[l0k3ndr]

The only positive I see in this is that these kind of government actions on social media giants can push decentralised web more. By it's nature peer-to-peer systems will be beyond control of government. Internet was not supposed to be just twitter/facebook combo which it has now become. A lot of news nowadays are coming just from twitter trends on indian tv channels which is not right all the time. Mostly it's celebrity or big boss gossip but we can't rule out that twitter can start a war inside any country if it wants.

I am not sure these laws will solve any problems with the current internet. Some problems which I would like to see solved would be:

1. Tracing people who morph images real people and ruin their normal life. If this is a criminal offence and what's the point if people can easily get away with this. Internet by and large can have a mechanism to trace and banish such bad actors.

2. Too much dependence on twitter/facebook/google. It's fucked up. Why CEO of these companies have so much power over our planet. Twitter can literally cause world war by sending misinformation if it wants. It's scary to just imagine how much power Dorsey has. May be he is a good man, but is it worth to trust one man over the stability of this planet?

3. Manipulation with bots. There should be certain amount of weightage given to verified accounts as well as posts with links to verified articles. I want to see the real votes of real people - not the trends of automated bot armies.

My suggestion to Indian government on these laws would be - Applying hammers won't solve anything in long term. What will be better is to make people question what is right and wrong for internet themselves; Bring this discussion internationally and use the international platform to tell what problems are spread on internet - and tell the options people can choose in long term. Have a vote internationally may be.

[drieddust]

I will be more than happy if decentralised web emerges. However, I am not ok with likes of Jack Dorosy calling the shots over Countries and elected Goverments.

[l0k3ndr]

Agreed. Although it's the concentration of power that is harmful in long term than who is holding that power.

Moreover, I am not sure how much manipulation humans are able to detect ; a small misinformation injected into twitter timeline or a small bias in facebook can cause ripples across the world's outlook over time that we can't even notice when it's happening. Social media companies which provide these feeds always get away by saying it's by the algorithm recommendation but who is tuning those parameters? Only a small amount of human population asks 'why' type of question and rest of them just absorb the content and it shapes their mind. I watched the movie Social Dilemma sometime back and slowly this has been dawning on me - wtf we are witnessing. World is falling in hands of these social media companies, they are storing our data, they profile us, they manipulate what we see, they tell us what they want us to see ; it's mind-boggling that the world is sleeping on this much centralisation of power happening in broad daylight.