Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by galtwho 1887 days ago
Few of the tweets removed are detailed here https://www.opindia.com/2021/04/covid-pandemic-hoax-to-shari...

Ps : the usual propaganda site or govt mouthpiece claims are bound to come out now. Read the article and make up your mind

6 comments

The list of tweets removed are here: https://thewire.in/tech/as-covid-19-crisis-deepens-twitter-t...

Anybody with a VPN or is outside India can indeed read and make their mind up.

Edit: Every propaganda has an inkling of truth to it. That's why people believe it. And that's how everyone from Goebbels to the current Indian administration operate. Cherrypicking just the obviously fake ones to make your point is silly.

Sadly, any side, not just India and Goebbels, employs this tactic (admittedly to varying degrees). It is apparently to effective to ignore, even if its message is factually correct.
The pics of pyres shared in the tweet were common in India before the Covid started. Just go to any crematorium in India and you will see similar situation, dead bodies keeps on coming and their relatives burn them and do the last rites. Its not new to India, but the way its portrayed that pyres are only due to Corona pandemic is totally wrong !!!
So you are denying India even has a Covid emergency?
I didn't said there is no covid emergency, but tweets which are spreading lies, hoax and demeaning our PM Modi should be taken down, that's what I'm saying !!!

Check a tweet which changes people perception: https://twitter.com/akhileshsharma1/status/13863780415011799...

getting 404 on the above link
Thanks, updated it with the correct one.
This article is an odd choice, though, it's a site that claims to present the "marginalised" Hindu nationalist viewpoint. Very hard to take it seriously.
Did they report the tweets incorrectly?
No, just picked and chose the ones that made their point well. The point of this kind of publication isn't to tell lies, just selective truths that push an agenda.
Okay, I just wish people stop fighting which side is correct and focus on the problem at hand in India.
The article clearly gives proof to the tweets and images posted were from old incidents, like a tweet posted by Dr. Kafeel Khan, a controversial doctor who is an accused in the Gorakhpur tragedy, shared an unrelated image of funeral pyres as well. But when it came out that the image was from 2017 he appears to have deleted his tweet. Please check !!!
Opindia is a well-known source of right-wing disinformation. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpIndia

> OpIndia is an Indian right-wing news portal founded in 2014 by Rahul Raj and Kumar Kamal. The website has published fake news and anti-Muslim commentary on multiple occasions, including a 2020 incident in which it falsely claimed that a Hindu boy was sacrificed in a Bihar mosque.

> OpIndia is dedicated to criticism of what it considers "liberal media", and to support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindutva ideology. According to University of Maryland researchers, OpIndia has shamed journalists it deems opposed to the BJP, and has alleged media bias against Hindus and the BJP. In 2019, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) rejected OpIndia's application to be certified as a fact checker. IFCN-certified fact checkers identified 25 fake news stories and 14 misreported stories published by OpIndia from January 2018 to June 2020.

The submitted URL from the wire.in has screenshots of the more significant tweets that were hidden in India despite not violating Twitter policies regarding disinformation.

Are you saying the tweets mentioned in the article are false? (from Vindos Das, Kapri, Hansraj etc)
I am saying the tweets mentioned in the article are cherry-picked to paint this censorship in a positive light as these tweets contained false claims.

The issue at hand is that the government censored other tweets that are accurate or are statements of opinion rather than on making factual claims.

The tweets mentioned by Medianama and The Wire are are not, by any stretch of the imagination, disinformation.

They blame Modi for mismanagement and conducting super-spreader events. They draw a contrast between the government actions and rhetoric around Tablighi Jamaat (a muslim religious event with perhaps a few thousand participant that happened at the beginning of the panedmic) and the Kumbh mela (a hindu religious event with hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of participants, happening now.) They tweet pictures of cremation grounds.

I don't consider them disinformation, and neither does Twitter (they would have been deleted otherwise.)

I would quote those tweets, but I occasionally travel to India so I do not feel safe doing that. The Wire and Medianama feel unsafe reproducing these tweets, while OP India does not - that should tell you something.

Did you read the article. Once guy posted a old cremation pic as covid cremation happening now. Another posted a pic about a different city as happening in guj(since modis from guj). They are by definition disinformation. Unless you have a source that includes other tweets which are accurate.

For Wire claims it be true while OP claims its false. Obviously OP is more free to diss on that. If the situation was reversed than Wire would have posted and OP not. These are media houses not Truth seeking journalists. Carvan has a tweet about farmer killed by bullet when it was not. Not sure if its deleted now, but it was there for a long time and Twitter did nothing.

I read the post, but it looks like you did not understand my comment.

The OP India article reproduces a small subset of the censored tweets that is disinformation. The government action here is not too problematic.

The Wire article, and the Medianama article, reproduces a different subset of blocked tweets. Those are certainly NOT disinformation, were made by very prominent individuals (elected MPs and MLAs) and were blocked by the government because they were highly critical. This is the problem.

> Unless you have a source that includes other tweets which are accurate.

I do: the wire.in article mentioned above and the medianama article I linked to on another thread. If you are in India you may need a VPN to see them. I am not going to reproduce them here out of the same concerns as the editors of The Wire and Medianama.

It saw Vindo Kapri name in Medianama article. That is the who posted a old picture as what is hapenning now.

were made by very prominent individuals - does not mean its true. That too coming from elected members, heh even journalist are tweeting incorrect information. Without checking the tweets we cannot come to any conclusion.

HN Crowd is so butthurt that when you correctly point out how opindia is a source of right wing disinformation, People feel that they have to down vote you for that.
looks like the above msg is being brigaded and downvoted to hide the news

@dang fyi

This is the only unbiased comment which actually shows the tweets which were deleted instead of just presenting a conclusion
Incorrect, the original submission (thewire.in) reproduces several of the tweets.

Medianama, which covered this yesterday, chooses to _paraphrase_ the blocked tweets rather than quote them outright, likely in an attempt to avoid censorship demands. https://www.medianama.com/2021/04/223-twitter-mp-minister-ce...

I was wrong, it looks like thewire.in has gated those screenshots to not be visible from Indian IP addresses.

> A screenshot of the tweet, which now cannot be viewed within India, can be found below.