[KrishnaShripad]

> "Actually no, you can't say we treat everyone equally, we're manually going in and exempting certain people from scrutiny, and that's entirely within our discretion."

Isn't that literally what Twitter does as well? Making exceptions for Politicians and Government Representatives? Or does HN's bias towards Twitter exempt it from any form of scrutiny?

[numpad0]

I don't think this has too much with celebrities, but about exempting "problematic people" from being repeatedly banned by algorithmic and applied AI systems. IOW, they don't have controls over internal mechanisms of so-called algorithms, and a separate suppression system is used to reduce harm.

[nl]

[flagged]

[dang]

Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. You perpetuated this one badly and that's not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[KrishnaShripad]

When it comes to India, Twitter is typically at the forefront of mainstreaming propaganda and selectively applying rules. So my perspective comes from that (since this article concerns feud between Meta and The Wire which covers India). Whenever Twitter gets mentioned (atleast in HN) concerning its role in policy with regards to politicians it mostly gets a pass.

Let me put it this way: what you feel Meta is doing in the West, is what many in India (like me) feel Twitter is doing here. And the sentiment I see is mostly anti Meta and mostly pro Twitter here.

After all it is my perspective and I could be wrong (as I obviously don't have statistics to say if HN definitely has a Twitter bias or not). But I believe I have a right to express my opinion on what I feel is HN sentiment towards big tech censorship (which mostly circles around Meta but rarely around Twitter).

[8note]

I haven't seen twitter getting a pass? When trump finally got the boot, the comments were along the lines of "the only thing that can't get you kicked off of twitter is to run an insurrection against the US government"

[nl]

I think this is mostly about Twitter's refusal to censor on behalf of the Indian government; see eg https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3bmn/twitter-censorship-in...

The OP is a very strong BJP supporter (see comment history), but even so it's a weird take.

[KrishnaShripad]

> I think this is mostly about Twitter's refusal to censor on behalf of the Indian government; see eg https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3bmn/twitter-censorship-in...

Vice is part of the same Leftist Media cabal.

> The OP is a very strong BJP supporter (see comment history), but even so it's a weird take.

LMFAO no. It is mostly about Twitter censoring accounts that are pro-Hindu: https://twitter.com/aranganathan72/status/132892246447524659...

And the ban was done after Opposition Party supporting Bureaucrat (from the IPS cadre) threatened to get the account banned. Basically Twitter acted on behalf of the Opposition not the Ruling Party. You can read the full story here [1].

If Twitter is truly unbiased, it wouldn't be siding so openly with Opposition Parties in India.

Quoting the user (TrueIndology) who was banned:

`She asked me for my personal details. I refused to divulge those details. She then said "Your time is up". And boom. My account was suspended within 5 minutes. Twitter sent no mail. Gave no reason. Simply suspended my account`.

The Government of India has authority to regulate Law and pass Executive Orders to entities operating within the Country. The Opposition of India has no such powers. Yet Twitter defied the Government's Executive Orders but did not defy the Opposition Party Bureaucrat's diktat. That should tell you how openly biased Twitter is.

Anyways, being a "strong BJP supporter" is not a crime on HN I presume. Where propaganda thrives it is better to be a strong, vocal supporter. Even if all alone and in minority.

[1]: https://www.opindia.com/2020/11/twitter-suspends-trueindolog...

[throwaway384629]

You linked OPIndia website as your reference, can you please share even one article posted on OPIndia against BJP or current Modi government?

[KrishnaShripad]

> I think this is mostly about Twitter's refusal to censor on behalf of the Indian government; see eg https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3bmn/twitter-censorship-in...

I'll explain the context behind this because Vice (as is usual with Western media propaganda outlets) does not provide any details.

The "journalist" in question, who goes by the handle @zoo_bear, tweeted out a clip from a heated National TV debate between a ruling party spokesperson and another Islamic scholar. Some unsavory remarks were made by the Islamic scholar on the ruling party spokesperson's Religious beliefs (she is a Hindu). She retaliated in the TV debate with her own unsavory remarks on his Islamic beliefs.

Now this "journalist", instead of putting out the entire clip, decided to cut the clip to only show the spokesperson's remarks which went viral not just in India but across the World. She not only received beheading/death threats but was also forced to apologize, tender resignation from the Party and go into hiding. Then after that, 4 other Hindus (completely unconnected to this TV debate) were beheaded, by Islamic terrorists, as a "revenge" for what she said. Only later did the entire clip surface and things cooled down. But by then, the damage was done. Was any of this reported by Vice? Nope. This is the kind of propaganda that Western media outlets indulge in.

Now the Government of India wanted to take this out-of-context Tweet down (as well as suspend the "journalist"s account) as he continued to put out partial information just to keep the communal pot boiling.

India is a multi-cultural, multi-religious democracy with a billion+ people. Any riots that break out has potential to turn into communal clashes on a pan-India scale. The Government, unlike Western Governments, has extra responsibility to take care of the social fabric of the Nation apart from protecting the country from adversaries on our borders.

So the Government of India is perfectly justified in requesting take down. Twitter not taking it down is purely politically motivated. It is not like it hasn't taken down accounts/tweets at all. It has done so multiple times on behest of opposition party members.

[nl]

Note that this explanation is only one of the (many) incidents outlined in the (long) Vice post. As the Vice article points out, the tweet was over 4 years old when he was arrested for it. The Indian article[1] about the arrest doesn't make any claims about the tweet going viral or being responsible for the things the OP is claiming here. Notably neither the police themselves not the complainant make these claims.

This quote summarises the overall situation reasonably well:

> A 2021 transparency report released by Twitter revealed that India was the single largest source of government takedown requests in the second half of 2020—accounting for 25 percent of the global volume. The compliance rate for these requests was 0.6 percent in India, as opposed to 30 percent globally.

[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/altnews-co-fo...