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.

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.

Filed Under: bjp, content moderation, covid, flags, india, india national congress, intimidation, manipulated media, police
Companies: twitter

Not A Good Look: Facebook's Public Policy Director In India Files A Criminal Complaint Against A Journalist For A Social Media Post

from the not-cool dept

In today's insanity, Facebook's top lobbyist in India, Ankhi Das, has filed a criminal complaint against journalist Awesh Tiwari. Tiwari put up a post on Facebook over the weekend criticizing Das, citing a giant Wall Street Journal article that is focused on how Facebook's rules against hate speech have run into challenges regarding India's ruling BJP party. Basically, the article said that Facebook was not enforcing its hate speech rules when BJP leaders violated the rules (not unlike similar stories regarding Facebook relaxing the rules for Trump supporters in the US).

Das is named in the original article, claiming that she had pushed for Facebook not to enforce its rules against BJP leaders because it could hurt Facebook's overall interests in India. Tiwari called out Das' role in his Facebook post, and it appears Das took offense to that:

In her complaint to the police, Das asked for an investigation to be opened against Tiwari for sexual harassment, defamation, and criminal intimidation. If charged and convicted, Tiwari could face fines as well as up to two years in prison for sexual harassment, up to two years for defamation, and up to seven years in prison for criminal intimidation, according to the Indian penal code.

The complaint appears to allege that she's faced threats and harassment since Tiwari's post:

In her complaint, Das said: “Since August 14, I have been receiving violent threats to my life and body, and I am extremely disturbed by the relentless harassment meted out to me by the accused persons. The content, which even includes my photograph, is evidently threatening to my life and body and I fear for my safety as well as that of my family members. The content also maligns my reputation based on a news article and I am subjected to name-calling, cyber bullying and eve-teasing online.”

Even if this were true, teasing and name calling should not be criminal offenses. But, even more to the point, why is Tiwari being blamed for the action of others. He just posted a post, citing the WSJ article, and criticizing Das. Das has all the power in the world to simply... respond on Facebook (the company which she works for).

As the Committee to Protect Journalists notes, this is absurd. Das should drop these claims and apologize. I certainly recognize the impossible position Facebook is put in with regards to content moderation, and completely understand that there are multiple tradeoffs at play in how Facebook chooses to handle moderation of politicians around the globe. But none of that justifies taking out a criminal complaint. And Facebook's response here is utter nonsense:

A Facebook representative told CPJ via email that the social media outlet takes the safety and security of its employees seriously, but said it does not comment on individual employee matters.

Sure, the complaint was taken out by Das, not Facebook, but Das is a representative of Facebook and this action reflects directly on the company.

Tiwari has now filed a counter complaint back against Das, which is not a great look either. His argument now is sort of the mirror image of Das's, saying that since news of her criminal complaint has come out, he has faced threatening comments as well.

It seems like this is just a typical internet-style flame war, except the participants all think the police should be involved and their critics should go to jail. And that's crazy. Take a breath everyone, drop the criminal complaints, and move on.

Filed Under: abuse, ankhi das, awesh tiwari, bjp, content moderation, criminal complaint, free speech, harassment, hate speech, india
Companies: facebook