advertisers, the hardware forms sell their hardware, the software firms... See their software used everywhere, but only sometimes getting paid for it, and are chomping at the bit to turn that around. SAAS vendors are largely getting the short end of the stick, but most of them also make money from one of the fields above.
Cultural exports, mostly in the form of films, of course, are also booming.
If the US, the EU, China, or India says 'jump', most of them will, after complaining about it, eventually ask 'how high'? That's just the nature of the business. (And is why they also have extensive lobbying operations.)
If India make it illegal to host a video critical of their PM, and google block that video from access in India that's one thing
If Thailand make it illegal to slag of their king and google block users from Thailand watching a video about the king that's a similar thing
If Europe make it illegal to track users without their consent and google block users from Europe that's a similar thing
If China make it illegal to talk about Winnie the Pooh google block users from China searching, that's a similar thing
If America make it illegal to talk about tools to circumvent DVD copyright protection and block users from America searching, that's a similar thing
In all cases Google is obeying local law so they can do business in those countries, but that local law applies to local people.
Now copyright (not DMCA but Bern style copyright) is, so I could see why google would remove a BBC copyrighted film, although they tend to ignore copyrighted material unless the copyright holder complains.
India has a robust sphere of public debate and draconian laws and acts of discrimination by the government are regularly criticised. In more cases than not the government embarrasses itself by its clumsy use of power to restrict opposition, like in the case of the BBC documentary which did not uncover anything new.
Constant vigilance is required. I am not a BJP supporter, but I don't think the intent of the BJP is to suppress debate. They seek legitimacy. BJP is clearly toning down its more radical elements and is getting more mature judging by the way it allowed the Bharat Jodo Yatra (Join India Campaign) and understands that a robust opposition is in national interest.
I am more hopeful than this article.
No one need to buy negative opinions or so but trying to suppress truly occurring issues is childish. One needs to be mature to accept criticism. Whether twitter or elsewhere...
Again as a OCI, pointing out any issue is treated by this govt more as unpatriotic. (This strategy was successfully used by Bush/Trump to polarize the US). It is not good in the long term to do that.
Again many of the complaints are not out of spite. It is truly from heart many have optimism and feel let down. This is even inside the Indian consulate - I once was told that visit us only if you want to give a positive vibe (when I politely asked them as they printed place of birth with typo).
Note that US citizens complain about NSA spying, abortion rights etc.
Given poor law/order people can disappear in India. Take citizens that are languishing in prison. Again US police are not perfect but there are due procedures in the DOJ-USA. And getting a driving license or registering a house in US/EU will not need bribes.
Listening to complaints is the first step.
One can politely disagree. By banning things they create a chilling effect.
and please do not all the time compare to Congress govt. This is similar to blaming British. Yes, all that happened - just move on - NOW do good to current citizens.
No point in having dirty beaches complaining about Congress or British.
I mean, sure, yeah, we're not North Korea yet. And is that the bar we are setting for the "World's largest democracy?"
Last time I checked India was still a democracy.
1. there are really two definitions of the internet. A. the set of networks that use the internet protocol. B. the sum of all interconnected networks.
2. But what about the multiverse? you loudly exclaim. Like I said by definition the universe is the whole thing. even once you expand your domain past it's original boundary the whole thing is still the universe. your original domain would now be considered a subverse.
In 2 countries in Europe, Chromebooks have been ruled incompatible and schools have been prohibited from rolling them out under this rationale, with more countries likely to come with similar rulings. Just one example of the internet and tech splintering. EU also wants to do nonsense that would not fly in the US like Chat Control. What happens to US-based non-compliant services? Looks like some way of banning them needs to come next...
As a US citizen and strong advocate of civilian relations across geography, I have to object to throwing out all possibilities in a bitter moment of finger pointing. "Increasingly" is weasel words, just say "know" :-)
The EU tried to grow some local big techs with government subsidies but the results were predictably garbage. The Airbus business model doesn't transfer well to consumer technology. If the EU really wants homegrown big techs then they need to reduce employee protections, eliminate red tape, encourage venture capital markets, and make business bankruptcies easier.
Who has ever tried visiting any ru-net platforms, for example?
Their morality is just conditional
Being based out of mostly western countries, corporations like Google and Microsoft found the belief system of quitting Russian business initiatives as most acceptable to the public, and hence executed that plan. A western worldview where it may have been more acceptable for Russia to initiate a war would have resulted in a different outcome.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Do you really believe big tech cared about some wArCrImEs, instead of getting a call from their lobbyist/investor/gov.account advising them to play along, or else?
JFYI, YouTube (and the whole of Google) is still operational in Russia, I can still use my iPhone, pay for iCloud, and buy a new one as soon as I want.
Business is business, I don't understand why people ever suppose it would be fighting for their political goals.
This leaves them with two choices - either they stop doing business in said countries, or maximize profits by conducting business in those countries by loosening their belief system to include the countries' negatives, such as censorship of political discourse in this case.
The censorship is taking place either way right? Why not take the money?
I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something if they don't like it, it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.
If every impactful documentary would be given away for free, there's no incentive for anyone to pay the company behind it to make more. Journalism is expensive and I don't think enough people would donate to a large corporation through Patreon.
I would love documentaries like these to be available without restriction, but when it comes to copyright and business model, it really does come close to Moanna or Eastenders.
And I wonder if that BBC link works in India. Or if this one does: https://btdig.com/search?q=modi+question&order=2
BCC iPlayer doesn't work in any country other than the UK, so there isn't any question of it working in India. BTDigg is blocked in India, along with most piracy oriented websites, since long before the BBC documentary thing I think.
They presumably treat everything on the service exactly the same, because it would cost them money to do otherwise, and also because they probably don't want to pay for the bandwidth for foreign users. I suspect you probably have to have a UK TV license to watch it, too, which means they're charging for it in the UK. It'd actually be surprising if they had a way to treat different content differently, as opposed to the whole service being all or nothing.
They probably also have foreign stuff on there that they've bought only the UK rights for.
Many of the best shows are co-produced with other broadcasters from countries, which means the BBC doesn't have the global rights for them. Also a decent proportion of BBC content is independently produced, which also means the BBC doesn't have the rights to that content. Lastly, the contracts for performing rights were often written before the concept of streaming, so you may have to go back to each credited performer and get the rights to distribute the show online. This has impacted DVD releases before, in one instance the BBC had to actually wait for someone to die before they could release a DVD box set, because one actor in just one episode refused to sign an updated agreement. So the list of content that's actually available is much smaller than you might think.
Maintaining a paid archive of "long tail" content has long been said to be the way forward. You can monetise that huge library of content from your past, right? Actually, it turns out that people don't actually watch that long tail. Outside the top, recent content, you'll get maybe a handful of people watching the archive each week. The cost of maintaining that archive online is non-zero and because the content is largely "cold", in terms of streaming, delivery of the archive costs you more than the popular content people are actually watching. And if you hadn't noticed, streaming services aren't renowned for being profitable in the first place.
Oh, and playback performance for cold assets is worse than fresh content. So watching an old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' in Indonesia will have relatively poor streaming performance without putting in significant global investment. That investment being difficult to justify.
It's cheaper to syndicate the popular shows (old and new) to the other streaming services and see what gets watched.
Credentials: >20 years in broadcast/media technology, now working in a senior role at a major streaming service.
The BBC might correctly determine that, although it's a respected content producer, it doesn't have enough of that kind of power to make it work... except in the UK, where it already has a captive audience of "subscribers".
That applies at least until there is a universally adopted micropayment system, and maybe after that, too.
On edit, as a by-the-way: While it's true that everybody with a library is trying to do that, that only proves that it's trendy. Where are the numbers that say it's actually profitable?
As soon as a paid service goes subscription-only I drop it generally unless I really really need it.
I know not everyone is as anti-subscription as I am, but really, 100? Anything that pays "automatically" and auto-renews is something I have less control and visibility over so I'll do anything to avoid it.
https://archive.org/details/india.-the.-modi.-question.-s-01...
It would be the first thing I'd get in a country with restricted internet :)
I suggest trying out wireguard, it's a ton easier to set up than openvpn or ipsec
I haven't been blocked on decently reputed hosting providers
The pogrom is an internal matter. A hitjob is external interference. /s
Btw, I watched the documentary and it actually covers the Supreme court judgement, so the responding accounts are actually spreading misinformation.
I'm sure that line on the map is really important to the victims...
I find myself continually dumbfounded by the kind of reasoning and justifications, the supporters BJP come up with. Thousands of people killed and in many cases, even worse. Terming it an "internal matter" is being cruel beyond my comprehension.
> Btw, I watched the documentary and it actually covers the Supreme court judgement, so the responding accounts are actually spreading misinformation.
So you're implying the Supreme Court has a "Ministry of Truth" type of thing going on? How many judges transferred, maligned and were even killed for clean chits? Institutions ceased being autonomous and ethical a long time ago in India.
Also, the one member of the indian bureaucracy who dared to question Modi's role in the riots - Sanjiv Bhatt - was sentenced to life in prison.
I am not sure what the poster here is insinuating with the claim that the case was tried under a different government. In no reasonable democracy are the courts swayed by politics.
Court judgements are made by humans and humans err. This is not the binary you are making it out to be. Indian courts are hamstrung by the rest of the Indian legal system and are routinely used to silence dissent and harass the small fry.
All judicial appointments need to be approved by the government. Retired judges get plum political appointments including to the Rajya Sabha.
The Centre refused to appoint Saurabh Kirpal because he is openly gay. This isn't some wild conjecture, this is the official government position: https://www.barandbench.com/news/law-ministry-says-saurabh-k...
Maybe in movies.
Simple as that really. The government of Tuvalu making a similar request probably would have been politely ignored.
They may even require that all compute happen locally. And of course that all content and so on meet local regulations. Sort of like what we see with other telecommunication, be it T-mobile or other. Sure, they operate in many countries, but they have local staff and follow local rules.
In that case it wouldn't matter how many intermediary entities are there between HQ and local operations.
And from what I understand Youtube isn't profitable by itself.
I don’t have specific estimates I can link to, but I’ve seen statements like this fairly regularly: There are more questions around YouTube’s profitability, but he said the general view was that it was “modestly profitable but not dramatically so.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/technology/youtube-financ...
Of course when Google actually disclosed what percentage of their revenue came from YouTube it was well below the 20% suggested in that piece.
What is 'that wildly profitable estimate' then?
And Chinese entrepreneurs just kind of said, "SWEET!", then swept in with their own startups offering those services.
I'd imagine there are a lot of Indians, even here in the US, that would make a headlong rush back to India to start up web service companies if our companies said we won't service India any longer.
Stories like that always make me think that this is always some kind of a political play on the side of western media platforms, likely coming from ex-spooks they like to hire so much. Especially judging by how e.g. in Russia, YouTube has learned to play nice over time and generally doesn't act like it's "delete everywhere or leave as is" kind of choice.
The original rush to remove the content was fueled by alot of publicity around the documentary.
Everything beyond this is YouTube's own doing, really.
"Later today, I have the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prime Minister Modi to discuss how we are supporting small businesses and start-ups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, applying AI in sectors like agriculture and healthcare, and other priorities."
A message from our CEO: https://archive.is/t3f7R / https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/optimism-india...
I expect the high road from my country's communications sector on freedom of speech, and even though RT has always sucked, this behavior is distasteful.
Obviously the war is an abomination, but I'd prefer that in the interim, "platform" corporations stay the hell out of the 4D-chess.
What makes you think those in power won't abuse them as early and often as possible?
https://peertube.tv/search?search=The+Modi+Question+&searchT...
While I'm just as displeased with India censoring stuff for the rest of us, keep in mind that for most of the world, Google/YouTube is that censorious foreign entity.
S01E02: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:F55992F922B9A0E49C09E198835F0F06EE07635B&dn=India%20The%20Modi%20Question%20S01E02%201080p%20HDTV%20H264-DARKFLiX&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.me%3A2780%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2730%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fp4p.arenabg.com%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tiny-vps.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce
Still seems pretty available here. =)
Everyone's anti-bittorrenting until some asshole with more power but even more insecurity comes along and refuses to be legitimately criticized or questioned.
What do you mean?
Ummm.... Yes
I don't know what bridge you are trying to sell here. The Indian media is known as modia for a reason. NDTV, the only center channel had a hostile takeover. The TV media is a joke focused 74% on stoking Hindu Muslim conflict and attacking anyone who passes a negative comment about Modi.
Speak for yourself. As an Indian, I don't want the government telling me what I can't watch.
> investigated by various courts including the Supreme Court of India
The same Supreme Court also ruled that the 2G Scam did not happen. Would you like to acquire an ownership interest in the Bandra-Whorli Sea Link?
> Will BBC make a documentary about the many crimes the British did in India?
They did even in the face of backlash from British Nationalists: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/historians-accuse-bbc-new...
> taint his image, and even destabilize India
So, Modi is India and India is Modi?
Modi is going to do more fascist stuff and take away rights one after another. The supporters will keep inventing reasons every single time. It will always point to the caste order's interests
They have a large support from other castes now because Muslims are the enemies now. Until this narrative stays they will stay.
This tribal president and the previous dalit president are exactly what I mean by their election winning formula. I'm not sure what's illogical in any of this because this is literally what they themselves speak about in every election meeting.
But otherwise agree with you. Yogi Adityanath another possible successor to Modi is also not from a privileged background.
In Telangana, someone was arrested for making fun of the CM’s nose: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/andhra-student-arre...
These are all parties that are opposed to the BJP. I wish there were parties that are committed to liberalism, rule of law and institution building in India. Not very optimistic at the moment.
But that’s not the end of it. Sure Hindus (who are not nearly as monolithic as you think) appreciate that BJP seems to be supporting their values but that in itself would not have been enough. Modi’s success comes from being perceived as someone who gets things done. I was recently Gujarat UP and Delhi and talked to people from all walks of life. There’s a huge amount of optimism that life is getting better and rightly or wrongly Modi is getting credit for it. Maybe it’s a mirage. Maybe it would have been just as good with someone else but this is in fact the perception on the ground and those who want an alternative ignore it at their peril.
Also thank you for proving my point above. Lol
If you cannot do either, you need to wear the garland of shame, lies and more.
Chill. I thought Upper caste population is the smallest size.
If you have time travel technology I’ll definitely vote for you.
Meanwhile back in reality the one who has a compelling vision for the future and a plausible record in executing it will win the election. Do you have someone like that in mind?
Companies technologically focused or not have to comply with local regulations on a number of things: privacy, age restrictions, medical, gdpr, hipaa, etc. So you can't "just follow international norms" You have to follow local norms.
In the West we had tech coordinate Covid, election and other information with government.
But now the West is "uncomfortable" with others wanting to set their own narratives because we disagree with them for differing reasons.
One is hard pressed to say one is right and the other is wrong. They are the same coin showing different sides.
To a point they will lock you up for sedition,without trial for a decade and if you are really lucky, some stupid judge will be allowed to let you go on a planted technicality.
I am not bragging but I've survived been charged with "waging war against India" whatever the hell that means and having my wits in the moment saved my sorry ass. Most are not so lucky.
I am a dissenting voice that will keep dissenting. I've helped in various projects over the years in trying to "spread the voice" and its all I ever want to do.
There is a war between me the person and the government and its just a matter of who wins.
Let them try to control the internet, gfw is working but its not like its immune.
I will find a way to make the voices heard. If it means someone Better than me has to chance the reins if I fall, well that's what we do.
Gujarat?
Randomly being lynched for eating hamburgers?
Being expelled from their homes in Assam?
Being barred from their schools in South India?
Don’t post with a throwaway, at least have courage to voice your convictions like OP, who actually had to face down government oppression.
At the end if the majority (mostly boomers) that do not want change continue to do this it is saddening for the young. But of course, when it bites them it may be too late.
Sad but democracy in function.
I'd love to hear somebody from India explain it: my guess is that religious politics and political religion have been India's problem from before the partition, and it's a fissure that Congress typically tried to ignore, while, rather awkwardly, it's been sticking its elephantine trunk in everybody's drinks while taking up eight tenths of the room.
Modi drives straight at the problem, takes a position, then relies on the demographics to carry him through. There are more Hindus, so in a democracy, taking a Hindu-first perspective is sound electoral strategy.
The Congress/UPA's reputation was severely trampled out when BJP/NDA rose to power in 2014, and it hasn't recovered since. BJP has perfected the art of media manipulation and public politics, and is extremely competent in directing and subverting public sentiment; they are one of the biggest populist forces in the world right now with a formidable and highly-skilled marketing force backing its brand (enough to get featured on Harvard whitepapers). More importantly, they learn and adapt quickly to changing environments. For example, after the JNU fiasco they now seem to recognise the importance of moderation and avoid going gung-ho on dissent in practice (e.g. their prolonged tolerance to the Farm Law protests) while keeping a public image of firebrand rightism to maintain their brand. They are intelligent, very intelligent.
Its opposition, meanwhile, has only gone downhill and keeps embarrassing itself. Opposition parties neither have a well-built plan or timeline, nor do they invoke any significant loyalty from voters. They keep infighting and bickering among themselves while retaining dynastic figureheads from an already disgraced family. They're all so in on themselves they still try to use the same half-baked strategies that used to work in the 2000s.
Do you know why third parties haven't come to the fore? I can see that the Congress party has a bunch of problems that are pretty inherent to the party DNA, but did the people who used to vote Congress because they liked secularism and universalism just stop liking those things?
BJP/NDA simply outclasses every other force in terms of its outreach and marketing prowess, and with the kind of control it now has over mainstream media, challenging them will be a herculean task at least for the time being (and filled with a very tangible risk of self-destruction).
Especially the UK, who have been trying to prop up the Gandhi-Nehru family party, their heirs and Brown sahibs.
Also, I suspect the US likes a monolithic YouTube from a “iPod diplomacy” perspective - being the cultural centre of the world is an advantage!
In the cases I've been personally involved with, it added significant costs to comply to move processing and storage onto Indian territory data centers that are run by large US corporate cloud vendors anyways. If you're large enough, it doesn't matter. If your use case serves a small enough long tail where it ends up on the wrong side of that added cost burden cutoff, then it matters. And I think that is unfortunate, because I see lots of Indian innovation happening inside that long tail, and such restrictions disadvantage the smaller scale efforts where the novel propositions seem particularly rich.
But perhaps I simply don't have sufficient data and perspective, so I'd welcome Indians closer to the action to help me understand why this is in India's interests. If I had to guess, I suspect the thinking is similar to China's: it is too strategic an area to give up, and India has enough population where it doesn't matter they are ring fenced into a walled garden as "only" the domestic market is big enough to stand within its own island market.
As for BBC "The Modi Question", comes from wrong place itself. India has left that issue long ago, but internal and external forces who doesn't much on Modi in politics plays same card again and again.
Few videos I found to their narrative - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkVQ4RNxBB4
Truth about Godhra 2002 riot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcn4Yv-dR-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUI1Cc0gkcU
PS: Author AKASH BANERJEE is well know youtuber who extreme leftist. India's are not interested in people who cant represent them anymore. We lack centrist government / opposition.
> but internal and external forces who doesn't much on Modi in politics plays same card again and again.
Is the BJP's "IT cell" spreading propaganda on HN now too?
EDIT: totally wrote that without checking out parent's profile
> user: relavir212
> created: 16 minutes ago
They are so accepting of criticism, that every time one criticizes them, they get banned from India's Twitter.
This isn't a real account and should be flagged.
The most I can see is fear-mongering and creating artificial victimhood against them for clout and political reasons, but that happens on both sides and has been happening since time immemorial. If this is about Kashmir, their drastic steps, albeit excessively totalitarian and cruel to Kashmiris, are for retaining their sovereignty before anything else. They would have done the same had there been any other religion.
And don't get me started on Twitter. For every account banned for "misinformation" there are a thousand others that keep on shitting on the administration. It's Twitter for God's sake.
You aren't contributing anything with your ad hominem painting of the entire government as hateful to Muslims other than fear-mongering.
Same here. If Indians, split from Internet - and if the majority (perhaps boomers etc), decide it is the right decision - may be OK - but likely they will lose in the long term - in terms of education, awareness, global participation etc.
In some ways, top Indian MNC can benefit from talent not leaving India.
Sure some will say, we have our own space program, etc - but lets be honest - it will take decades to even build a new operating system. Cooperation in science, tech benefits all humanity.
Outsiders' image of India is through the narrative of the media, which has no connection to reality. The Indian government is also actively engaging in fake news dissemination. Here is a tweet from Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute Director of The Wilson Center and writer of Foreign Policy's weekly South Asia Brief
Michael Kugelman on Twitter: "The scale and duration of the EU/UN-centered Indian disinformation campaign exposed by @DisinfoEU is staggering. Imagine how the world would be reacting if this were, say, a Russian or Chinese operation." / Twitter
You feel that's horrible? Sure, that's your right. But the moral universalism of the anglophone cultural sphere has long alienated a majority of Indians exposed to it, that at this point their opinions do not get any goodwill from Indians.
Progressive media has published enough news that run absolutely opposite to the lived experience of a majority of the Indians that at this point they don't give a crap.
I would even say that every report of far-right authoritarianism of Modu's India liberal media publishes, greater the support for Modi from Indians. I say this as someone who thinks of him as an absolutely mediocre administrator.
It seems to be a common issue among liberal anglophones to confuse democracy with liberal democracy.
> You feel that's horrible? Sure, that's your right
Of course it is horrible. Thanks to the free internet (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook) we can further promote our interests. Sincerely, the NSA /s
There has been no evidence of BJP rigging National or state elections until now. In fact parties like TMC which progressive media often hail for opposing BJP have been found to indulge in electoral violence and rigging [1]. These parties run unhindered in what english media essentially calls the Nazi regime of Modi.
Where is the evidence for BJP winning due to suppressing political parties? A political party or politician who you don't like being elected (in free and fair elections) does not qualify.
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/kolkata/tmc-accused...
EDIT: sidenote: Electoral violence seems to mainly be an issue in West Bengal. Other states have a lot of issues but the scale of gratuitous bloodshed that follows elections is a unique characteristic of the state. That no Indian government past or current has tackled this issue, only speaks for the inability of the Indian state to effectively project hard power.
This is basically the state in Russia. I would not call Russia a democracy therefore your argument does not convince me India is one either.
The parent is correct. Control over media, and jailing witness who implicates top government employees is exactly what happened in Russia just before the invasion.
Your statement does not jibe well with the lived reality of most Indians. We have plenty of access to critical coverage of the ruling party and its leader. Plenty of journalists are living their lives, paying rent and venting out their frustrations against the government on twitter without being arrested.
A sample of Indian publications that are critical of BJP:
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/national-politics/govt...
https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/hindutva-pop-hate
https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/12/24/aaj-tak-and-india-tv-...
https://thewire.in/politics/twitter-amit-malviya-bjp-it-cell...
https://thewire.in/politics/if-rahul-gandhi-were-really-irre...
https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/bjp-accused-of-using-app-tek-fo... and https://restofworld.org/2022/the-wire-vs-meta-india/ - This bit of critical journalism was found to be outright creative writing. But since you Anglos don't trust Indians on how their own country works maybe check out Alex Stamos of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center on this piece of news. I couldn't care less about the guy but maybe you will give his words weight. The reason I am giving this example is because this is a clear cut example of journalists publishing literal fake news critical of the governement and going about their lives without imprisonment and consequences.
Time to time a corrupt politician tries to throw around their weight and gets people arrested, but our legal system typically strikes down the case. This is a problem with every political party in India but we don't have mass imprisonment of journalists critical of BJP as some publications may want you to think.
Still matches Russia until about 2019 (btw 5 years after initial invasion) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/06/russian-parlia... , which coincidentally was 9 years after it became clear to me personally it was a totalitarian state.
> But since you Anglos don't trust Indians
Laughable to hear, considering I am from Russia, and have hands-on experience, that is very relatable with the treatment of student-led protests. Also considering, that you are coming from a state, that requests videos to be removed from YouTube for political reasons (BTW also 100% same as Russia), toward the state that does not.
> The reason I am giving this example is because this is a clear cut example of journalists publishing literal fake news critical of the government and going about their lives without imprisonment and consequences.
I hope you understand, that this argument has no logical bearing on the issue. E.g. from `P(A)`, `P(B)`, and `not B` it does not follow, than `not A`. I hope I don't need to explain what P, A and B in this case.
In regards for the video, it does not even present a one-sided story. E.g. it mentions the absolution of Modi by Supreme Court on the lack of evidence ground. But the rest of the video makes a compelling case why that absolution is hard to trust.
Pick up any 24x7 Indian news channels, and you can find govt being disrespected by half of the panel. Sure that doesn't justify certain action by the govt but I too think, one needs to be in India to understand India.
Modi or no Modi, things have been same as far I recall. Only new we have now is free internet which has amplified everything.