The problem isn't technical, it's legal - you can't build a system that operates one way and then publicly misrepresent it.
“Senator, thank you for the question. We treat everyone equally. To be clear this means every single user on our platform is subject to the same terms of service they agreed to when signing up.”
So fine, if you want to define the words as meaning something they clearly don't, and want to try and fight that battle in the media... ok. But almost certainly the first thing that happens is something exactly like this - some nerdy engineering comes out and goes "Well no actually, we manually intervene for the people we like". And then you get to go back to Congress and explain to them why you clearly lied to them, and you're not going to get out of that by using Mark Zuckerberg's pure eye-watering levels of charisma.
And any system which involves reporting from the public will need to build a "this account gets lots of false reports of category X, to save time assume they're all false" system. As well as "all the reports made by this user are bogus".
It’s not likely to be more than a nuisance to defend and not terribly expensive to settle, but an enterprising plaintiff’s lawyer could probably find a cause of action that passes summary judgment.
Which (and I hate to ever sound likey I'm defending Facebook) is quite common in legal systems.
That's opposed to an Id or different account types, where if you didn't register with a specific type, you cannot be granted that same exemption
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?
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).
The OP is a very strong BJP supporter (see comment history), but even so it's a weird take.
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...
> The TrueIndology account is very popular and has thousands of followers. The person behind the account is a meticulous fact-checker who corrects wrong and distorted claims often pushed as history mostly by left-liberals, and cites actual sources to debunk myths and leftist propaganda on Indian history. Though the reasons for the accoun[sic] suspension are not clear, it comes just a day after he had ‘fact-checked’ and had idulged[sic] in an online arguement[sic] with senior IPS officer D Roopa.
Spelling errors are reproduced as is.
It's surprising how closely the "left-liberals"/"leftist propaganda" rhetoric matches "Leftist Media cabal"/"Western media propaganda outlets" language of the OP.
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.
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...
Where is this explanation? There is not even one mention of Nupur Sharma in the Vice article. Quote from the article.
> the tweet was over 4 years old when he was arrested for it
Nice deflection. This is not the tweet I was talking about.
I was talking about this: https://www.opindia.com/2022/06/islamist-mobs-nupur-sharma-p...
and this https://www.opindia.com/2022/06/alt-news-mohammed-zubair-del...
> 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.
Of course the Indian Authorities are going to charge him for the most heinous/offensive tweet. And they will choose the one that will stick when they prosecute him in a Court of Law. That does not mean what he did, did not lead to beheading of 4 innocent Hindus. This is well documented fact that the communal tension was result of him sharing a doctored clip that went viral.
> 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
LMFAO from Indian Express of all the papers? The ones who falsely published a report that Indian Army had moved towards Delhi to do a coup on the previous Government of India? [1] and [2].
Please refer to better sources.
> 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
Ah yes. And we should take Twitter at its word. Twitter can also reveal exactly what those tweets were which the GoI wanted taken down. I bet at least half of them involve some fabrication (like The Wire BS that is currently being propagated) or something communal to stoke riots and unrest in India.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/indian-newspaper-slammed-for...
[2]: https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/upa-2-top-leaders-wa...
>> the tweet was over 4 years old when he was arrested for it
> Nice deflection. This is not the tweet I was talking about.
Good for you? How exactly was I supposed to know this when the tweet I was talking about was the one mentioned in the article you were so keen to dispute?
> LMFAO
Really?
"Unequal treatment" would mean: these users are not subject to our policies. That's not the case here. XCheck just turns off the "we receive 100 reports, an algo shuts that account down" phenomenon. Humans review those cases manually, and the account can still be suspended or banned. How in the world could that be contentious?
What it empathically is not, by definition, is "equal treatment". It's existence is epitome of unequal treatment.
Same but different here.
"Equality" is an inherently unfair concept because not all humans come into the system with equal footing, or in equal conditions.
And so to simply, and blindly, treat everyone identically - what you mean to say is "equal" here - would be a bad approach.
Pedantically speaking, you can certainly argue that "equal" is not grammatically correct, but I think everyone else understands what's being said.
We may disagree on the last one - I find "everybody understands..." assumptions can range from mostly happen to be true to tragically incorrect to manipulatively deceptive. Based on other discussions in this thread, I'm not alone. The fact that you indicate diversity and inclusion has moved away from equal treatment phrase, that Equal vs Fair is now being taught as basic differentiation just like Pretend vs Real, and Opinion vs Fact in school, also I believe supports my claim these are meaningfully, substantially, importantly different concepts. Again, I think they get confused enough, intentionally or unintentionally, that "everybody understands" is just too dangerous of an approach, even if well meant.
* if your post gets reported 10 times, it gets taken down
* if your post gets reported (# of followers / 10) times, it gets taken down
* if your post gets reported (# of followers * 100) times, it gets taken down
Which of these are fair in your opinion? For an account with a huge # of followers, the last one effectively means their posts can't be taken down.
It seems a system like XCheck is a step function where at a certain point, you get exempt from certain checks altogether.
The "equality" here could refer to each account's potential to go through the vetting that would give them exempt status.
==============
Maybe this deserves a separate response, but another way to think of this is to compare it to income taxes. There are different income brackets that affect your marginal tax rate in the US. Is it equal for everyone to pay the same dollar amount in income taxes? The same rate? A progressive rate? Are people treated equally under the law in all these cases? In none of them?
Who said anything about fair? The only one that is "equal treatment" is the one where 10 reports takes them down. It's shitty policy, but that's a different question isn't it? Number of followers playing a role is where treatment stops being equal. I'm not arguing what's the right way to handle this, I'm just contradicting rhetoric aiming to justify their policy by fallacious argument.
Edited to add: I don't think tax code is meant to or treats people equally, even though they're all subject to the same rules. The rules explicitly divide taxpayers into categories with different treatment.
Xcheck is, by definition, at its very core, not "equal treatment". Equal treatment is easy and uncontroversial to define.
It may or may not be "fair treatment". That is always subjective and depends on goals and objectives and frameworks.
Something like Xcheck may or may not be necessary. It's interesting to read about problem it's trying to solve and discuss whether and how much it succeeds and at what price and what limitations.
What Xcheck does not get to do, however, is present / defend itself as "equal treatment",and in any meaningful discussion we should not mix and match or treat those as synonyms - that's confusing and unproductive at best, deceptive at worst.