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When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law. If the content violates Twitters rules, the content will be removed from the service, the spokesperson said. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only.

Some advocates have slammed the companies for complying with the order, citing Facebooks partnership with the Global Network Initiative, a coalition that seeks to limit online censorship by autocratic governments, and Twitters stated mission to serve the public conversation.

Facebook, Twitter, and other technology companies have a responsibility to respect human rights, including right to free speech, said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in an email interview. Online censorship can have a debilitating effect on dissent. It is important for companies to protect the human rights of their users and not censor information in violation of international standards.

Despite the Indian governments order, the companies should interpret and implement legal demands as narrowly as possible, to ensure the least possible restriction on expression, notify users, seek clarification or modification from authorities, and explore all legal options for challenge, Ganguly said.

But the choice by social media companies facing government demands isnt only a moral one but a business decision, too. India has more than 755 million internet users second in the world only to China making it an attractive market for U.S. companies. Modis use of the countrys digital regulation laws places the companies in an unenviable position.

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In India, Facebook and Twitter walk censorship tightrope with government - Roll Call

Former President Donald Trump told Fox Business on Thursday that Rudy Giuliani was "the greatest mayor in the history of New York and a great patriot. (April 29) AP Domestic

One of the nations largest states is taking on Big Tech.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is likely to sign into lawa bill that would prevent social media companies Facebook, Twitter and Googles YouTube from deplatforming politicians such as former President Donald Trump.

The bill was approved Thursday by the Republican-controlled state Legislature.

It would ordersocial media companies to publish standards with detailed definitions of when someone would be censored or blocked and makecompanies subject to as much as $250,000 daily fines for deplatforming a Florida candidate. The bill would requirea social media company to notify users within seven days that they could be censored, giving them time to correct posts.

Republican lawmakers in Florida said legislation is needed to curb the influence the nations leading social media companies have over the national conversation.

"What this bill is about is sending a loud message to Silicon Valley that they are not the absolute arbiters of truth," state Rep. John Snyder, a Republican from the Port St. Lucie area, said Wednesday, according to NBC News.

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Censorship or conspiracy theory?Trump supporters say Facebook and Twitter censor them, but conservatives still rule socialmedia

"What this bill does is send a loud message that the Constitution does not have an asterisk that says only certain speech is free and protected," he said.

The legislation is likely to face industry opposition.

This bill abandons conservative values, violates the First Amendment, and would force websites to host antisemitic, racist, and hateful content. Content moderation is crucial to an internet that is safe and valuable for families and Floridian small businesses, but this bill would undermine this important ecosystem, Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of trade group NetChoice, said in a statement to USA TODAY.

Szabo argued that the legislation would make it more difficult for conservatives to get their voices heard.

He told Florida lawmakers this monththat conservative speech has never been stronger.

No longer limited to a handful of newspapers or networks, conservative messages can now reach billions of people across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Gab, Parler, Rumbleand MeWe, Szabosaid. Weve seen the rise of conservative voices without having to beg for an op-ed in The Washington Post or New York Timesor a speaking slot on CNN. Social networks allow conservative voices to easily find conservative viewers.

Donald Trump was booted off social media after the Capitol riot by a mob of his supporters Jan. 6.(Photo: AP)

Conservatives intensified attacks on social media companies after the ejection of Trump and other conservatives in response tothe attack Jan. 6 on the U.S. Capitol.

DeSantis, a Republican and a Trump ally,condemned the oligarchs in Silicon Valley for deplatforming Trump and other conservatives.

Without citing evidence, DeSantis said Facebook, Twitter and YouTube use their size, advertising power and global reach to influence thought and play favorites being tougher on those who comment from the political right than left.

DeSantis revived his criticism after a roundtable he held in March was taken down from YouTube because the governor and scientists he invited were accused of airing COVID-19 misinformation.

Now accepting reader submissions: Creating a gaming community at USA TODAY

If conservatives want to remain on social media platforms, they should follow the rules, State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando-area Democrat, told NBC News.

"There's already a solution to deplatforming candidates on social media: Stop trafficking in conspiracy theories. That's the solution. Stop pushing misinformation if you're a candidate or an incumbent elected official. Stop retweeting QAnon. Stop lying on social media," Smith said.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/04/30/facebook-youtube-twitter-florida-ban-censor-trump-politicians/4897949001/

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Ban Trump? Not so fast. Florida is about to pass a law to stop Facebook and Twitter from censoring politicians - USA TODAY

As thousands of people die each day, the Modi government is cracking down on people criticizing it online.

Posted on April 29, 2021, at 5:05 p.m. ET

A worker adjusts a funeral pyre of those who died from COVID-19 during a mass cremation at a crematorium in New Delhi on April 29, 2021.

India, a country with 1.4 billion people, has been gripped by a deadly second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. But even as its healthcare system gasps for breath and its crematoriums burn with thousands of funeral pyres, its leaders are scrambling to censor the internet.

Last week, Indias IT ministry ordered Twitter to block more than 50 tweets from being seen in the country. Days later, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times of India reported that Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube had also taken down posts that were critical of the government. Over the last week, ordinary people running WhatsApp and Telegram groups to help people find medical oxygen and hospital beds have complained of threats demanding that they shut them down, and police in the state of Uttar Pradesh filed a complaint against a man who asked for medical oxygen for his dying grandfather on Twitter, claiming that he was spreading misleading information. On Wednesday, posts with the hashtag #ResignModi disappeared from Facebook for a few hours. And even though the company restored it and claimed that the Indian government didnt ask for it to be censored, it didnt provide details about why the hashtag had been blocked.

These incidents which happened within days of each other as criticism of Indias government reached a fever pitch highlight the shrinking space for dissent in the worlds largest democracy. As social unrest against an increasingly authoritarian government grows, it has cracked down on social media, one of the last free spaces remaining for citizens to express their opinions. New regulations have given the government broad powers to restrict content, forcing US tech platforms, which count India as a key market, to strike a balance between growth and free expression.

This isnt the first time that an Indian government has attempted to censor speech online. In 2012, before Modi came to power, Indias United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government ordered internet service providers to block more than a dozen Twitter accounts, including those belonging to people from the right wing.

In February, Indias government ordered Twitter to take down more than 250 tweets that criticized how the government handled protests over new agricultural laws. Although Twitter blocked most of the accounts, it unblocked the ones belonging to journalists, activists, and politicians, despite jail threats from the Indian government.

Indias current internet censorship ties directly into social criticism of the governments policies.

But now, there is an increase in the frequency and scale of the censorship that is being demanded, Apar Gupta, director of digital rights organization Internet Freedom Foundation, told BuzzFeed News. Indias current internet censorship ties directly into social criticism of the governments policies.

Over the weekend, Indias IT ministry attempted to explain its reasoning in an unsigned Word document it shared with the press, and which was accessed by BuzzFeed News.

The [g]overnment welcomes criticisms, genuine requests for help as well as suggestions in the collective fight against COVID19, the note said. But it is necessary to take action against those users who are misusing social media during this grave humanitarian crisis for unethical purposes.

The ministry cited a handful of the 53 tweets that it ordered to be blocked as examples of problematic content. There are four tweets that call the coronavirus pandemic a conspiracy theory, and four more containing old and unrelated visuals of patients and dead bodies. At least two of these four instances are genuine examples of misinformation, fact-checkers from Indian outlets Alt News and Newschecker who examined the images told BuzzFeed News.

In an example of how thin the line between removing dangerous rumors and censoring political expression can be, the ministry offered no explanations for any other content ordered down. A BuzzFeed News examination of the rest of the restricted tweets showed that at least some of them appeared to make legitimate criticisms of Indias prime minister. One of the restricted tweets, for instance, belongs to Moloy Ghatak, a minister from the state of West Bengal. He accuses Modi of mismanaging the pandemic and exporting vaccines when theres a shortage in India.

Neither Ghatak nor the IT ministry responded to requests for comment

One of the tweets restricted in India belonged to Pawan Khera, a national spokesperson of the Indian National Congress, Indias main opposition party. The tweet, which was posted on April 12, shows pictures from the Kumbh Mela, a religious Hindu gathering held earlier this month during which millions of people bathed in a river even as coronavirus cases were rapidly rising. Both ordinary Indians and the global press have criticized Indias government for allowing the gathering to happen. In his tweet, Khera contrasts Indias lack of reaction to the Kumbh Mela with an incident last year, when members of a Muslim gathering were accused of spreading the coronavirus when the country had fewer than 1,000 confirmed cases.

Why was my tweet withheld? Khera told BuzzFeed News. Thats the answer I need from the government of India.

What laws am I violating? What rumors am I spreading? Where did I cause panic? These are the questions I need answered, said Khera, who sent a legal request to the IT ministry and Twitter this week.

If I dont hear back from them, Ill take them to court.

If I dont hear back from them, Ill take them to court, he said. I need legal relief to protect my freedom of expression.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Experts said the ministrys note didnt provide sufficient justification for ordering social media platforms to censor posts. Since when did the government start sending takedown notices for misinformation? asked Pratik Sinha, editor of Alt News. And why have just these tweets been cited [out of 53]?

Social media platforms havent been the only places seeing a crackdown. Over the last few weeks, volunteer-run networks of WhatsApp and Telegram groups amplifying pleas for help, and getting people access to medical oxygen, lifesaving drugs, and hospital beds have sprung up around the country. But over the last few days, some of them have disbanded. According to a report on Indian news website the Quint, volunteers running these groups received calls from people claiming to be from the Delhi Police asking them to shut them down.

The Delhi Police denied this, but by then, people were spooked. A network of WhatsApp groups run by more than 300 volunteers disbanded days ago even though they didnt get a call. We decided not to take a chance, the founder of this group, who wished to remain anonymous, told BuzzFeed News. [I felt] frustration and anger.

Experts said one of the biggest problems in this situation is a lack of transparency from both the government and the platforms. Last week, Twitter revealed the details of the IT ministrys order on Lumen, a Harvard University database that lets companies disclose takedown notices from governments around the world. But Facebook, Instagram, and Google havent commented on alleged censorship in one of their largest markets, either to the public or to BuzzFeed News when asked.

They didnt even put out a public statement about this, said the Internet Freedom Foundations Gupta. The primary duty of transparency lies with the government, but there has been absolutely no transparency by the platforms.

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COVID-19 Is Devastating India. Its Government Is Trying To Censor Social Media. - BuzzFeed News

This story originally appeared on LX.com

It may be hard to picture today, but the Internet was originally conceived as a decentralized network of computers. Today web servers have been largely consolidated into the hands of five multi-billion-dollar corporations: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook. Yet there are several strong arguments for returning the Internet back to what its developers intended.

Each day, humans create around 2.5 EB [exabytes] of data as a byproduct of using the web roughly the size of one trillion iPhone photos and right now, most of it belongs to a handful of tech corporations. Sometimes web data is a key component to improving an app. Other times its the missing variable in an algorithm that organizes a social media feed. The current centralized web concentrates our user data on a handful of corporate servers; a decentralized web is designed to keep user data private.

In 2019, China's Ministry of Public Service blocked news accounts of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and in 2021, news of director Chloe Zhaos oscar win was censored on Chinese search engines and social media. Chinese citizens arent free to decide what content to read and watch online. A decentralized web is difficult to censor, because instead of blocking a single server, governments would need to block access to every node on the network. With a large enough network, that could be nearly impossible.

Of course if Internet infrastructure [cable and fiber lines] is centrally owned and managed, a regime could simply cut the fiber line. True decentralization isnt possible until the communications layer of the web, the network infrastructure, is no longer centrally managed.

With demand for web services growing, data centers are likely to grow accordingly. The current centralized web uses large data centers and some of these are less efficient than others. One aspect of decentralization, autonomy, could help reduce the webs carbon footprint.

ThreeFold is one blockchain project building a decentralized web. Developers say ThreeFolds network architecture creates a carbon-neutral, energy efficient Internet by replacing network engineers with automation; describing ThreeFolds peer-to-peer web as self healing and requiring zero people to maintain it.

It might seem strange to Americans reading this online, but the web is not widely available around the planet. If you have the web, you have an advantage. Information, goods and services are more available to communities with web access. This creates a loop where privilege enables more privilege, keeping offline communities at a disadvantage.

Fiber networks are expensive to install and not profitable for large corporations working in underprivileged countries. A decentralized web owned and operated by the people of any given community could provide opportunity to people living in areas without Internet access. Running the web from network nodes instead of a central access point reduces the cost of Internet infrastructure and could bring commerce and education to people who need it.

The networks that deliver the web are centrally owned and managed. Large telecoms bring fiber-optic networks to millions of Americans. OpenSecrets.org says in 2020, the top two telecoms in the US, AT&T and Verizon, spent $22 million influencing lawmakers on topics ranging fromprivacy to net neutrality. Right now, the web is controlled by corporate authorities who court lawmakers with money in efforts to alter our web and this happens without your consent.

In 2014, Facebook conducted a news feed experiment, manipulating algorithms to see if it had an emotional effect on people. The study was criticized by members of the National Academy of Sciences for not obtaining informed consent from people before subjecting them to experimentation. In 2018, a former Cambridge Analytica employee released documents detailing how the firm took user data from Facebook, and used it to create targeted political ads. Political campaigns have used data like this to stack our online feeds with content designed to influence our thoughts and actions including our votes.

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Censorship Battle Just One Critical Reason to Decentralize the Web - NBC Chicago

Netflix is aiming for a 20-fold increase in subscribers in India, but its journey in the nation has been bumpy. And now its getting a lot bumpier.

The Covid-19 crisis has forced film and TV production in Mumbaithe home of Bollywoodto shut down. According to Variety, Netflixs local productions are not only shut down in Mumbai, but also in Delhi and Lucknow. The company revealed on an earnings call this month that its back up and running safely in every country in the world except India and Brazil (pdf).

The shutdowns, of unknown duration, will thwart the momentum Netflix had been starting to build in India with its homegrown productions. Covid-19 wont last forever, and Bollywood will return to production eventually. Netflixs opportunity in India is immense, and the company is still committed to seeing it through. It just might take a lot longer than it planned.

Netflix is so interested in India because the movie-loving country (it produces 2,000 films per yearmore than the US) represents perhaps its biggest single-market opportunity since it started producing original content in 2015.

India is the worlds fastest growing streaming market, according to a 2020 report by PwC. Half of the countrys 1.4 billion peopleare under the age of 25, and by 2022, India is expected to have more than 800 million smartphone users. Netflixs expansion in India is part of a broader push throughout Asia, which has served as the source of much of the services subscription growth in the last few years.

The streaming service launched in the country in 2016, catering mostly to affluent, English-speaking consumers. It initially struggled to compete with cheaper entertainment options from the likes of Amazon, a brand thats long been popular with consumers in India, and Hotstar, which is now owned by Disney and was integrated into Disneys own streaming service, Disney+, last year.

In 2018, Netflix adjusted its India strategy to meet its bold vision. It invested more in local productions, offered a cheaper mobile-only plan (which the company said had better retention than it anticipated), and partnered with existing distributors like Reliance Jio to bring the service to new demographics. It also added Hindi to its interface and committed to more local-language productions, like the crime series Sacred Games, which debuted in 2018 and remains Netflixs most popular Indian show to date.

As of December, Netflix had about 5 million subscribers in Indiawell short of its 100 million goal. Executives have admitted they will continue to experiment with the strategy. India, were still figuring things out, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings said on the companys most recent earnings call. And so that investment takes some guts and forward-looking belief. This year, Netflix plans more than 40 original Indian movies and TV showssignificantly more than its output in most places outside North America.

But Netflix cant really afford to turn off thespigot of content it opened in India in 2018. Because the Netflix brand is not as well-known to many Indian consumers as some of its competitors, the company has tried to stay fresh in viewers minds with lots of new contentat least a few of which, the company hopes, will be hits, like Sacred Games. Throughout the pandemic, its done a very good job engaging its users in India.

The indefinite pause in production, however, will likely reduce the amount of new content Netflix subscribers in India see, and thus lessen the chances of a breakout cultural phenomenon. In the US, Netflixs subscription growth has slowed, which the company attributes directly to production pauses causing a lighter than usual slate of content.

Netflix has already nearly saturated the US market, so three months with weak content in the country wont be devastating. But, in India, a similar light slate could set the company back a long time in its quest to reach 100 million, especially when its competitors have such widespread recognition. Hotstar, for instance, is operated by the media conglomerate Star India, whose networks are in 90% of pay-TV homes in India.

Whenever Netflix does return to production in India, it will face much greater government scrutiny than when it first entered the country in 2016.

After shows like Sacred Games were accused of being vulgar by politicians aligned with prime minister Narendra Modi, Netflix and other streaming services began self-censoring some content, with the hopes of avoiding controversy and staving off regulation. Modis government has since changed the regulatory agency under which streaming companies operate, largely seen as an attempt to start clamping down on content on services like Netflix.

Such regulations could have a chilling effect on the thriving creative community in Bollywood. A number of filmmakers and actors in India told CNN last month that they are now walking on egg shells, worried not only that many of the countrys most provocative projects wont get off the ground now, but also that they could face jail time for just doing their jobs. Netflix in particular could struggle to replicate the success of Sacred Games in this stifling environment.

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Netflix's big plans in India may be slowed by Covid and censorship - Quartz