Social Media Watch Thread

IndraD · Post by **IndraD** » 11 Jan 2021 06:26

vijayk wrote:I joined tooter. Now Modi, Piyush, Yogi and PMOIndia are all in with blue ticks. I hope they are not fake accounts.

namo's account itself is fake apparently someone impersonating, those with contacts inside BJP have confirmed like bagga, op india editor nupur

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 11 Jan 2021 06:31

tooter.in Domain name needs to be revoked for impersonating the PM. It is only .in address. which is owned by someone in the US. So it won't get very far anyway.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 11 Jan 2021 06:43

srikandan wrote:tooter.in Domain name needs to be revoked for impersonating the PM. It is only .in address. which is owned by someone in the US. So it won't get very far anyway.

Huge security breach if it is fake ... They have AmitShah verified and Yogi, Chauhan, Piyush

Look at this CEO

https://code.gab.com/gab/social/gab-social

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 11 Jan 2021 06:55

Seems like a scam to me. It is not too difficult write a proxy that uses twitter API to actually do the work. The scam maybe people entering details trusting the platform bacause "amit shah was verified", when it is possible that both amit shah and the verification are fake.

Anoop.G · Post by **Anoop.G** » 11 Jan 2021 16:12

Deleted my Tooter account today. Will look at reactivating it in future after it gains some credibility.

nam · Post by **nam** » 11 Jan 2021 17:04

Sigh, can't believe it. Reading news that the accounts are fake.

Having a Indian digital ecosystem is so important, yet these jokers create scams. it even has a DRDO account! I don't know how people think, they can get away with such things.

I was so hoping that with the PM leading support to a Indian SM, we would see the trend towards moving away from twitter...jokers of our country

ArjunPandit · Post by **ArjunPandit** » 11 Jan 2021 18:26

ArjunPandit wrote:Of course ramana guru, BRF is sacred grounds. Over last 2 years I have seen many of my ids being bucthered esp on twitter. Now I am not abusive or anything. I suspect the following things affect in combination. In general there has been a pattern has been
1. Post velocity in last: if your posts in past few days is out of pattern
2. Browser change
3. API access: Twitter has been very strict on IDs with API access. My suggestion do not ever take that.
4. Account history
5. Account verification: they keep on asking you to verify the account number. A sign that you are prompted for MFA is a clear watch out sign. Twitter strike follows closely afterwards.
6. Follower count: I think there's a U-shaped curve based on a model. They shadow ban some posters with a very high count too.

I have strong reasons to believe that some obfuscated AI model, NN, etc is running under the garbs of fake news, hate news, SPAM profiles. There is quite likely a count of reportings etc on your account.

I can feel DT's pain. WHile i dont incite violence but there are ways twitter and SM have been imposing this. We can debate/denounce what DT says and what it resulted in last week. But the act of blocking him from internet without a govt order actually is the pinnacle of Big Tech outreach. When the dust settles and there will be a committee Twitter and other SM will not come unscathed because of this. Although that would be done in a "presidential" way. In other caves, before i achieved pest e shahadat I had stated earlier that big tech will be regulated like banks and perhaps internet would be localized. Europeans already have so many of their grips russia/china and other nations have the money and tech capabilities to do that and perhaps "digital borders" is a concept that i will lay copy right on BRF. And yes abduls will be sent here and there.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 11 Jan 2021 19:09

What is more of a Big Tech outreach was the dropping of Parler. In one fell swoop they cut off their cloud provider, email provider with about 30 hours of time given. Even their lawyers dropped them but that’s another story. It is unlikely that they will get anyone to peer to them in US either if they self host.

The above should be a wake up call for us. Doesnt US still control the TLDs for DNS? It would be trivial to knock any BJP related site offline under the “woke” guidelines they seem to be following.

ArjunPandit · Post by **ArjunPandit** » 11 Jan 2021 19:14

Tanaji wrote:What is more of a Big Tech outreach was the dropping of Parler. In one fell swoop they cut off their cloud provider, email provider with about 30 hours of time given. Even their lawyers dropped them but that’s another story. It is unlikely that they will get anyone to peer to them in US either if they self host.

The above should be a wake up call for us. Doesnt US still control the TLDs for DNS? It would be trivial to knock any BJP related site offline under the “woke” guidelines they seem to be following.

do we have any alternative caves just in case BRF gets down? do brf members have other avenues apart from nukkad? I know some tried on ..but lets suppose..worse thing is most are like red pills running under aliases to avoid being doxxed and affected on jobs

FYI, at some point there were some restrictions on accessing BRF from sky network on UK. I had to change settings, which one worked, I dont remember. I think age filters or something of that sort.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 11 Jan 2021 19:32

A signal group would be best to get the comms out for new caves but that can’t be a forum....

The best advice is to not use your own identity in any shape or form when posting. I hope the admins scrub access logs regularly as well

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 11 Jan 2021 20:33

@visegrad24
A law is due to be passed in Poland that would fine Big Tech firms $2.2 million every time they unconstitutionally censor lawful speech online.

Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if they do not break Polish law.

No reason why India cannot pass such a law -- such a law cannot be construed as anti-investment or anything of that sort, so the excuse that action will not be taken to scare off foreign investors does not hold. Indian govt's incompetence in handling the interference of these predatory american social media companies is confounding.

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 11 Jan 2021 21:20

The pretense that is going on is that these social media companies are only enforcing legally backed restriction, when what is happening is that the wokenasthas in tech companies are using their networks to create barriers for legitimate companies like parler. What has happened with parler is that a company called Twilio which was handling authentication for Parler deliberalely pulled the plug without warning users so that *ALL USER DATA* in parler has now been stolen by unknown entities. This kind of anti-trust behavior is new -- what it does say is that partnering with american cloud companies for software nservices in the cloud must have legal language to force these "partners" to pay through the node if they compromise user data. But then US data laws are non existent and not anything close to the EU's GDPR data protection.

Check out woke commentary and the virtual signalling that is defending such anti-competitive and anti-trust behaviour.

https://www.leafandcore.com/2021/01/10/ ... to-parler/

When will they learn? Free speech isn’t “anyone can say anything.” It’s moderated. The only way people can be free to speak is if they do not fear doing so. No one has free speech when others can threaten violence.

This woke-fool is pretending that they are a legal authority to censor using the cover of section 230, which allows them to censor without being called publishers --- what is galling is the Indian government adhering to section 230 and letting these US tech companies to censor Indians under the guise of "enforcing Indian laws on free speech".

ArjunPandit · Post by **ArjunPandit** » 11 Jan 2021 21:28

Chain of events since 2015
1. Supposed manipulation of info on SM companies lets DT come into power (read cambridge analytica and other similar)
2. SM companies amplify DT's outreach and his messages (irrespective of veracity) including messages on US election fraud
3. DT supporters did what they did in Capitol hill
4. DT is banned/ostracised from SM
Is there any accountability of Social media sites? To me it appears a classic case of dumping a speculative trade gone bad.
BTW many question India on blocking internet and social media in Kashmir and during CAA without even facing a fraction of what India faces and without a contextual understanding of Indian culture and historical background of problems.

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 11 Jan 2021 21:45

This is absolutely nefarious -- they want India to have NO data protection laws and to host Indian data in foreign servers -- this should be unacceptable but going by the behavior of the Indian govt.I am not holding my breath./

https://geneva.usmission.gov/2021/01/06 ... f-india-2/

The United States encourages India to refrain from introducing barriers to digital trade, including restrictions on cross-border data flows.

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 12 Jan 2021 00:31

https://twitter.com/svembu/status/1348324441487331330

Great news that Zoho is working on "arattai" (means smalltalk in Tamil) as a twitter like platform.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 12 Jan 2021 00:52

Amit Malviya
@amitmalviya
·
5h
Please note that neither the BJP or any of its state units, nor Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP National President J P Nadda have a presence on Tooter.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 12 Jan 2021 00:58

srikandan wrote:https://twitter.com/svembu/status/1348324441487331330

Great news that Zoho is working on "arattai" (means smalltalk in Tamil) as a twitter like platform.

Deleted my account in tooter ... I can't believe these scums imitated AS, NM, Yogi, Chouhan ... This is criminal

AshishA · Post by **AshishA** » 12 Jan 2021 01:04

Is there any backup plan if BRF gets taken down or blocked or silenced?

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 12 Jan 2021 02:35

People just need to be a bit more skeptical -- I mean, Indians want a replacement to twitter, and coincidentally, suddenly there is tooter.in that has the PM's account "verified" when the PM has not announced that he will be moving to another platform. Never believe in coincidences as a rule...though such things do happen.

m_saini · Post by **m_saini** » 12 Jan 2021 02:56

If there is a genuine replacement for SM companies in future, I wish they also come up with decent names instead of replacing a couple of characters for the company they're replacing. No one wants to see "bhesbook" or "finstagram" etc

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 12 Jan 2021 03:24

Tanaji wrote:What is more of a Big Tech outreach was the dropping of Parler. In one fell swoop they cut off their cloud provider, email provider with about 30 hours of time given. Even their lawyers dropped them but that’s another story. It is unlikely that they will get anyone to peer to them in US either if they self host.

The above should be a wake up call for us. Doesnt US still control the TLDs for DNS? It would be trivial to knock any BJP related site offline under the “woke” guidelines they seem to be following.

Can Usenet be used instead? Large capacity HD is not a problem anymore.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 12 Jan 2021 03:28

ArjunPandit wrote:FYI, at some point there were some restrictions on accessing BRF from sky network on UK. I had to change settings, which one worked, I dont remember. I think age filters or something of that sort.

I was accompanying my mom in a hospital when she was hospitalized for over a week. I was sleeping in her hospital room for those seven days to take care of her. When I tried to access BRF through the hospital's WiFi access points, I couldn't. RF was blocked with the message "You are accessing a site that has defense/war-related discussions"

IndraD · Post by **IndraD** » 12 Jan 2021 06:03

yes I had to get rid of sky broadband because of that. They have blocked Bharat Rakshak. I took it up with the complains and the person told me they don't know why but the web site is actually blocked. I suspect sky has a Pk in top position.
Besides BRF is blocked at heathrow etc
this time if ever i have to deal with sky, matter will be escalated to Broadband national inspectors .

ArjunPandit · Post by **ArjunPandit** » 12 Jan 2021 06:36

IndraD wrote:yes I had to get rid of sky broadband because of that. They have blocked Bharat Rakshak. I took it up with the complains and the person told me they don't know why but the web site is actually blocked. I suspect sky has a Pk in top position.
Besides BRF is blocked at heathrow etc
this time if ever i have to deal with sky, matter will be escalated to Broadband national inspectors .

BRF opens on sky now. I changed the settings. The war etc has this. If you edit the router settings you can get past it.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 12 Jan 2021 15:48

Interestingly even Salesforce.com has joined in

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdmdv/ ... g-violence

The current reasoning being given is that this is not moderation but simply a case of a company refusing to do business with another entity.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 12 Jan 2021 15:50

Regarding BR not being accessible, long time ago BR changed servers but this change was not propagated correctly for some reason. As a result DNS lookups would fail or return incorrectly. A workaround was using the address directly or use another DNS server. However it has been perfectly fine for the past few years.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Jan 2021 15:57

"Is there any accountability of Social media sites? "

Aren't they free market private enterprises that are free to make any decision they choose to and live with the consequences? Its quite funny to see American right which was always against Govt control and anti-trust laws suddenly screaming black murder when they are on the receiving end.

If AWS decides to stop services to Parler, they have every right to do so, and Parler has every right to sue them. AWS is acting as a free market private enterprise, isn't it?

For all those who rail against SM, who is stopping you from deleting your accounts and boycotting them? Its a free service after all, whose voluminous T&Cs you have accepted when signing on. You can always quit.

Don't like NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, Forbes...? Vote with your wallet. Idem for Fox or OAN.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 12 Jan 2021 16:57

@Cyrano,

The fallacy with this argument is that certain aspects of internet infrastructure are mandatory for any platform to function.

If I want to start hosting my own and I can’t get anyone to peer to my domain, then effectively I am cut off. If Apple and Google refuse to host my app, there is no third ecosystem for me to go to. Like it or not, there is a tech oligopoly that can effectively decide who can communicate and who cannot. Some of them hide behind opaque algorithms that can’t be appealed.

One may exult because they are right now compatible with ones preferred ideology but no guarantees that it will be the same way in the future.

m_saini · Post by **m_saini** » 12 Jan 2021 17:36

Regarding the "private company so can do anything" argument...

Merkel among EU leaders questioning Twitter’s Trump ban

European leaders said governments should regulate social media platforms, not the companies themselves.

Twitter’s decision to suspend of U.S. President Donald Trump’s account is pushing European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to stress the need to regulate social media companies.

On Monday, a spokesman for Merkel said Twitter's Trump ban was “problematic.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, while condemning Trump’s “lies,” also expressed his disagreement with Twitter’s ability to unilaterally decide to remove the American president from the platform. “What shocks me is that Twitter is the one to close his account. The regulation of the digital world cannot be done by the digital oligarchy,” Le Maire said on France Inter Monday morning.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Jan 2021 17:56

Tanaji wrote:@Cyrano,

The fallacy with this argument is that certain aspects of internet infrastructure are mandatory for any platform to function.

If I want to start hosting my own and I can’t get anyone to peer to my domain, then effectively I am cut off. If Apple and Google refuse to host my app, there is no third ecosystem for me to go to. Like it or not, there is a tech oligopoly that can effectively decide who can communicate and who cannot. Some of them hide behind opaque algorithms that can’t be appealed.

One may exult because they are right now compatible with ones preferred ideology but no guarantees that it will be the same way in the future.

False. BigTech doesnt own the internet. DNS servers and their owners public & private do. The rest like apple & Google are ecosystems, they are indeed oligarchies at present. I have no ideology here, these oligarchies are vulnerable to future competition and Govt intervention.

I was merely pointing out that those who are against regulation are crying when it doesnt work in their favour.

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Jan 2021 17:59

m_saini wrote:Regarding the "private company so can do anything" argument...

Merkel among EU leaders questioning Twitter’s Trump ban
European leaders said governments should regulate social media platforms, not the companies themselves.

Twitter’s decision to suspend of U.S. President Donald Trump’s account is pushing European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to stress the need to regulate social media companies.

On Monday, a spokesman for Merkel said Twitter's Trump ban was “problematic.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, while condemning Trump’s “lies,” also expressed his disagreement with Twitter’s ability to unilaterally decide to remove the American president from the platform. “What shocks me is that Twitter is the one to close his account. The regulation of the digital world cannot be done by the digital oligarchy,” Le Maire said on France Inter Monday morning.

Proves my point that its specious to argue BigTech is deplatforming Trump to curry favour with new Biden administration. Doesnt work that way.

RajaRudra · Post by **RajaRudra** » 12 Jan 2021 19:00

Is there any fully desi version of Whatsapp alternative. ?

There was a discussion about switching to Singnal in friends and relatives groups. The thing is those who initiated the talk are very far away from IT world. But the fear is truth. My take is Singal is again not desi and may change the privacy rules any time in future.

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 12 Jan 2021 19:58

Cyrano: Aren't they free market private enterprises that are free to make any decision they choose to and live with the consequences? Its quite funny to see American right which was always against Govt control and anti-trust laws suddenly screaming black murder when they are on the receiving end.

The free speech amendment in the US is all about being able to speak freely without restrictions, mainly with respect to political preferences. I would argue that "Twitter is a private enterprise so your free speech argument does not work" is specious at best. We are talking about a country where political parties have perfected the art of manufacturing public consent to go to war, even if it is not in the public interest. This has been adequately documented by Noam Chomsky in "Manufacturing consent" a long time ago.

Okay, so if twitter is allowed to kick people out, then someone creates parler, and as soon as people move to that platform to speak their minds, they are shutdown and deplatformed to stop them from expressing their political views by shutting down the company. So where is the space for these political opinions? Isn't this is a direct assault on citizens rights to free speech?

So I would like to hear the justification for why this is not an assault on the rights of citizens of a country to have non mainstream political opinion if private companies do it. First amendment thus far was only considered under threat by the political establishment in the country, unlike now. Tech companies are ideologically aligned with one party (which is also funded heavily by these people) and they are shutting down political views of the opponents of this party, so they are related and not independent entities.

The behavior of these private companies is even more insidious if you consider that they are doing this in places like India too, and *THEY* get to decide what is acceptable political speech in India. They just call it "fake news" or "hate speech" when they shut down such opinions, but that just shows up their mendacity even more.

In fact, the same dbags in the left who were rejoicing the silencing of voices they disagreed with, started to whine when these companies shut them down.

The rule of thumb to follow is "If some hostile entity had this power to wield over you, would you be okay with it?" -- "My views are fact-based and pristine" does not wash because we all know how trustworthy "fact checkers" of these companies are.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 12 Jan 2021 20:03

Cyrano wrote:
False. BigTech doesnt own the internet. DNS servers and their owners public & private do. The rest like apple & Google are ecosystems, they are indeed oligarchies at present. I have no ideology here, these oligarchies are vulnerable to future competition and Govt intervention.

I was merely pointing out that those who are against regulation are crying when it doesnt work in their favour.

You are adding semantics here. The point is that tech companies are making judgements on what services they will provide on ideological grounds. Today none of the US ISPs were willing to provide connectivity to Parler. Facebook is blocking all posts with “stop the steal” in it. The point here is that you are gloating because your ideology stands to gain right now, but businesses can change and will change based on what makes money for them. Tomorrow it will be your ideology that is blocked, what will you do then?

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 12 Jan 2021 20:08

Trump got booted for the things he said but Mahathir Mohammed has said far worse things on twitter on what muslims should do and he is allowed to get away with it.

Goes to show how fickle and inconsistent this “ideology” is.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 12 Jan 2021 21:09

https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/pm-nare ... -platform/
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not on Tooter: Here is what we know about Tooter so far

https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/tooter- ... p-leaders/
Tooter CEO takes 24 hours to ‘research’, blames BJP of sabotage after opening unauthorised verified accounts of leaders, including PM Modi

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Jan 2021 22:37

Tanaji wrote:
Cyrano wrote:
False. BigTech doesnt own the internet. DNS servers and their owners public & private do. The rest like apple & Google are ecosystems, they are indeed oligarchies at present. I have no ideology here, these oligarchies are vulnerable to future competition and Govt intervention.

I was merely pointing out that those who are against regulation are crying when it doesnt work in their favour.
You are adding semantics here. The point is that tech companies are making judgements on what services they will provide on ideological grounds. Today none of the US ISPs were willing to provide connectivity to Parler. Facebook is blocking all posts with “stop the steal” in it. The point here is that you are gloating because your ideology stands to gain right now, but businesses can change and will change based on what makes money for them. Tomorrow it will be your ideology that is blocked, what will you do then?

Arrey yaar, these are phokat ka services, designed to get you hooked, collecting all kinds of data on people and mining it to sell services and advts, they don't give a rats ass about free speech. Their valuations have gone to stratosphere because 1000$/hr consultants are spouting "data is the new oil" etc.

You tell me, what will you do if for ex they go bankrupt? You will scream free speech right is violated ?

Like you are not obligated to use them, they are not obligated to serve you, or anyone else. I accepted the data privacy risk and arbitrary service denial risk when I started using SM.

Did you ?

Cyrano · Post by **Cyrano** » 12 Jan 2021 22:41

srikandan, your arguments and understanding of free speech (and the US version of free speech rights), is incomplete at so many levels, my only suggestion would be to read up on the topic.

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 12 Jan 2021 22:45

The issue is that widespread adaptation of new technology creates new problems in society -- pretending that all of this is just a matter of "chalo, yaar, write your own twitter if you don't like it" reeks of "hey, it does not affect me, so why are you worried about it?".

Clearly, none of these were issues 10 years ago, when all of these platforms existed, but back then people has the same political views except they were on private forums or blogs and not centralized. The laws always lag behind techonology, and laws are required only because widespread use of the technology makes it a public resource -- these companies monetize the people who use them, so this is not some favour these companies are doing to the public. people spouting simple-minded views that blithely overlook the implications of blocking out large numbers of people from sharing their political views, would do a backflip if these same standards blocked them out from joining political conversations because they were "blacklisted by society". For all the flatulence from western countries like the US about "freedom and democracy", there seems to be no problem with employing communist techiques to silence political views as long as all of that works at that moment in time.

srikandan · Post by **srikandan** » 12 Jan 2021 22:51

srikandan, your arguments and understanding of free speech (and the US version of free speech rights), is incomplete at so many levels, my only suggestion would be to read up on the topic.

That does not answer any of the points made. Pretending you know more is not an argument, just sounds like bombast from someone who does not have a valid response. laws and rules change with the times, and free speech protections are mainly for political speech, since that is the lifeblood of constitutional democracies. People no longer interact face to face -- they do it online. So the "town square" has taken a new form in the past decade, and blocking people out of this "town square" is a significant change in how political expression has changed due to technology.

These things do not need expertise in the US constitution as you seem to imply. These free speech protections apply to most functioning democracies within limits.