Social Media Watch Thread

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Tanaji
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Tanaji »

Rarely do big companies massively pivot their USP, public positions or strategies unless their bottom line is threatened or they are facing massive public backlash and PR disaster. None of this is the case with Twitter and indeed it’s whole USP is to cater to a left of centre crowd. I don’t think Parag is going to rock the boat on this… he is more likely to attend meets with Swara Bhaskar and Rana Ayyub holding down with Brahmanical patriarchy posters than reinstate True Indology.

Hanging out with these types brings a certain cachet that hanging out with Trud Indology never will.
Rudradev
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

You said:
srikandan wrote: when it is clear that he was/is fully behind twitter's biases that works against native Indian narrative
What exactly is your evidence for this claim? As you appear to know, he was CTO of Twitter. That isn't a position involved with editorial and content policy. Unless you have access to relevant internal memos or communications from him, or public pronouncements of his political views, on what basis are you saying he was "fully behind" the biases?

What is your yardstick for an employee of a corporation like Twitter to show that he is not "fully behind" its biases: should he have quit his job over the fact that its biases exist?

What happens in future will be judged as it happens. He is now the CEO and bears responsibility for everything that follows. But I do not see any basis to claim that he fully backed the biases to date.
Why? Don't really care who he is or what his name is, as opposed to what he is likely to do, unless this 'data' has implications on twitter's policies under him
If the objective is analysis-- facts, details, and evidence actually do matter quite a bit.

If the goal is just a performative display of "RW" outrage, however... carry on.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Tanaji wrote:Rarely do big companies massively pivot their USP, public positions or strategies unless their bottom line is threatened or they are facing massive public backlash and PR disaster. None of this is the case with Twitter and indeed it’s whole USP is to cater to a left of centre crowd. I don’t think Parag is going to rock the boat on this… he is more likely to attend meets with Swara Bhaskar and Rana Ayyub holding down with Brahmanical patriarchy posters than reinstate True Indology.

Hanging out with these types brings a certain cachet that hanging out with Trud Indology never will.
I very much doubt that Parag Agrawal will rock the boat, or indeed that he is capable of doing it (even if willing). The bias in all of Silicon Valley, let alone Twitter, is profoundly systemic.

However, I think the reason he was elevated to CEO is something else. Remember who went to jail or lost their jobs after the 2008 financial crisis?

Rajat Gupta. Raj Rajarathnam. Vikram Pandit. Not exactly representative of the ethnicity that massively perpetrated, and profited from, the Wall Street malpractices that were responsible.

Desis are made CEOs for a reason. Usually it is because the board of directors knows that a bus is coming, so they need to prepare somebody to throw under it.

All I am saying is, let us not be in a tearing hurry to attack one of our own. At least until the person gives us a clear and present cause to do so.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Rudradev: What exactly is your evidence for this claim? As you appear to know, he was CTO of Twitter. That isn't a position involved with editorial and content policy. Unless you have access to relevant internal memos or communications from him, or public pronouncements of his political views, on what basis are you saying he was "fully behind" the biases?
The CTO and the programmers have to encode these editorial policies into code for the twitter editorial bots to flag stuff, or perhaps you can explain how this stuff is done, where editorial decisions do not involve the CTO or his minions in a ML-based editorial platform that twitter uses.

All your claims do not hold in the domain of ML-assisted content gatekeeping. Typically, Editorial content is flagged by ML algorithms in the code that enforces the said policy -- humans act as a the final filter. So the CTO has to be intimately familiar with the ML programming that decides twitter's editorial policy, so that it can be enforced by the bots.
What is your yardstick for an employee of a corporation like Twitter to show that he is not "fully behind" its biases: should he have quit his job over the fact that its biases exist?
What do these questions have to do with anything? Just throwing up strawmen so you can burn them down? What exactly is your reasoning for pretending you know better? The scope of what I have said so far is that this new CEO will not change the editorial policies that are politically biased. at least in India.

My reasoning here is agnostic of this new CEO's name, nationality, shirt size or amount of facial hair: This new twitter CEO has been intimately involved in programming Twitter's editorial bots for many years now, and anyone who pays attention to the censorship of Indian voices is aware of those biases, where the standards of "offensive speech" varies depending on which religious group is making those speeches.
If the goal is just a performative display of "RW" outrage, however... carry on.
So I am now RW is it? Yes, very "analytical" of you. Kudos. The only reason twitter's reach is not consequential in India is that is mainly used by english speakers and has a small user base, but that does not excuse twitter's racist biases.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Enforcing i.e. implementing a policy is not the same as determining it. If Parag Agrawal headed up their tech department, it would be his job to implement ML algorithms that fulfilled the policy determined by the CEO and others. So are you saying that unless he refused to do his job, i.e. quit, he must have fully backed the policies at a political or ideological level? It's a fairly straightforward question.

There is one thing I have to admire about the Islamists. Even after 9/11/2001, when Islam effectively became equated with terrorism in the mindset of the American establishment, the Islamists did not attack every Muslim who worked in government or media institutions as some kind of traitor.

Some of those Muslims, working in police departments or the FBI, may actually have been anti-Al Qaeda. But many Muslims who ended up working in federal, state, and local governments-- or in media organizations-- were either neutral or were Islamists themselves. The point was that overall, Muslims managed to infiltrate institutions across the board and gather influence at every level. This meant the presence of Muslims became normalized as a bulk effect-- providing cover for actual Islamists to reach positions where they could actually impact policy in meaningful ways.

Unless all this had happened you would not have had Huma Abedin, Ilhan Omar, or Rashida Tlaib rising to where they are today. You would not have Mehdi Hassan openly defending Islamism in the mainstream media or CAIR and ICNA acquiring influence over social discourse or electoral politics. All this was achieved one step at a time, and it will continue to advance.

The point is that the Islamists did not start out by applying a litmus test for all the Muslims who were entering and gaining influence in various American institutions. They did not insist that every Muslim working for NY Times or Microsoft or the Department of State must have a long beard and pray 5X a day. Nor did they commit the self-goal of attacking individual Muslims in positions of influence, who may sometimes have to adopt public positions contrary to Islamism.

Islamists realized that as an overall effect, the strategic benefit of having more Muslims entering and capturing institutions far outweighs the gratification of denouncing this one or that one as a traitor to Islam. I wish the same realization would dawn on Hindus as well.
Mollick.R
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Mollick.R »

Rudradev wrote:You said:
srikandan wrote: when it is clear that he was/is fully behind twitter's biases that works against native Indian narrative
What exactly is your evidence for this claim? As you appear to know, he was CTO of Twitter. That isn't a position involved with editorial and content policy. Unless you have access to relevant internal memos or communications from him, or public pronouncements of his political views, on what basis are you saying he was "fully behind" the biases?

What is your yardstick for an employee of a corporation like Twitter to show that he is not "fully behind" its biases: should he have quit his job over the fact that its biases exist?

What happens in future will be judged as it happens. He is now the CEO and bears responsibility for everything that follows. But I do not see any basis to claim that he fully backed the biases to date.
Why? Don't really care who he is or what his name is, as opposed to what he is likely to do, unless this 'data' has implications on twitter's policies under him
If the objective is analysis-- facts, details, and evidence actually do matter quite a bit.

If the goal is just a performative display of "RW" outrage, however... carry on.

Srimaan Rudradev Jee,

moii thinkss eouu aleee dated...............

Have peaceful dekho at this article............

https://welovetrump.com/2021/11/29/cons ... amendment/


"If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists."

Incoming Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal: "The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed."

https://archive.md/JQ2cu

Tweet
@JackHadders
"New Twitter CEO @paraga not only follows a Soros-funded anti-free speech organisation, but also has liked tweets that compare conservatives to ISIS, suggest people give money to BLM rioters, and liken COVID arguments to a "religious war"
@NationalFile


JD Rucker @JDRucker
I see a lot of conservatives celebrating Jack Dorsey stepping down from Twitter.

His replacement, Parag Agrawal, is a far-left extremist who embraces Critical Race Theory and has aggressively spoken against the 1st Amendment. This is not a time to celebrate.


Parag Agrawal @paraga
"If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists."


Dhyanawad
Mollick.R
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Mollick.R »

srikandan wrote:
Rudradev: What exactly is your evidence for this claim? As you appear to know, he was CTO of Twitter. That isn't a position involved with editorial and content policy. Unless you have access to relevant internal memos or communications from him, or public pronouncements of his political views, on what basis are you saying he was "fully behind" the biases?
The CTO and the programmers have to encode these editorial policies into code for the twitter editorial bots to flag stuff, or perhaps you can explain how this stuff is done, where editorial decisions do not involve the CTO or his minions in a ML-based editorial platform that twitter uses.

All your claims do not hold in the domain of ML-assisted content gatekeeping. Typically, Editorial content is flagged by ML algorithms in the code that enforces the said policy -- humans act as a the final filter. So the CTO has to be intimately familiar with the ML programming that decides twitter's editorial policy, so that it can be enforced by the bots.
What is your yardstick for an employee of a corporation like Twitter to show that he is not "fully behind" its biases: should he have quit his job over the fact that its biases exist?
What do these questions have to do with anything? Just throwing up strawmen so you can burn them down? What exactly is your reasoning for pretending you know better? The scope of what I have said so far is that this new CEO will not change the editorial policies that are politically biased. at least in India.

My reasoning here is agnostic of this new CEO's name, nationality, shirt size or amount of facial hair: This new twitter CEO has been intimately involved in programming Twitter's editorial bots for many years now, and anyone who pays attention to the censorship of Indian voices is aware of those biases, where the standards of "offensive speech" varies depending on which religious group is making those speeches.
If the goal is just a performative display of "RW" outrage, however... carry on.
So I am now RW is it? Yes, very "analytical" of you. Kudos. The only reason twitter's reach is not consequential in India is that is mainly used by english speakers and has a small user base, but that does not excuse twitter's racist biases.


@srikandan bang on........ here we go........
Image

from https://archive.md/JQ2cu
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Rudradev: So are you saying that unless he refused to do his job, i.e. quit, he must have fully backed the policies at a political or ideological level? It's a fairly straightforward question.
No, you seem to be saying a lot of things like the above, not I. Whatever you are going on about is irrelevant, which is why I am not saying anything of the sort ^^^

Going by the "everyone works for their self interest" axiom, the behavior of this new CEO is already boxed in by his own interests, like career and paycheck, but all that is irrelevant to whether Twitter's policies will change for the better or continue its current racist trend.
Islamists realized that as an overall effect, the strategic benefit of having more Muslims entering and capturing institutions far outweighs the gratification of denouncing this one or that one as a traitor to Islam. I wish the same realization would dawn on Hindus as well.
He quotes Asif Mandvi's line on treating all white people as racist if they call muslims terrorists (paraphrasing). Yes, I can see that you want to treat this guy as "one of our own" in the "me against my brother, me and my brother against the remaining" jihadi/cult mindset. Here is something to consider: given that most of the bad press India and Indians get originate from neo-colonial lutyens coconuts and "minority" communities, not from outsider groups, it takes a leap of logic to pretend that this guy will be an asset for hindus and hindu groups. Nothing logical or rational about such claims.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by vijayk »

Tanaji wrote:Rarely do big companies massively pivot their USP, public positions or strategies unless their bottom line is threatened or they are facing massive public backlash and PR disaster. None of this is the case with Twitter and indeed it’s whole USP is to cater to a left of centre crowd. I don’t think Parag is going to rock the boat on this… he is more likely to attend meets with Swara Bhaskar and Rana Ayyub holding down with Brahmanical patriarchy posters than reinstate True Indology.

Hanging out with these types brings a certain cachet that hanging out with Trud Indology never will.
exactly. Only financial screws have to be tightened. Eliminate them from India, threaten them with financial exclusion, hurt them financially ... not just twitter but also Netflix, Amazon media, FB or instagram and even google ...
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Mollick R jee,

I am not particularly concerned with what the Trump people have to say about him. In fact, I think the very reason he was put up as CEO is to be the fall guy in the firestorm that will develop around Twitter during the run-up to the 2022 elections in the US.

But I do agree that the following is a problem. It is the first interview I have seen with Parag Agrawal that in his own words, spells out his ideological stance (that he favours putting the thumb on the scale to advance some viewpoints over others).
Agrawal: Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation. The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed. One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard. The scarce commodity today is attention. There's a lot of content out there. A lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention, some subset of it gets attention. And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content and that sort of, is, is, a struggle that we're working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we're building, how we direct people's attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.
This seems to suggest that he was not simply doing a job of implementing ML algorithms, but actively involved in shaping those algorithms i.e. editorial and content policy.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

srikandan wrote:
Islamists realized that as an overall effect, the strategic benefit of having more Muslims entering and capturing institutions far outweighs the gratification of denouncing this one or that one as a traitor to Islam. I wish the same realization would dawn on Hindus as well.
Yes, I can see that you want to treat this guy as "one of our own" in the "me against my brother, me and my brother against the remaining" jihadi/cult mindset. Here is something to consider: given that most of the bad press India and Indians get originate from neo-colonial lutyens coconuts and "minority" communities, not from outsider groups, it takes a leap of logic to pretend that this guy will be an asset for hindus and hindu groups. Nothing logical or rational about such claims.
You don't think the neo-colonial Lutyens mouthpieces are doing the bidding of external institutions i.e. outsider groups? Why do you think Washington Post and NY Times came running to the rescue of people like Barkha Dutt and Rana Ayyub just as the credibility of Indian left-wing platforms (who previously promoted them) began to be eroded?

Also, you don't seem to get the point. I don't think this individual, by himself, is going to be an asset for anybody. However, the general trend of Hindus moving beyond purely tech-specific positions to public-facing institutional positions is clearly an asset. It provides cover for ideologically-committed Hindus to acquire positions of influence as well.

Most likely these ideologically-committed Hindus will have to keep their political preferences to themselves as they go about it. Just as Islamists could not have ascended the ladder if they were publicly shouting AoA at every opportunity. The important thing is that the trend continues. For Hindus to disrupt it on the basis of any particular individual failing an ideological litmus test would be a spectacular self-goal.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Mollick.R wrote:

Parag Agrawal @paraga
"If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists."
FWIW I totally agree with this in principle.

The default worldview with which most Muslims are raised inculcates jihadi supremacism and extremist viewpoints against other religions.

The default worldview with which most white people are raised instills a conviction that they are inherently superior to other races in civilizational and cultural terms.

There are exceptions in both cases, but only among rare individuals who have made the effort to overcome the default conditioning.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Karan M »

No self goal here. People who actively act against a political and civilizational force in India need to be made aware there are consequences of their belief system. Can't run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Many ostensible indians have become spectacularly mercenary and use woke signaling to mask their own cowardice, against their own peoples interests. They should feel the pressure too.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Rudradev: You don't think the neo-colonial Lutyens mouthpieces are doing the bidding of external institutions i.e. outsider groups? Why do you think Washington Post and NY Times came running to the rescue of people like Barkha Dutt and Rana Ayyub just as the credibility of Indian left-wing platforms (who previously promoted them) began to be eroded?
That's my point -- most of the brown-nosing coconuts dissing on India and "Communal" Indians are the outsider groups trying to wield influence in India via the INC-era of network of individuals who fill in all the positions in foreign media. It is not a coincidence that the people that NPR picks to comment on India are Barkha Dutt, RA or other INC sycophants/mercenaries.

When I see that the only "fact checking" site on India that this guy follows is "altnews" -- Indians who know about this site and its antecedants will be drawing their own conclusions about this guy, doesn't matter what I think.
Also, you don't seem to get the point. I don't think this individual, by himself, is going to be an asset for anybody.
He is an asset for the INC and the anti-modi crowd in India which also runs the parliamentary committee for oversight of Twitter under Shashi Tharoor. The INC knows this fully well too, if we read Tharoor's preening after each Social media parliamentary committee press release.
However, the general trend of Hindus moving beyond purely tech-specific positions to public-facing institutional positions is clearly an asset. It provides cover for ideologically-committed Hindus to acquire positions of influence as well.
What's the use of some nominal hindu holding such a position when that hindu actively suppresses the voice of hindus who never get heard, and haven't been heard for centuries. Even in the defense of his thoughts he uses the example of the ROP community rather than his own.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by m_saini »

srikandan wrote:...Even in the defense of his thoughts he uses the example of the ROP community rather than his own.
I think that's still great. Wokeism should be greatly encouraged as long as it's not directed against you.

I don't think American RW would've cared had he said "If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between Hindus and fascists". Au contraire, I think they would've joined in with all these made-up examples of how that's exactly the case.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by nachiket »

Meanwhile Twitter suspended the handle @storiesofBHs (Stories of Bengali Hindus) which used to share stories of Hindus from Bangladesh and the trauma they have suffered. They had earlier suspended an ISKCON official handle when the anti-Hindu violence in Bangaldesh was in full swing. They continue their crusade against Hindus in the subcontinent and globally against anyone not following a regressively leftist and/or islamist ideology.

This is the kind of people they hire:

Image
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FFYHQVaXEAM ... name=small

Image
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FFYHRYcWUAI ... name=small
Rudradev
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Karan M wrote:No self goal here. People who actively act against a political and civilizational force in India need to be made aware there are consequences of their belief system. Can't run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Many ostensible indians have become spectacularly mercenary and use woke signaling to mask their own cowardice, against their own peoples interests. They should feel the pressure too.
Two very different things here.

First, there are people who are clearly and obviously motivated to act against India's political and civilzational interests. Be they Barkha Dutt, Pravin Sawhney, Sunitha Vishwanathan or whoever. These can be identified by a consistent track-record of statements and public postures. Of course they must be made to pay a price.

Second, there are people who pay lip service to wokeism (the dominant cultural rubric) in certain areas of the West where they build their careers, but have otherwise been generally silent on India. These people may be transferred to the first group IF they either adopt public postures consistent with the first group, and/or make use of their positions (e.g. as CEO of a company) to otherwise attack India's political or civilizational interests.

However, I am strongly against assuming that people in the second group MUST belong in the first group until and unless they show verifiable signs of doing so. Agrawal's speech to the MIT conclave about "emphasizing who gets heard" is a warning sign in this regard, and bears watching, but not in itself enough to indict him IMO. Not yet, anyway.

The self-goal lies in deciding prematurely that people in group 2 are deserving of retribution and treating them as if they are in group 1. Again, look at how well the Islamists play this game. They have people like Hassan Minhaj and Mehdi Hassan who often criticize (e.g.) the Saudi or Turkish leadership, and make all kinds of woke noises, but this positions them with even greater credibility when they attack Israel or Modi/India. CAIR, for that matter, shows up to support Jewish synagogues etc. that get vandalized. However, their funding and influence is ultimately channeled towards Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ghulam Nabi Fai.

Finally, there is a world of difference between "making our displeasure known" and "making the enemy pay a price". I believe we don't think this through very often, and tend to assume that ravaging someone on Twitter/Youtube/Facebook serves some useful purpose other than gratifying ourselves.

There are many ways to make deserving enemies pay other than just outraging against them. Often those ways can be much more effective e.g. showing that Barkha Dutt was a participant in the Radia Tapes scam, or that Nidhi Razdan faked getting a job at Harvard, does a lot more to dent their credibility than just calling them "anti-national".

On the contrary, showing Twitter outrage in huge droves plays into the hands of the enemy more often than not. See how people like Sadanand Dhume, Audrey Truschke, or Ramachandra Guha play this game. They bait a response with some provocative statement, after which their mentions get filled with 1,000 expressions of RW rage, which they then hold up to show the "unthinking mob mentality of Hindutva activists" that lead to "a threatening atmosphere against intellectuals and journalists in Modi's India". No matter that most of the angry respondents would probably be too squeamish to kill a rat.

Fight by all means. But for sure we need to fight smarter than we have been.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Another aspect of smart fighting is knowing who your allies are and who your enemies are, no?

Parag Aggarwal's "emphasizing who gets heard" is the basis of Twitter's shadow-banning and ensuring that tweets of people with non-woke-compliant views are snuffed out by making the retweet button inoperational on a tweet after it reaches some number of viewers. A sneaky way to keep people on the platform while actively shutting out their voice without the user/customer's knowledge.

No need to reach conclusions now -- we can all wait and watch and see how this Parag fellow swings in the long run. Don't hold your breath for course-corrections -- this tool cannot course correct and still be employed in the top echelons of silicon valley management, so there is zero chance.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

nachiket wrote:Meanwhile Twitter suspended the handle @storiesofBHs (Stories of Bengali Hindus) which used to share stories of Hindus from Bangladesh and the trauma they have suffered. They had earlier suspended an ISKCON official handle when the anti-Hindu violence in Bangaldesh was in full swing. They continue their crusade against Hindus in the subcontinent and globally against anyone not following a regressively leftist and/or islamist ideology.

This is the kind of people they hire:
Case in point. It is important to fully understand what's happening here in detail.

Data Point #1. ICNA (An organization formed in US/Canada by Islamist perpetrators of 1971 Bangladeshi Genocide) has acquired a lot of influence in left-wing US politics. Bernie Sanders addressed a conclave of their sister organization ISNA during the 2020 Presidential Campaign.

Data Point #2. Sharmin Hossein, a BD-American member of ICNA, is a prime mover behind Equality Labs: the so-called "Dalit Rights" organization that has been attacking Cisco Systems, BAPS etc. with "caste discrimination" lawsuits.

Data Point #3. "Dalit Diva", a handle associated with Equality Labs, has made a pre-emptive strike to position Parag Agrawal as a hate-figure for the wokes by pointing him out as upper caste (laughably, she calls him a "Brahmin")

https://images.app.goo.gl/jDuxqh9ALAWs2Wnh7

Clearly the point here is to put Agrawal on the defensive. Pressure is on him now to prove his allegiance to woke "South Asian solidarity" one way or another. They hope that he will do this by denouncing or otherwise attacking his caste, religion, and birth country.

Data Point #4. This Rumman Choudhry person (another Bangladeshi, probably associated with ICNA but not verifiable at this point) shows up and again reiterates the theme of "Caste"-- throwing her weight behind the line of attack initiated by "Dalit Diva". At the same time, Choudhry ALSO positions Bangladeshi Muslims as some sort of victimized community for the woke brigade to rally around (notice the blue hair, the "cisgendered" language, all the queer-theory talking points).

See how these people craft their offensive? Twitter (and especially Agrawal) is under pressure to either silence the voices speaking up against genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh, or face more caste-based attacks.

The point is this. They all work and act together. We want to stand back and see what Agrawal does before we will even extend him the courtesy of assuming his neutrality.

If you were Parag Agrawal, would you feel confident that the Hindu community has your back if you stand up for the truth against the ICNA assault? Or would you decide they were useless for anything except giving gaalis and framing angry responses?
Last edited by Rudradev on 03 Dec 2021 04:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Rudradev: If you were Parag Agrawal, would you feel confident that the Hindu community has your back if you stand up for the truth against the ICNA assault? Or would you decide they were useless for anything except giving gaalis and framing angry responses?
You mean the hindu community that his company shut down when they posted images and videos of being slaughtered in Bangladesh just last month? You think he is going to stand behind hindus otherwise, when his twitter policies actively snuff out the voices of hindus undergoing ethnic cleansing? Yeah, makes total sense. He should just continue his current woke posture, so that Indians in India know who he is and where he comes from mentally -- nothing like a bitter shot of reality to help in such situations.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

srikandan wrote:
You mean the hindu community that his company shut down when they posted images and videos of being slaughtered in Bangladesh just last month? You think he is going to stand behind hindus otherwise, when his twitter policies actively snuff out the voices of hindus undergoing ethnic cleansing? Yeah, makes total sense.
Strawman argument.

Like it or not, the fact is he has zero incentive to change any of Twitter's existing policies to favour Hindus (other than whatever personal affinity he may feel towards Hindus, which is probably not enough incentive when weighed against his career). This is the reality.

The level of organization and coordination pressuring him to keep Twitter's policies as they are (which I've pointed out) is formidable. As against that, what have Hindus in the US (or India) been able to organize?

I get that it's easier to vent about Twitter having racist and anti-Hindu policies (pas de merde, Sherlock) but if that's really all you have to offer against the systematic assault from ICNA, I'm not sure what you expect.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Vayutuvan »

Rudradev wrote:... he was CTO of Twitter. That isn't a position involved with editorial and content policy...
He certainly would have a handle on the internal BOTs that police Twitter. If the BOTs are biased, he should take the blame. Moreover, any CTO hardly does programming. CTO, CFO, or any CXO for that matter have a direct line to the CEO. Unless a CEO is a dictator, all policy decisions would be made in one or more committees. There rea only two choices here - either Jack Dorsey was a dictator or Parag Agrawal was in the know. We wouldn't know whether he voiced his opposition or not. That will never come out unless leaked by somebody who doesn't like his ascension. As you can imagine, there would have been lot of pushing and pulling within the organization before P. Agrawal was named the successor.

A career in FB/Twitter (or even Google for that matter) is not much of a career. These careers can end as suddenly as they started. Next Silicon Valley bubble burst will see all these heroes out on the streets of San Francisco. How exactly do Twitter and companies of their ilk and their business models (advertisement dollars)help improve the human condition?!!!

Storm in a teacup. CEOs with these kinds of qualifications - IIT/Univ. of XXXX/Standford/Kelloggs/Wharton are dime a dozen.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Rudradev:
We want to stand back and see what Agrawal does before we will even extend him the courtesy of assuming his neutrality.
Hindus organizing in the US is not relevant to the topic here, so let's cut the digression.

The point here is that his personal ideology has always been aligned with Jack and he has personally driven the content filtering in Twitter for years now. Wondering about his neutrality at this point would be deliberately missing the point.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

srikandan wrote: Hindus organizing in the US is not relevant to the topic here, so let's cut the digression.

The point here is that his personal ideology has always been aligned with Jack and he has personally driven the content filtering in Twitter for years now. Wondering about his neutrality at this point would be deliberately missing the point.
It's not a digression at all. It's an attempt to at least analyze why all these Nadellas, Pichais, Agrawals, and whatnot invariably succumb to the pressure of the Islamist-Left lobby when it comes to maintaining the current discourse on Social Media (which is exactly the topic of the thread).

The primary, number-one reason is that there is no effective Hindu lobby to counter and overpower the Islamist-Left lobby. Period. Anyone who fights for the Hindu discourse in Silicon Valley must fight the entire weight of the opposition all by himself/herself, as an individual. As long as that is the case, nothing will change.

But on the other hand it's the easiest thing in the world to say "oh these Silicon Valley CEOs are just deracinated Hindus who don't give a cr@p". Saves us the trouble of doing anything. Better to let the "topic" of this Social Media Watch thread focus on an endless, one-point agenda of complaining that Social Media companies treat Hindus and India unfairly.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

Rudradev: It's not a digression at all. It's an attempt to at least analyze why all these Nadellas, Pichais, Agrawals, and whatnot invariably succumb to the pressure of the Islamist-Left lobby when it comes to maintaining the current discourse on Social Media
where is your data to support that claim? I have not seen any of them under pressure from islamist-left lobbies, but I see them consistently take a position where they will not be under pressure from any lobby. One cannot survive those positions without taking politically expedient positions, so that is all expected. While there is no need to make enemies of these captains of industry, it is also silly to pretend that people like this Parag are an unknown quantity when they are not, and their own words and actions reveal where they come from.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Vayutuvan »

Rudradev wrote:Most likely these ideologically-committed Hindus will have to keep their political preferences to themselves as they go about it. Just as Islamists could not have ascended the ladder if they were publicly shouting AoA at every opportunity.
False equivalence.

Ideologically committed Hindus are not likely to blow up buildings or try to wreak havoc on the streets of NYC and in the subways or plough cars into xmas parades or behead Jewish reporters.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Vayutuvan »

Rudradev wrote:... does a lot more to dent their credibility than just calling them "anti-national".
You are being unkind to the BRFites who are criticizing P. Agrawal. None of the accusations levelled at him are as simplistic as calling him "anti-national" (or rather "anti-India" in this instance).

The very fact that some members who know him on a personal basis have come here to defend him is proof enough that he is constrained in someway to do what is right. The question is how far would he go to seal his success on the "anti-India" path which he seems to be on currently.

Probably he is shooting for a job in the Dem administration/COngressman. _mian kee daud masjid tak_ a la Rep. P. Jayapal or Rep. Ro Khanna.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Vayutuvan »

Rudradev wrote:The primary, number-one reason is that there is no effective Hindu lobby to counter and overpower the Islamist-Left lobby.
The islamist-left lobby has access to funds which are, how shall I put it, not really kosher. You know what I mean. Those are "halal", I mean, hawala funds. Narcotics, convoy protection jiziya, and such.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by vera_k »

I hope GoI is able to encourage Twitter to outsource more to India. Maybe offer to set up an IIT Jhumritalaiyya open to reserved category students exclusively on condition that Twitter hires them.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Atmavik »

vera_k wrote:I hope GoI is able to encourage Twitter to outsource more to India. Maybe offer to set up an IIT Jhumritalaiyya open to reserved category students exclusively on condition that Twitter hires them.
Don’t give them ideas
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Vayutuvan wrote:
Rudradev wrote:Most likely these ideologically-committed Hindus will have to keep their political preferences to themselves as they go about it. Just as Islamists could not have ascended the ladder if they were publicly shouting AoA at every opportunity.
False equivalence.

Ideologically committed Hindus are not likely to blow up buildings or try to wreak havoc on the streets of NYC and in the subways or plough cars into xmas parades or behead Jewish reporters.
I have no idea what you mean. "False equivalence" between what and what? Who drew any equivalence between street-level jihadi terrorists and ideologically-committed Hindus?

The "equivalence" (if any) is between *the career paths taken by* ideologically-committed Hindus vs those taken by Islamists like Huma Abedin, Mehdi Hassan, Farid Zakaria and others who infiltrate the American system.

The Islamists I mention would not have been able to get where they did by openly wearing their Islamism on their sleeves, at least until they acquired positions of substanial influence and a LOT of Leftist institutional support. Now they can let the mask slip a bit & get woke applause into the bargain.

Hindutvavadis, similarly will not be able to infiltrate the American system without both concealing their political affinities and benefiting from organized Hindu support. Nobody in the US gives a rat's behind that Hindus don't blow up buildings. The mainstream would be dead against any open proclamation of affinity to a foreign culture & heathen belief-system regardless.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Vayutuvan wrote:
Rudradev wrote:... does a lot more to dent their credibility than just calling them "anti-national".
You are being unkind to the BRFites who are criticizing P. Agrawal. None of the accusations levelled at him are as simplistic as calling him "anti-national" (or rather "anti-India" in this instance).
If you are going to quote me, then at least position your rebuttal against the context of my quote na? Hopefully you read the post you quoted.

The excerpt you posted was not about Agrawal at all, but my tactical assessment of how we should respond to openly, avowedly anti-national mouthpieces like Barkha Dutt or Nidhi Razdan. On social media & elsewhere. Yelling at them is not as effective as discrediting them. Do you disagree?
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

Vayutuvan wrote:
Rudradev wrote:The primary, number-one reason is that there is no effective Hindu lobby to counter and overpower the Islamist-Left lobby.
The islamist-left lobby has access to funds which are, how shall I put it, not really kosher. You know what I mean. Those are "halal", I mean, hawala funds. Narcotics, convoy protection jiziya, and such.
That may be true. So what should we do? We like to say how Hindus are THE wealthiest religious community in the US. It's not as if an organized effort on our part would lack for resources... enough Hindus have to be properly motivated, that's all.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Rudradev »

srikandan wrote:
Rudradev: It's not a digression at all. It's an attempt to at least analyze why all these Nadellas, Pichais, Agrawals, and whatnot invariably succumb to the pressure of the Islamist-Left lobby when it comes to maintaining the current discourse on Social Media
where is your data to support that claim? I have not seen any of them under pressure from islamist-left lobbies...
I described an ongoing campaign of Islamist-Left pressure against Agrawal by the ICNA/Equality-Labs brigade right here.
viewtopic.php?p=2525522&sid=f0be882f1c5 ... 5#p2525522
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Vayutuvan »

Rudradev wrote: ... like Barkha Dutt or Nidhi Razdan. On social media & elsewhere. Yelling at them is not as effective as discrediting them. Do you disagree?
I misread your post, presumably. My answer is no, I don't disagree. That said, Barkha Dutt's involvement in Radia tapes affair is well known. That didn't discredit her in any way. People are resorting to "yelling" because that is the only recourse available to those whose voices are being suppressed.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by srikandan »

rudradev: I described an ongoing campaign of Islamist-Left pressure against Agrawal by the ICNA/Equality-Labs brigade right here.
There may be an ongoing campaign against this guy (islamist/woke lobbying is a full-time profession), but that does not mean he disagrees with those lobbies "pressuring" him -- the overt bigotry of islamist lobbies is nothing new.

These lobbies want him to "do more" but that does negate his public stance on censorship of political views which is already aligned with these lobbies.

So if the claim is that his actions are a result of him "succumbing to pressure" from these lobbies (and not because he is already ideologically aligned with them), that is not substantiated by Parag's worldview in his own words. Sure we will know what's what in due time. Got nothing else to say.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by morem »

Mods please stop this derailing
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Karan M »

Rudradev wrote:
Karan M wrote:No self goal here. People who actively act against a political and civilizational force in India need to be made aware there are consequences of their belief system. Can't run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Many ostensible indians have become spectacularly mercenary and use woke signaling to mask their own cowardice, against their own peoples interests. They should feel the pressure too.
Two very different things here.

First, there are people who are clearly and obviously motivated to act against India's political and civilzational interests. Be they Barkha Dutt, Pravin Sawhney, Sunitha Vishwanathan or whoever. These can be identified by a consistent track-record of statements and public postures. Of course they must be made to pay a price.

Second, there are people who pay lip service to wokeism (the dominant cultural rubric) in certain areas of the West where they build their careers, but have otherwise been generally silent on India. These people may be transferred to the first group IF they either adopt public postures consistent with the first group, and/or make use of their positions (e.g. as CEO of a company) to otherwise attack India's political or civilizational interests.

However, I am strongly against assuming that people in the second group MUST belong in the first group until and unless they show verifiable signs of doing so. Agrawal's speech to the MIT conclave about "emphasizing who gets heard" is a warning sign in this regard, and bears watching, but not in itself enough to indict him IMO. Not yet, anyway.

The self-goal lies in deciding prematurely that people in group 2 are deserving of retribution and treating them as if they are in group 1. Again, look at how well the Islamists play this game. They have people like Hassan Minhaj and Mehdi Hassan who often criticize (e.g.) the Saudi or Turkish leadership, and make all kinds of woke noises, but this positions them with even greater credibility when they attack Israel or Modi/India. CAIR, for that matter, shows up to support Jewish synagogues etc. that get vandalized. However, their funding and influence is ultimately channeled towards Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ghulam Nabi Fai.

Finally, there is a world of difference between "making our displeasure known" and "making the enemy pay a price". I believe we don't think this through very often, and tend to assume that ravaging someone on Twitter/Youtube/Facebook serves some useful purpose other than gratifying ourselves.

There are many ways to make deserving enemies pay other than just outraging against them. Often those ways can be much more effective e.g. showing that Barkha Dutt was a participant in the Radia Tapes scam, or that Nidhi Razdan faked getting a job at Harvard, does a lot more to dent their credibility than just calling them "anti-national".

On the contrary, showing Twitter outrage in huge droves plays into the hands of the enemy more often than not. See how people like Sadanand Dhume, Audrey Truschke, or Ramachandra Guha play this game. They bait a response with some provocative statement, after which their mentions get filled with 1,000 expressions of RW rage, which they then hold up to show the "unthinking mob mentality of Hindutva activists" that lead to "a threatening atmosphere against intellectuals and journalists in Modi's India". No matter that most of the angry respondents would probably be too squeamish to kill a rat.

Fight by all means. But for sure we need to fight smarter than we have been.
Sorry, but your analysis does not take into account the value of deterrence and punitive action and how public outrage can be used to effectively strengthen Govt actions.

"We have to be smarter than we have been" assumes that hitherto we have used all organs of our power- we haven't and that the prescription is to somehow stop at online outrage, i.e. "twitter outrage in huge droves" is the only answer there is and it somehow is of little use to boot.

Twitter outrage reflects public opinion (albeit very limited in the Indian context, but for the opinion shapers abroad who cares), and public opinion matters to the establishment and allows it to take steps that would otherwise paint it as being authoritarian and taking unpopular steps.

In fact, all the people you mention who are paying "lip service" to wokeism are doing so because they are very aware there are prices to pay for not doing so. In whatever form - social, opportunity and access to establishment costs. Clearly, they are very careful not to step on hot button topics in the countries of their residence because many are opportunistic or simply dont want the hassle. Even billionaires are afraid of the court of public opinion.

The same logic should be extended towards them opining on our redlines or interfering there too.

Why would we want India to play shrinking violet and somehow pander to the "woke crowd" who would anyways tar and feather Indians our public statements apart? Its not like they will stop merely because we are less assertive publicly. We have tried this method for 70 years. It has *failed*. All it has resulted in is milquetoast Indians coming up with convoluted explanations while responding to malafide actors and still getting mocked.

In fact, vituperative and overwhelming public opinion on certain "hot button topics" signals resolve and can also imply a lot of unity - yes, they will use it for propaganda but it can also be used to signal the establishment has significant support to take harsh state sanctioned measures against propagandists of all stripes.

Power is respected. The Indian establishment need not be overtly associated with the Twitter outrage group. But as long as the outrage is tempered and does not descend into legally/morally dodgy antics (threats, physical violence, abuse), it can serve as a useful means for the establishment to utilize as the basis for its actions.

The second "silent group" which is mercenary or simply too cowardly to take a stand will not join group 1, openly inimical to Indian interests, if they realize group 1 is paying substantial costs - social, opportunity and access to establishment costs, and hence it makes more sense for them to just keep quiet.

Granted - we arent the PRC economically. And going after everyone is not in our interests. And nor do we want to chase down every rando, but more savvy Infowar tactics are essential. And some level of punitive capability against bad faith actors like Dhume, Guha et al is good and it should be multi-factorial.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Karan M »

srikandan wrote:Another aspect of smart fighting is knowing who your allies are and who your enemies are, no?

Parag Aggarwal's "emphasizing who gets heard" is the basis of Twitter's shadow-banning and ensuring that tweets of people with non-woke-compliant views are snuffed out by making the retweet button inoperational on a tweet after it reaches some number of viewers. A sneaky way to keep people on the platform while actively shutting out their voice without the user/customer's knowledge.

No need to reach conclusions now -- we can all wait and watch and see how this Parag fellow swings in the long run. Don't hold your breath for course-corrections -- this tool cannot course correct and still be employed in the top echelons of silicon valley management, so there is zero chance.
Precisely. Do most biz czars openly mock the PRC establishment? The latter assumes hostile intent and has a variety of tools at its disposal, carrots and sticks. We may not be there yet, but we have to start thinking on those lines.
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Re: Social Media Watch Thread

Post by Karan M »

Rudradev wrote:
srikandan wrote: Hindus organizing in the US is not relevant to the topic here, so let's cut the digression.

The point here is that his personal ideology has always been aligned with Jack and he has personally driven the content filtering in Twitter for years now. Wondering about his neutrality at this point would be deliberately missing the point.
It's not a digression at all. It's an attempt to at least analyze why all these Nadellas, Pichais, Agrawals, and whatnot invariably succumb to the pressure of the Islamist-Left lobby when it comes to maintaining the current discourse on Social Media (which is exactly the topic of the thread).

The primary, number-one reason is that there is no effective Hindu lobby to counter and overpower the Islamist-Left lobby. Period. Anyone who fights for the Hindu discourse in Silicon Valley must fight the entire weight of the opposition all by himself/herself, as an individual. As long as that is the case, nothing will change.

But on the other hand it's the easiest thing in the world to say "oh these Silicon Valley CEOs are just deracinated Hindus who don't give a cr@p". Saves us the trouble of doing anything. Better to let the "topic" of this Social Media Watch thread focus on an endless, one-point agenda of complaining that Social Media companies treat Hindus and India unfairly.
Then that is something the Indians of NA (whosoever is bothered et al) and the current Indian establishment need to get together to fix. I wonder if they can, but at least its worth a try.
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