If you’re on this site, then the simplest assumption is that you are an internet user.
A little more complex but hopefully not far-fetched assumption is that you’ve found it against and despite the giant monopoly of Left Liberal eco system and Abrahmics’ chokehold on news media. And their constant, venomous anti-Hindu propaganda because of their equally constant state-of-war against Santani interests.
That war runs beyond their own websites and have reached on Social Media.
And there, not everyone is as lucky, or as persistent, like OpIndia had been.
A Hindu tailor named Kanhaiyalal was beheaded in Udaipur, Rajasthan, on 28 june 2022, for supporting ex-Spokes Person of BJP Nupur Sharma on WhatsApp (or it might’ve been his 8 year old son who expressed solidarity, details are hazy at the moment.) We all know, in fact OpIndia itself had established the chain of events that led to this: an alleged fact-checker with a dangerous propensity for spreading fake news, unleashed Islamist mobs on Nupur Sharma and in fact on several Indian cities, when he, and let me emphasize this, practically declared her guilty of committing Blasphemy before Indian Courts had to decide the matter one way or the other.
That should’ve been, before anything else, contempt of court. Which wouldn’t have been worthy of being called out otherwise but in this case, it had led to riots, arson, and now a gruseome beheading of a Hindu man by 2 Islamists in ISIS style.
Questions that need to be asked
Who’d be responsible for all this carnage if Nupur Sharma is proved not guilty of blasphemy in an Indian Court?
Who’d be responsible for endangering our Nation’s hard won good relations with arab world if she didn’t do something for which Left Liberal eco system and Abrhamics held a media (now violent) trial and declared her guilty?
And even if the court finds her guilty, It’ll be an Indian court’s decision. Who gave the alleged fact checker the authority to decide it, or for that matter other anti-Hindu people, local or foreigner, if she’s guilty or not?
In fact that’s the same mistake crores of left-liberals and Islamists are making now when playing victim card – when alleged fact checker was arrested for hurting Hindu religious sentiments – and even before that, hailing him as someone who calls out “Hate Speech” (never mind that technically, he’s accused of that crime himself now.) Who gave them to right or even authority to judge whether someone’s speech is hate-speech or not?
So the question is: Shouldn’t the government have exercised its authority and asked the Social Media sites to remove that problematic content and if appropriate, ban the account? Despite so many people calling out the dangerous path alleged fact checker had chosen to tread in his anti-Hindu hatred, by playing judge and declaring Nupur Sharma guilty of blasphemy before Court had the opportunity to consider all the facts?
Why leave it to Social Media?
Is it because they’re celebrities among anti-nationals?
Because there’s another example. A few days ago, donation fraud accused alleged journalist Rana Ayyub’s 1 tweet, just 1, about completely lawful survey of Gyanvapi disputed structure, was withheld in India on a Legal demand from government. And all the usual anti nationals of left-liberal eco-system and Abrhamics jumped the gun to scream about censorship.
But this is not about the expected response from her fellow anti-nationals. This is about what the government did?
Which begs the question:
Why one celebrity anti-national is treated differently than the other?
And why is action delayed so much anyway? Both, in case of alleged journalist and alleged fact-checker.
Now that, is something for which I think celebrity status could’ve influenced the hesitation.
So the final question, is this: What about common people? What about their complaints? Why shouldn’t government be bound and required to act quickly and decisively, in a manner that does not discriminate among Indian Citizens in violation of Article 14 of our constitution: Equality before the law? Both, in case of content removal and content restoration.
The danger of trusting ever-changing Big Tech.
Big Tech has gone far left and had become part of that anti hindu / anti national eco-system. As I write this, there’s massive upheaval in their ivory towers, because a billionaire has bought Twitter. The deal is yet to come fully into effect. But people on the right, or anyone sane in general, are everywhere rejoicing.
Good riddance to that “woke mind virus”, as the buyer itself put it. Or at least lets celebrate for regaining the freedom to call it out.
Freedom.
Now that’s a giant word.
They have, on both right and left, started debating what would happen to Donald Trump now? Elon Musk, the new owner of twitter, had hinted that he’d reverse the ban on him. Who knows?
The point is Freedom.
In the name of which all major social media companies had deplatformed a sitting president of the world’s biggest Super Power, Donald Trump.
Why?
Because his speech, according to them, led to a situation where common american people’s biggest symbol of freedom, their Capitol Hill, was attacked. And a democratic process of vote-counting was allegedly threatened.
Freedom of USA Vs. Freedom of India.
Left-Liberal eco system has almost unanimously hailed the decision of Big Tech. Trump supporters were called traitors. Sedition charges, a historical rarity in America (or so they say) and frequently denounced in India, were in fact, demanded by foreign left liberals and some of them actually pressed against people.
That was for 6 January 2020.
An year later, on 26 January 2021, a much bigger mob of alleged farmers led an attack on India’s Symbol of Freedom, the Red Fort, on a day that’s celebrated because its the day Constitution of India came into force.
It turned out a tool-kit of seditious conspiracy was in play, Co-Authored by an far-left eco-activist Disha Ravi, with equal support from Khalistanis like Mo Dhlaiwal and Anita Lal but also from entitled international brats like Greta thunberg, Rihanna and Mia Khalifa, a toolkit which was choke full of not just fake news but extremely dangerous material, like hashtags of ‘Modi plnanning farmers genocide’.
Given the sensitivity of the situation, Indian government asked twitter to block 250 such handles. But twitter, which had acted on its own to deplatform a man like Donald Trump, refused to follow Indian government’s order saying it’d “violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law.”
That’s a major point that needs to be explored.
But before that, lets all remember that lots of things have happened even before and after that giant hypocrisy.
A completely non-exhaustive list of social media and Big Tech’s anti Hindu bias.
OpIndia facebook pages have themselves faced the wrath of Big Tech. And it wasn’ t the 1st time they’d done a report on it either.
In may last year, government asked twitter to remove a “manipulated media tag” about yet another tool-kit, this time made by Congress, to malign BJP about pandemic, using “friendly journalists” and “influencers”. Twitter again dragged its heels, which led to yet another stand off.
But twitter did not put a “manipulated media” tag when that infamous loni gaziabad assault case happened, where an old man abdul samad saifi had his beard cut in a dispute regarding personal enmity but alleged fact checkers and journalists (perhaps the same ones congress referred to in its tool kit) tried to give it a communal color by saying it was done because he was a Muslim and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram.’ That one involved the vicious anti-Hindu propagandist websites like the Wire and Alt-news which rely on alternate facts as truths, donation fraud accused Rana Ayyub, out-of-job actress Swara Bhaskar, Saba Naqvi, Sharjeel Usmani, Salman Nizami and so many others. That incident was so big that even twitter itself was dragged to court.
One of Bollywood’s few right wing celebrity acting icons (even though her commitment has come under suspicion since she hosted Ekta kapoor’s Lock Upp which involved, among other things, the rabid anti-Hindu alleged comedian Munwwar Faruqi), Kangna Ranaut was summarily deplatformed by twitter. She and her sister both.
Action was also taken by Big Tech against Kashmiri Pandit genocide survivor Aarti Tikoo Singh and her brother, for speaking against targeted killing of Hindus by Islamist terrorists. Aarti ji, who had no intention of this taking lying down, moved Delhi High Court, after which twitter cowed and suddenly decided she hadn’t broken any community guidelines.
As far as court is concerned, famous twitter account holders Skin Doctor, Wokeflix, Megh Bulletin, Befitting Facts also had moved court when twitter took biased decisions to remove them from the platform just because they were right wing or nationalists.
But the biggest question is this:
All these cases got the limelight because they’re celebrities. They’re powerful people. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of other people follow them.
Common people.
Like you, who is reading this article; or me, who’s hoping that OpIndia considers it big enough to allow it on their main page.
What about people like us?
Celebrities can generate enough traction among their fans that Big Tech would capitulate on its own. If not, they can move courts.
How many of us can really avail either of those options when Big Tech deletes our tweets, posts, reels, memes, comments, whatever?
How many of times have you wondered when you’ve become victim of mass-reporting; or heck, just a single report; or perhaps not even that, because Big Tech decided your content violated their opaque community guidelines but at at the same time, you can see Left Liberal eco system and Abrahmics’s rabid anti-Hindu content escaping not just any kind of voluntary scrutiny by Big Tech but also your reports bringing it to their attention.
How many times have you felt helpless? And prayed to Bhagwan for a solution to anti-Hindu bias prevalent in the world, that, more often than not, leads to their killings by Islamists terrorists, and not just in Kashmir.
Democracy, Freedom of Expression, Equality before the Law and Social Media.
Let’s finally circle back to February 2021 and twitter’s claims that blocking some people’s accounts would “violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law”.
1st of all, Twitter – or for that matter any Social Media company, is not, repeat, not the guarantor of protection of any Fundamental Rights under Indian constitution.
As Meta pointed out in its affidavit to the court: “Meta does not perform an inalienable sovereign function.”
Damn right, they don’t!
But where they’re failing, is this part: “Meta is a private party, and Instagram users in India enter into an agreement with Meta when they register to use the Instagram Service. The Instagram Service is a free and voluntary platform, and petitioner (Wokeflix) has no fundamental right to use it.”
And this: “Petitioner is erroneously trying to define Meta’s action of disabling their post and account as a quasi-judicial act, when it is merely action taken in accordance with a private contract and has resulted in a contractual dispute between two private parties. Given that the relationship between Meta and petitioner is purely contractual, and that Meta does not have judicial or quasi-judicial authority, petitioner’s attempt to obtain reliefs in the nature of certiorari should be denied,” Meta added.
Except they’re missing a crucial point: No contract can run afoul of relevant regulation under which it comes. And Social Media companies are not like just any other company. We’ve seen how they can affect even election outcomes. But even before that became apparent, Social Media companies on internet were “allowed” to come into existence on a single promise, called “safe harbor principles,” which simply means this: That they’d act as an intermediary. They’ll not act as an interfere-y. They’ll not alter the content of the user in any way, shape or form. Only then, can they be absolved from any liability from the content user is posting on their platform. If they started interfering with the content of the user – like deleting it on their own, amplifying (or minimizing) its reach, banning a user randomly – they become a “Publisher.” And hence they have to comply with all the laws and regulation that comes with becoming a publisher. (Let me tell you, it involves criminal prosecution and even jail time.)
So technically, what should happen on social media, is zero moderation from the company’s side. Somebody has a problem with someone else’s content, they can complain to government or take it to the court. Those two institutions will decide what action to take regarding people’s speech. Not the social media company. That way, equality before the law is maintained as it should be.
So far, Social Media companies have been blatantly violating this solemn promise. They’re moderating user’s content according to their own whims and fancies while also claiming immunity from assuming any legal responsibility for the user’s content. That not just violates, but practically nukes the sacred notion of equality before the law, of both the users of social media companies and regular publishers.
On 25 February 2021 – a month after that blotch on our constitution that was Republic Day Riots – government announced a comprehensive updated regulation regarding Social Media Intermediaries, called IT Rules 2021. Twitter had initially refused to follow even that. That’s why they’ve been dragged to the court regarding Loni Gaziabad assault case hot on the disputed beard of Abdul Samad Saifi. Because by refusing to follow IT Rules 2021, their protection from the law of the land under safe harbor principle was gone. They’ve been treated as publisher, and hence liable for all the criminal content on their platform.
And that’s exactly why, they had to eventually comply with the IT Rules 2021, no matter how much they grumbled about it.
Under those rules it was declared that any Social Media Intermediary, who has total of 50 lakh users or more, across all of its services/apps, will be considered a ‘Significant Social Media intermediary’. And they have to do additional due diligence.
That included appointing 3 people, who must be employees of the company and resident of the India:
- Chief Compliance Officer: Tasked with ensuring SMI is complying with all Indian laws.
- Nodal Contact Person: This will be the person government and courts will contact in case of… well, any case.
- Grievance Redressal Officer: Person who’ll acknowledge and resolve all grievances of social media users, both regarding removal and restoration of their content.
There were other guidelines but these 3 were main, and especially the last one.
That was the user-facing aspect of the regulation.
Plus, there were supposed to be two more tiers if the users were dissatisfied with the decision of Grievance Redressal Officer.
1.) A self regulation authority as tier 2 with a retired supreme court or high court Judge as its chair person.
2) An inter ministerial committee as final tier 3.
Unfortunately tier 2 and 3 never came to the rescue of Indian users because they were never formed in the 1st place. And the tier 1, grievance redressal officer, who, by the IT rules 2021 itself, was required to be an employee of the company, would be acting as the regular biased moderation as before, because remember: They take their salary from the company, so they have no reason to go against its ideology in the name of fairness.
A ray of hope
Seeing the inefficient, if not blatant disregard, for the regulation, government has decided to update the IT Rules 2021.
Under the proposed amendment, government has made 2 crucial changes.
First is the explicit mention of this: “the intermediary shall respect the rights accorded to the citizens under the Constitution of India.”
The second is a Grievance Appellate Committee to which anyone can raise their complaint, if they’re dis-satisfied with the decision of the Grievance Redressal Officer. This committee will have to give its decision with in 30 days, and all of its decisions will be binding on Social Media companies. Furthermore, if anyone is dis-satisfied with even the decision of Grievance Appellate Committee, they can approach the court against it.
Mark my words, this is the single biggest change social media sphere has ever experienced.
This way, a route to equality before the law has been established. As well as making sure, that SMIs don’t censure people beyond the reasonable restrictions defined under Article 19.2 of the Indian Constitution. In that, its the same measure as the proposed polish regulation on social media.
And that’s how it should be.
Content that doesn’t violate national law, should remain where it is in national cybersphere.
If it does, then it should go, at least from the national cybersphere, no matter what any foreigner’s moderation rules say.
And that right there, is what this is all about.
Freedom.
Freedom from colonialism.
Freedom to choose our own fates.
Freedom to have our nation and live by its laws, rather than the laws foreigners impose upon us.
And let me tell you, it is not just idealistic rhetoric. Its very real and very close to you and me.
Don’t believe me?
Okay.
Let me ask you a question: How many of you have actually taken 5 minutes out of your busy lives and bothered to read ‘terms and conditions / user agreement’ of foreign Big Tech / Social Media you daily use?
You haven’t?
Fine, but I have.
And if you haven’t, then I suggest you read them, and then come tell me which court and which jurisdiction Big Tech agrees to submitting itself to. And by extension, asking you to agree to submit to that particular jurisdiction as well, in case of any dispute regarding the ‘Contract between 2 private entities.’
Most of the time it’ll be some court in California, USA (sometimes Europe.) And unless Akhand Bharat involves Silicon Valley, and USA/EU had decided to already gift itself to us, out of some generosity regarding racism and joint hatred for British, the law of USA/EU will apply in case of a dispute between you and social media, rather than the law of India.
Those are the terms and conditions to which you hastily ticked on ‘I agree’ box. Submitting yourself to foreign rule.
So tell me, what kind of a situation is this where a company will be allowed to come in India, do its business with Indian users, but the company itself will live by Foreign laws?
Does the name ‘East India Company’ rings a bell here?
A request with folded hands
There’s one last point I’d like to make, a request.
Maybe government introduced IT Rules 2021 just a month after Republic Day Riots, but the process for it had started way before. 2018 in fact. Government had asked public comments on it from 24/12/2018.
Do you know how many people gave their opinion before such a crucial policy came into effect?
Only 171!
and 80 counter comments to those 171!
Imagine that!
Based on these mere 250 or so suggestions, government formulated a policy that was going to decide fates of crores of Indians. Most of them young. So its not some old people talking about oblique and boring business law. Its about how you’ll use Instagram, what you’re allowed to say on Twitter and forward on WhatsApp.
Perhaps that’s why IT Rules 2021 proved insufficient. Because people themselves didn’t pitch in.
Today, government has again invited public comments on proposed amendment to IT Rules.
With folded hands, I want to request all my fellow young Indians and especially the Right Wing nationalists, let the government know what you think about Big Tech’s (mostly biased) moderation and how it should be handled in India? Any other suggestion you might have about it as well.
Don’t think ‘what good it’ll do?’ Its not some random complaint to a random government functionary. Its part of the democratic process. Emails sent to them will be used in deciding ‘policy’ regarding social media. It’ll be a matter of public record. If enough of you said one thing, and government still decided to do something that favors Left Liberal eco system and Abrahmics, then it’ll have to answer uncomfortable questions later on. Heck, when that anti-Hindu ‘ Dismantling Global Hindutva’ conference in USA was organized by rabid anti-Hindu haters, HAF organized a campaign that saw Indian People sending so many emails of protest to the universities that backed this anti-Hindu conference, it crashed email servers for some of them!
We get so charged up about something that’s technically happening on foreign soil and hence under foreign jurisdiction, but we don’t have time to tell what we think, to an entity that’s legally bound to answer to We, The People of India? Something that could actually make a difference towards reducing this mass, hysterical anti-Hindu hatred online?
If nothing else, it’ll establish a direct link for governmental responsibility, for not removing incendiary content that could result in the beheadings of other Kanhaiyalals, who merely supported other Nupur Sharmas.
So please, I urge everyone: take a little time to decide what you think about these amendment to IT Rules; what you want against Big Tech moderation; write it down on an M.S. Word or PDF file and then send it to these 2 emails Ministry has provided :
The last date is 06-July-2022.
In case you’re unsure, I’ve compiled a list of 16 suggestions here . On archive. Its an MS Word file which I sent as suggestion to MeitY regarding the proposed amendment a little while ago. Some of the these suggestions include their explicit mentioning in terms and conditions that they’ll abide by Indian laws in case of Indian users. Others deal with fines in case they act biased. Still others implore upon government to not include so-called Civil Society or anyone that has a vested interest in trampling other’s freedom of speech while amplifying its own.
By no means its everything there is. You are free to go through these suggestions, add or subtract as you wish. Or come up with a your own. Maybe you want to increase the fine on Big Tech in case of violations, or perhaps you want to add criminal liability. Or something completely different. Whatever you decide, do let the government know. If you are satisfied by my suggestions only, then just send them on to the Ministry on the above emails.
Remember: The more you pitch in, the more data government will have about ‘Public Opinion.’ And the better it’ll be able to formulate policy. Or that’s how its supposed to be in a democracy.
We can only do our part as Citizens of this glorious, independent and sovereign nation called India. And that’s all we need to do.
Remember what Bhagwan Krishna had said: You can only do your karma, let the fruits of it be decided by me.
So please, send those emails.
And one last request to editors of OpIndia: Please, I beg you. Use your reach, among blue ticks and commoners, to let them know that we have this one chance to rein in the Big Tech in India. Amplify the message. Urge them to send the emails containing their thoughts about big tech’s biased moderation and the solutions in the proposed amendment. It doesn’t have to be this post. Perhaps you can write a better one. I’m only interested in securing everyone’s freedom of expression as defined under Article 19.1 of India. So that no body, especially Hindus, have to suffer from Digital colonialism in Free India.
You rose as the voice of common people against Lutyens Elite. Help us mango men and women survive the onslaught of Left Liberal eco system and Abrahmics on Social Media.
Thank you.
