[ad_1]
Like the democracy of India day by day it is handed over to Narendra Modi, whose social media platforms have operated in place of the free press. As the Reporters Without Borders recently stated, Indian journalists “if they criticize the government, they risk dismissal”. Since Modik took office in 2014, India has been ranked in the World Press Freedom Index fallen every year, plain In 142 (180 countries and regions) between 2020 and 2021.
But Modi is effectively cracking down on social media as a lifeline, thanks to IT regulations called for by activists and concerned citizens in February. unconstitutional and undemocratic. The new rules give the Indian government more power to manage perception, forced by technology companies and video content providers. Social media platforms are demanding that the government respond to complaints about their online messages. “creatorIt’s basically “tagged content” end end-to-end encryption.
This elimination is compounded by the fact that US technology companies were bent over the Modi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. A few weeks before the rules were set, Twitter extended among other things, hundreds of accounts of journalists, media and politicians from opposition parties in protests against the country’s new agriculture laws, as well as the government blocking hundreds of tweets in favor of farmers. ”controversialA 21-year-old climate activist was also arrested in support of the protests for editing with Google Doc resources to protesters and people in favor of protests. When the police found out he had edited the document Google shared its data.
Technological giants located in America have long been exploiting the so-called global south. We have always it has been a good source of data and companies have calmed authoritarian regimes in exchange for this very new capital.
This is little digital colonialism: Where once the colonial powers sought natural resources, they now seek data.
If the platform giants do not follow the new regulations of the Indian government, they could lose a market of 1.3 billion people. It is clear that they are not willing to take the risk, regardless of the price that the citizens of India themselves pay.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Big Tech started making a take power in the global south there was more than just a deepening confidence in technology. It was about expanding the territory by taking advantage of opportunities with local partners.
April 2020, Facebook gained a 9.99 percent stake ($ 5.7 billion) on Reliance Industries ’Jio platforms, India’s largest mobile network provider. In November, WhatsApp it was finally launched payments in India. And in a year June this year, Google announced an Android phone in collaboration with Jio. In the first eight months of the pandemic, owner Mukhesh Ambani Reliance created wealth $ 22 billion.
More than money, however, as these new IT regulations apply, the gap between Big Tech’s presence in the West and how it is presented in India has widened. In the first case, people like Jack Dorsey took a strong stand against political figures like Donald Trump after the January 6 Capitol Uprising. Dorsey defend Banning Trump because of potential “offline harm”.
In the face of this, the heads of the BJP of India he tweeted In Trump’s favor, saying “if they do this with POTUS, they can do it for anyone” and “big tech companies are new oligarchs.” However, they need to know that these companies will leave themselves to the real new oligarchy.
India, a country with more and more (and historically). strained Hindu-Muslim relations, Was the tweet of a politician who linked terrorism to Islam removed only by his command own Government. The head of BJP’s social media also tweeted a video suggesting that the opposition party against the controversial Indian citizenship law was “protected”. false. That’s the tweet still without a label deemed false on the platform.
Why these inconsistencies? The question cannot be whether the governments of countries like India are solely responsible for the state of their democracies. This view, especially if limited to the global south, is naive and culturally imperialist. If the Cambridge Analytica scandal has taught the world anything, the data could lead to or shatter democratic elections anywhere.
[ad_2]
Source link
