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It all started in January this year, when, out of the blue, a completely new and unrelated clause was added as a postscript to the draft online gaming rules. The clause proposed that the Centres Press Information Bureau can flag and instruct online intermediaries if a piece of information online relating to the government was deemed as fake. Intermediaries would then have to act and take it down.

On Thursday, that proposal was notified by the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Though the reference to the PIB was removed in the final rules, with the government saying it will notify a fact-check unit, the spirit of the legislation remained the same.

As a consequence, online intermediaries social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and internet service providers like Airtel and Jio will be faced to make a key decision: whether to abide by the government fact-check units version of the truth and take down any content the unit labels as fake, or decide not to take the content down and risk facing litigation.

While the government is billing it as an important measure to curb some amount of misinformation on the Internet, critics are calling it a tool to widen the scope of online censorship in the country, asking the Centre to withdraw them.

Experts believe that the rules could potentially impact a range of stakeholders, including opposition political parties and journalists. Unsurprisingly, the Congress and several other Opposition parties, including the TMC, RJD and CPI(M), have come down heavily on the government over its decision. So have digital rights activists and press associations like the Editors Guild of India, which has called the rules draconian.

Studies have shown that misinformation is a big issue on every major social media platform. In many cases, it is the content that most often goes viral on these sites, thanks to their own algorithms, and users with varying motivations who share such information. But, these platforms have also become an important tool for people particularly from marginalised groups to exercise their right to free speech.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar has assured that the government-backed fact check body will work in a credible way, in a bid to address the concerns. When we notify the agency, we will certainly be very clear that any doubts in the mind of people that the power will be misused on behalf of the government will be addressed when we notify the agency. There will be a list of dos and donts that it will have to adhere to, he earlier told The Indian Express.

Unfortunately, there is a high probability that this will be used to suppress free speech and stifle criticism of the Union government, and its policies. This may happen today, tomorrow, or ten years in the future, but once there are rules/laws which can be misused, selectively enforced, they will, Prateek Waghre, policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation told The Indian Express.

The issue at hand is complex. To break it down, it is first important to understand what these rules are not: these fresh amendments do not give the Centre direct powers to order content takedowns. It already enjoys that authority and exercises it frequently under Section 69 (A) of the IT Act, 2000.

However, what the rules say is that intermediaries will have to make reasonable efforts to not host content that will be marked as fake or false or misleading by the governments to-be-notified fact-check unit if they wish to retain their safe harbour, which is legal immunity from third-party content.

The question that arises then is if social media companies will exercise their agency to decide whether they should let a piece of content labelled fake by the government on their platform. If they do, they could lose safe harbour and attract a lawsuit; and if they dont, they will become party to a censorship exercise.

In plain English, it means that if they choose to continue hosting the content despite it being labelled as misleading, they will lose their safe harbour, which would open an option for the government to take them to court, an option that was previously unavailable. Digital rights experts believe that social media companies will err on the side of caution.

Namrata Maheshwari, Asia Pacific policy counsel for the global rights body Access Now said that if platforms have to make the choice between removing content flagged by the government, and being taken to court, they are most likely to choose the former. Litigation, and potentially several cases in multiple courts, would simply be too resource-intensive and high-risk. For its part, the government has tried to circumvent the concerns by saying that the fact-check body will follow a list of d0s and donts and adhere to standards of fact-checking. The standards, however, are currently not known.

There is also a concern around the government changing course on different provisions in the same law. Earlier this year, it established three committees that would hear appeals filed by users of social media companies if they feel that their grievances have not been satisfactorily dealt with by the companies officials.

The idea here was that not everyone might have the option to go to court to challenge content moderation decisions taken by platforms, and hence there needs to be a forum which can offer an additional avenue of recourse to users. But the new rules point to a dichotomy. For government-branded misleading content that has been taken down by a platform, the entity or person who posted it will have no option but to go to court should she decide to appeal the result. There is no in-between.

If a court challenge is the only recourse available to aggrieved parties, then the net result of this amendment is that it has given the government a shortcut to take content down, while increasing the burden on potentially aggrieved parties, Waghre said.

The overarching question around the new rules is if the government should, and can, be the judge, jury and executioner. The governments argument is that since the rules concern misinformation around businesses of the Centre, it is the most well placed to take a call on content that relates to it, since only it has the right data to prove its case.

Critics have, however, pointed to a potential conflict of interest that might arise when a government-appointed body has the final say in information directly related to the government. The independence of the body had been called into question.

for a fact-checking setup to be credible, it must be independent, possess the necessary capacity (technical, journalistic, etc.) to verify information, have an established track-record, and most importantly, not have a conflict of interest about the accuracy of the content it is supposed to vet, Waghre said.

The claim that only the government has the data to prove whether information about it is true or false reflects the need for it to be more open, transparent, objective in its own assessments about its performance so that these determinations can be made independently, he added.

Read more:
Govt says fact-check body to curb misinformation, critics allege censorship - The Indian Express

Books

Opponents say memoir The Courage to Be Free, published in February, violates law governor signed last year

Democrats in Florida are attempting to use a state law that censors books in public schools against the governor who signed it, Ron DeSantis, by asking schools to review or ban the Republican governors own book, The Courage to Be Free.

The very trap he set for others is the one that he set for himself, Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic minority leader in the Florida statehouse, told the Daily Beast.

DeSantis published The Courage to Be Free in February, in what was widely seen as an opening shot in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He has said he wrote the book himself.

Seeking to compete with Donald Trump who enjoys convincing leads in polling DeSantis has established himself as a ruthless culture warrior, willing to use government power against opposing interests and viewpoints.

He signed the law regarding books in schools last year. It includes guidelines for content deemed inappropriate on grounds of race, sexuality, gender and depictions of violence.

But the law has run into problems over interpretations of its language, not least when a childrens book about Roberto Clemente, a baseball legend who faced racial discrimination, landed at the centre of national controversy.

Seeking to take advantage of such uncertainties, Florida Democrats are highlighting instances of language in DeSantiss book which they contend could violate his own guidelines.

As reported by the Beast, in The Courage to Be Free, DeSantis use[s] the terms woke and gender ideology 46 times and 10 times respectively, both of which could constitute divisive concepts the governor has argued should stay out of curricula up to the college level.

DeSantis also claims students have been forced to chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice and, as well as describing violence at Black Lives Matter protests, cites a video showing dead black children, dramatically warning about racist police and state-sanctioned violence.

DeSantis also describes the 2017 mass shooting at congressional baseball practice in which Steve Scalise, a senior Republican, was seriously wounded.

Such passages, Democrats contend (in what the Florida publisher Peter Schorsch called a clever bit of trolling), could fall foul of the governors own rules.

According to the Beast, only one school district initially responded to Democrats complaints. Marion county, near Orlando, said no public school there possessed the governors book.

Driskell told the Beast: Were leaning into one of [DeSantiss] weaknesses.

If America doesnt want Floridas present reality to become Americas future reality, people need to know what its like here. This is our way of fighting back, but also highlighting how ridiculous some of this becomes, right?

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Democrats bid to use censorship law against DeSantis and ban his book - The Guardian

It was intriguing to read the commentary, The governments censorship by proxy appearing as an opinion column by Jacob Sullum in the March 28 edition. Although the column asserted that there is evidence of government collusion in public censorship, I believe that assertion is still unproven, while admittedly compelling.

Apparently I suffered a perplexing example of related censorship described in that commentary. Over the past 90 days on behalf of the Center for a Sustainable Coast I have been posting and attempting to promote articles prioritizing clean energy and reducing carbon emissions as a means to rapidly curb climate change.

When attempting to boost these posts by paying Facebook to push the information out to other FB users, the Meta Ad Center repeatedly refused to allow me to do it, advising that Im not approved to receive ad support for endorsing political (government) policy. How commonly Facebook administrators prohibit ads promoting well-founded public policy reforms remain unknown. In any case, restricting this use of social media unjustifiably handicaps well-meaning. nonprofit advocacy groups that are seeking to serve the common good.

Consider the blatantly biased and repressive contradiction that the 2010 Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision sanctions billions in corporate spending on political and policy campaigns by classifying it as constitutionally protected free speech, while modestly priced Facebook ads promoting policy reforms are being prohibited.

When online platform providers like Meta unfairly impede the responsible use of social media, a gag-order effect results, favoring corporate agendas by thwarting opposing viewpoints thereby hiding and cultivating inconvenient truths.

Center for a Sustainable Coast

Original post:
Censorship by subversive means | Letters to the Editor ... - Brunswick News

India

Canadian politician, poet, an India MP and journalists are among 120 accounts that have been withheld

Yashraj Sharma in Srinagar

Twitter has been accused of bowing to government pressure in India by blocking scores of prominent journalists, politicians and activists from its platform in recent weeks.

The Indian government issued notices to Twitter to remove people in the aftermath of an internet shutdown in Punjab during the search for a fugitive Sikh separatist leader.

Twitter agreed to block more than 120 accounts, including the Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh, the Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, several journalists and an Indian MP. Twitter also blocked the handle of the BBCs Punjabi bureau.

Jaskaran Sandhu, the Toronto-based co-founder of Baaz News, an outlet focused on the Sikh diaspora, received an email from Twitter on 21 March that said his account had been withheld in India. In the email, seen by the Guardian, no specific tweet or activity by Sandhu was cited by Twitter for its action.

The Indian government has made it a norm to take draconian measures and crack down on dissent coming from Sikh or other minority communities, Sandhu said. Twitters actions are just another example [that imply] civil liberties and democratic rights are under attack.

My entire account, not any tweet, has been banned in India. It is blanket censorship. And there is absolute silence from Twitter on this.

Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit organisation, has accused the prime minister Narendra Modis government of driving India toward authoritarianism and in 2021 downgraded Indias status from free to partly free.

India, the third-largest market for Twitter after the US and Japan, is proving to be one of its biggest challenges. Responding to a tweet about censorship in India, Elon Musk, who completed a takeover of Twitter in October and calls himself a free speech absolutist, tweeted: It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.

Social media platforms including Twitter had been seen as one of the remaining avenues for Indian people to express dissent, after traditional media houses largely caved in to pressure from the government to toe its line.

Twitter sued the government in July over takedown orders, after the government introduced legislation in 2021 aimed at regulating every form of digital content, including online news, social media, and streaming platforms and empowering itself to remove content it deemed objectionable.

Prateek Waghre, the policy director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, said much of the content being withheld was reportage that did not portray the government in a positive light. There is no contention. It is just absurd, he added.

Since his takeover, Musk has reportedly slashed Twitters workforce by 90% in India. There is a question if Twitter still has people to vet these requests, Waghre said. The question is also on the willingness of a pushback, which has certainly reduced [since Musk takeover].

Raqib Hameed Naik, the founder of Hindutva Watch, a US-based site that tracks hate crimes in India, described the situation as very grim.

Big tech has completely surrendered to the authoritarian regime of PM Narendra Modi, he said. Twitters conduct in India sets a worrying trend of silencing media, critics and dissenters worldwide.

Sandhu said he was not optimistic about Indias ability to uphold minimal requirements for a healthy democracy, describing the system as rotten to the core.

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Twitter accused of censorship in India as it blocks Modi critics - The Guardian

A bill making its way through Florida's Legislature would expand the state's censorship of discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity all the way up through eighth grade and, in addition, would specify that charter schools are included in the ban.

This attack on educational freedom comes just days after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law H.B. 1, which expanded school choice to all Florida students. It's a reminder that when some (but not all) conservatives and Republicans talk about "school choice" and "parents' rights," they have a limited view of what those choices should be and which parents should have rights.

H.B. 1069, which passed the state's House on Friday, would staple some new rules onto H.B. 1557, the law passed in 2022 that censored any discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and restricted it in other grades. H.B. 1069 expands the censorship from pre-K all the way up to eighth grade. And while proponents of this type of legislation have insisted that this is all about giving parents control over their children's education, one simple line of text will undermine that entire argument if this bill is signed into law: "This subparagraph applies to charter schools."

All of this is in addition to the latest move by the state's Department of Education to implement regulations that apply a greater level of censorship to all discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades.

What makes charter schools so valuable is that they give families the freedom to pursue education that meets their children's needs and is free from overly restrictive, one-size-fits-all lesson plans. Families can find charter schools that cater to special needs children or that only focus on certain subjects. There are also a small number of charter schools designed for families with LGBT parents or children.

H.B. 1069 essentially declares that certain types of families will be denied the educational freedom offered by charter schools by censoring which topics can be taught. Politicians who actually believe in "parents' rights" and school choice should be very much opposed to this ban. If parents want their children to learn about LGBT issues in schools, it should not be for a group of conservatives in Tallahassee to tell them no.

In a similar vein, another part of H.B. 1069 undermines the educational choices of families by amending the process of objecting to and removing books from schools. The bill requires that any book or material that is the subject of a removal request by a parent be removed and unavailable to students within five days for an investigation. This means the allegedly objectionable material will be unavailable to all students, not just those of the parents who object. The bill also adds a lengthy appeals processthat involves bringing in a special magistrate that the school district has to pay for if a parent continues to object. As Reason has pointed out before, these aren't "parents' rights" bills at all. These are "parents' veto" laws that allow some parents to control what other parents' kids have access to. And since the school district will have to pay to bring in a magistrate to fight against these objections, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the easiest thing for a school district to do is just remove anything any parent objects to.

H.B. 1069 passed the House easily Friday by a vote of 7735, and the Senate version is currently being reviewed by the Fiscal Policy Committee. If the bill passes, it will be a test of DeSantis' actual commitment to school choice. If he signs it into law, he's giving credence to any Democratic or progressive critic that says "school choice" is really a conservative plot to undermine public schools and school unions as a mechanism of control, not freedom. It is taking power away from parents and concentrating it in the hands of conservative lawmakers.

Continued here:
Conservative Florida Lawmakers Want LGBT Censorship Expanded ... - Reason