Police In India Raid Twitter Offices After Twitter Labeled A Tweet By A Government Official As 'Manipulated Media'
from the intimidation-tactics dept
Remember the absolute shit fit that Donald Trump threw after Twitter placed warning labels on some of his tweets about mail-in ballots? That resulted in the ridiculous executive order to undermine Section 230, even though all Twitter had done at the time was add more speech to Trump's tweets and pointed out that they were presenting misleading information.
To some extent, however, we should be thankful that the power of the US President is at least somewhat limited, or we might have ended up with a situation like what happened in India this week. The story begins similarly to what happened with Twitter labeling some Trump tweets. In this case, there was something of a political spat in India, where the Indian National Congress (more or less the opposition political party, not a legislative body as the name might imply), complained to Twitter that the leading BJP party was spreading "forged documents" on Twitter. They asked Twitter to suspend the accounts of some BJP leaders who were supposedly spreading those documents.
We've formally written to @Twitter seeking suspension of Twitter accounts of BJP leaders who are indulging in spreading forged documents attributing to Congress.
While an FIR has already been lodged, the independent fact-checkers too have blown the lid off BJP's propaganda. pic.twitter.com/DeVUO585l3
— Rohan Gupta (@rohanrgupta) May 20, 2021
The "forged documents" were basically misleading claims by the BJP that Congress was using a "toolkit" to undermine the Indian government's response to the raging pandemic.
After apparently reviewing this request to suspend those accounts, Twitter instead took what should be seen as a perfectly reasonable middle ground approach, and flagged the tweets of a BJP spokesperson noting that they were "manipulated media." The "manipulated media" flag is one of the first that Twitter started using in its attempt to flag misinformation and it has been used for well over a year now in a variety of contexts.
Now matter how you look at it, this is a "more speech" approach to dealing with potential misinformation. Twitter is adding its own speech to the tweets, noting that what they show appears to be manipulated. This hardly seems like a reason for law enforcement to get involved -- but get involved they did. Police first sent a notice to Twitter demanding an explanation over why it placed the "manipulated media" tag on that tweet, and then followed it up by raiding two separate Twitter offices in order to conduct a "search" for such information.
Of course, Twitter has all of its employees working from home these days (especially in India where there is still a massive COVID outbreak), so that wasn't particularly effective. But this is also against the backdrop of the Indian government just recently threatening to throw Twitter employees in jail if they didn't remove various criticisms of the Indian government, including over both protests and its handling of the pandemic.
This is all kind of terrifying when you look at it. It seems like a blatant intimidation technique from the ruling government trying to stifle not only criticism, but to suppress attempts to fact check some of its own disinformation.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: bjp, content moderation, covid, flags, india, india national congress, intimidation, manipulated media, police
Companies: twitter
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
They should do this in California whenever someone is harassed, doxed, etc. on the service. Would stop that shit in its tracks.
Funny how it was "just the internet" and everyone should "turn off their computer" until it happened to them.
schadenfreude
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
So you are comfortable with using the power of the government to suppress speech you don't like?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
They should do this in California whenever someone is harassed, doxed, etc. on the service. Would stop that shit in its tracks.
Sending in the police to deal with hurt feelings? Really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's weird. You spend so much time whining about free speech and how you need it for yourself without consequences. Yet, as soon as you think it only affects someone you dislike, you go all in on communist takeovers and fascist police states.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Scratch India off the "to see who rules you" list.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
You're still not getting your mailing list, John Smith.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If only they had put this much effort into stopping the pandemic, instead they are trying to salvage reputations by pretending they always knew it was a pandemic.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The BJP has a habit of this, "Oh yeah? We'll show you!" behavior, where what they actually show is their level of authoritarian crazy, and occasionally a demo of the Streisand Effect.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
how many security forces in how many countries are doing very similar things? they're all done to persecute the social media sites, prevent the public from finding out what complete, self-serving, easily bribed assholes 95% of politicians and lawmakers are and the lengths they'll go to in order to keep their dirty dealings out of public eyes!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
'We're not tyrants, now hold still for your beating!'
Well that's one way to remind people what thin-skinned thugs are running a country I suppose, strange that the government itself would feel the need to make that reminder, I guess they were worried people might think they were competent and not insecure goons for whatever reason.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: 'We're not tyrants, now hold still for your beating!'
"strange that the government itself would feel the need to make that reminder"
It's India. It wasn't named the most corrupt country in Asia for nothing.
The weird part is that in ancient times, or as late as the 16th and 17th century, India was renowned among its neighbors as an ordered state holding honesty and virtue in high regard. Something must have happened between those times and the early 20th century to start india's slide into the festering cesspool or bribery and thin-skinned thuggery it is now.
Probably the same thing which happened to the Middle East. Some mustachioed gentleman drew a line on a map and said in flawless oxfordian english "There. Now learn to live with it. And get rid of all this superstitious claptrap and pagan traditions".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: 'We're not tyrants, now hold still for your beating!'
Ah yes but no.
Everything from Thuggies to the built in social norms of slavery and cast system to the Moslem invasions say otherwise.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]