Dear Reader (excluding those of you unhealthily bothered by other peoples admittedly weird handiwork),

Stop me if youve heard this one before.

No, wait: You are powerless to stop me if youve heard this one before, hah! In 1970, Richard Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell to fill Abe Fortas seat on the Supreme Court. Critics charged that Carswell was a decidedly mediocre jurist. Sen. Roman Hruskas defense of Carswell and the nomination is considered a minor classic in political spin. In a TV interview, he said, Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, arent they? We cant have all Brandeises and Frankfurters and Cardozos.

I like this anecdote for a bunch of reasons. Hruska was a good man and he had a perfectly respectableat times even laudatorypolitical career. This episode is the only thing hes remembered for by those other than his friends and family and some Nebraska political junkies. It got ample space in his obituaries, and its a good cautionary tale about how small slips of the tongue can end up defining you.

Scattergories.

But what I really like about this story is how it mangles a way of thinking about representation. Theres a category error buried in it.

I dont like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophys entry on category errors because it reduces them to infelicitous statements. On the other hand, I do like its examples of the infelicity of category errors: The number two is blue, The theory of relativity is eating breakfast, or Green ideas sleep furiously.

I love statements like that because they expose how language can become visible to our brains when it makes connections between things we dont expect to be connected. For instance, there are a bunch of versions of the following joke:

Q: What is the difference between an orange?

A: A pencil. Because a vest has no sleeves.

If you laugh at this, its because your brain cant make sense of it, so you enjoy the absurdity. And I think part of that enjoyment stems from the recognition of how language drives how we think about stuff. We like to think language is bound up with rationality. The words we use align with reality, and reality is governed by reason in some fundamental sense: 2+2 = 4 because when I take two rocks and add two more rocks, I get four rocks. But language doesnt have to be bound by reason. I can say two plus two equals a duck, but, so far, reality cant make that happen. In other words, language can put distance between the world and our brains.

A more reliable form of humor points out connections between things we either dont see or thought we were the only ones to notice. A whole branch of comedy boils down to Did you ever notice ? These jokes work because they confirm pre-rational intuitions or make irrational connections between things like cause and effect. Dont believe me? Pull my finger and Ill prove it to you.

Anyway, the reason I dont like reducing category errors to merely absurd statements is that I think category errors are the bane of politics. Everyone recognizes that the theory of relativity is breakfast is nonsense. But when Chris Rock said Barack Obama was the dad of the country, lots of very smart people nodded. Of course, lots of conservatives rolled their eyes, but not out of rejection of a category error. Partisan animosity did most of the work getting those eyes to roll. Likewise, when supporters of Trumpor Reagan or Eisenhower or whomevermade similar statements, partisan opponents rolled their eyes. The idea that the president is the father of the American family is a bit of political boilerplate going back to George Washington. But at least Washingtons claim to that metaphorical title depended on the act of creating the country in the first place.

But the idea that the president is akin to a parent is a category error. The president is not my boss. Hes definitely not my father. He has no power, moral or legal, to tell me how to live my life beyond the very limited power of persuasion and a few contestable and narrow emergency powers. My dad could tell me to give my seat to a lady on the bus, and he did it many times. The president cant.

The body politiccorpus politicumis one of the most fraught category errors in history. It was tolerable as a mystical medieval metaphor, but in the 19th and 20th century, intellectuals grabbed all sorts of pseudo-scientific nonsense off the shelf and argued that nation states were organic entities. Herbert Croly, one of the co-founders of The New Republic, said society was just an enlarged individual. Edward Alsworth Ross, arguably the most influential sociologist of his day, believed society is a living thing, actuated, like all the higher creatures, by the instinct for self-preservation. When Woodrow Wilson rejected the system of checks and balances inherent to the Constitution, it was in service to these ideas. He rejected the vision of the Founders as naively Newtonian rather than Darwinian. The trouble with the [Founders] theory, Wilson wrote, is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live.

Wilson was wrong in every regard. Government is a machine in the sense that it is technology, a manufactured system designed for specific purposes. It is not in any way a living thing bound by the theory of organic life. Checks and balances work precisely because Congress isnt like a spleen and the judiciary isnt like a liver. Moreover, Im not entirely sure that our organs dont work against each other in a checks-and-balancey kind of way insofar as various organs regulate each other. But I could be wrong about that.

Nazis were obsessed with the idea that the Aryan nation was an organic entity, and that idea gave them permission to see other groups as parasites.

Now, some stickler might object to what Im talking about by arguing that these theories were just bad metaphors and analogies. And thats fine. But when we dont consciously recognize that an idea is merely metaphoricalnever mind a bad metaphorwe take it to be literal, or close enough to literal to act as if it were.

You could say category errors we like are just called metaphors or analogies. Its sort of like censorship. Pretty much everyone is in favor of censorship, but we only use the word censorship for the kinds of censorship we dont like. I used to have great fun arguing with libertarians of the right and left about this. Theyd say something like, Im against all forms of censorship. And Id respond, Socratically, So you think its fine for TV networks to replace Saturday morning cartoons with mock snuff films or simulated child pornography? (I have to insert the mock and simulated qualifiers to avoid clever but real snuff films and child pornography are illegal rejoinders). Eventually, most would end up arguing that censoring that stuff isnt really censorship, its just responsible programming or some other euphemism. Naw, its censorship, and Im fine with that.

Similarly, with metaphors and analogies, if you dont regularly push back or poke holes in them, people come to accept them as descriptors of reality.

Bonfire of the mediocrities.

I had no idea Id be spelunking down this rabbit hole. I planned on writing about the problems with our elites, but Ill save that for another time. Like the runza peddler said at the Cornhusker game, lets just circle back to Sen. Hruska.

The other thing I love about Hruskas representation-for-mediocrities argument is that it mangles the concept of representation. On the surface it kind of makes sense, like an intellectual Potemkin village. For starters, the Supreme Court is not a representative bodyor at least its not supposed to be. Forget the identity politics arguments about how the court is improved by, say, the presence of a wise Latina in ways that it wouldnt be improved by a wise Nordic. Why not put plumbers or electricians on the court? Dont they deserve representation, too? Although the court has always been top-heavy with Pale Penis People, its been utterly monopolized by lawyers.

Its sort of like the term diversity. Everyone likes to say theyre in favor of diversity, but diversitymuch like censorshipis very narrowly defined. We dont think the NBA would be improved if there was a quota to get more one-legged players or blind people on the court. When I talk to my financial adviser about diversifying my portfolio, I never say, Make sure theres a healthy balance between good investments and bad investments. A balanced diet doesnt have a lot of strychnine or razor blades in it.

The idea that the court would be improved by mediocrity takes the familiar political logic of representation and exposes how it can take us in ridiculous directions if we dont recognize its limitations. Its funny precisely because it exposes how serious ideas can suddenly become silly by grabbing something from the wrong category and shoving it where it doesnt belong.

Theres an unwritten rule not to verbalize such things. But a lot of the dysfunction in our politics is Hruskian in reality: Lots of people are fine with mediocrities representing them as long as they represent their team. Hruska supported Carswell because he was Nixons pick and Nixon deserved a win. Run through the list of politicians garnering passionate support from partisans. Some are smart, many are dumb. Some know how to do their jobs, many dont have the first clue how policy is made or legislating is done. But the important question is: How often does intelligence or competence even enter into it?

As with diversity and censorship, representation is a broad category that we narrow down in realitycertain kinds of diversity, specific forms of censorship. If we understood representation in its broadest, most categorical sense, Congress should reflect a broad cross section of Americans that would include everything from morons to geniuses, violent criminals to pacifists, physicists to spoken-word poets. But we understand that the filter has to be set with a narrower screen.

The problem is that we have the filter on the wrong settings. If I want to hire an electrician, I might consider all sorts of factors: price, recommendations, availability, etc. But the indispensable qualification would be expertise. I would immediately rule out all people who arent electricians. In other words, can they do the job?

Marjorie Taylor Greeneto take a very easy exampleis an ignoramus. She doesnt understand the job she was elected to, but even if she did, she couldnt do it because shes not on any committees (because shes also a bigoted loon). But Republican voters just renominated her, presumably on the grounds that what Congress needs is representation of bigoted lunacy and performative jackassery.

Most other politicians arent elected for such ludicrous reasons. But many of them are elected to perform and entertain in ways that have nothing to do with the job itself. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no fool and she has an adequate academic grasp of the job, but shes also among the least effective members of Congress. Shed have to step up her game to be a mediocre legislator if effective legislating determined the bulk of her grade. But it doesnt for her voters, or for the media that lavishes attention and praise on her.

When it comes to hiring a politician, there are a bunch of things that can or should be on the checklist: ideological agreement, good character, patriotism, a good work ethic, a record of success, etc. You can even include things like religion, height, attractiveness, or odor. This is a democracy after all, and people can vote for whatever reason they want. But one of the things that should be non-negotiablenot as a matter of law, but as a matter of civic hygieneis the candidates ability to do the job.

But for a lot of voters, the job description has been rewritten without even a minute of debate or discussion. Do they hate the other guys enough? Are they entertaining? Are they angry enough? Are they loyal to my team?

No wonder so few can do the actual job. Thats not what they were hired for.

Various & Sundry

Canine update: So Zo has been a bit melancholy of late. We dont know why, but she skipped a couple meals and is less interested in what is traditionally the source of her greatest joys: chasing rabbits and squirrels. Were keeping a close eye on her. It may just be age and the heat, which saps energy from the best of us. Pippa, meanwhile, is doing great, and having lots of fun with her spaniel buddy on the midday walks. Speaking of her pack, meet Willie, the newest member. Her limp seems to be permanently behind her (knock on wood). While both girls are passionately patriotic, they really hate the fireworks on the Fourth of July. Man-made thunder makes no sense to them.

ICYMI

Last Fridays G-File

Last weekends giant-sized, extra-patriotic Ruminant

Last weekends Dispatch Podcast on our post-Roe moment

The Remnant with FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips

This weeks Dispatch Live

Against a congressional criminal referral

Wednesdays newsletter

The Remnant with Noah Rothman

And now, the weird stuff

Adios

Gentlemans agreement

Fresh incentives

Fishy deals

The Peppa effect

Force choked

To kill a talking bird

Just making sure

Read the original:

A Little Representation Goes a Long Way - The Dispatch

from the the-moral-panic-to-end-all-moral-panics dept

Over the last year and a half, weve had plenty of stories about how various state legislators are shoving each other aside to pass laws to try to regulate speech online. Of course, thats generally not how they put it. They claim that theyre regulating social media, and making lots of (highly questionable) assumptions insisting that social media is somehow bad. And this is coming from both sides of the traditional political spectrum. Republicans are pushing bills to compel websites to host speech, while Democrats are pushing bills to compel websites to censor speech. And sometimes they team up to push horrible, dangerous, unconstitutional legislation for the children.

Over at Politco, Rebecca Kern has done an amazing job cataloging this rush by state legislators across the country to push these laws almost all of which are likely unconstitutional. Its depressing as anything, and in a few decades when we look back and talk about the incredibly ridiculous moral panic over social media, maps like these will be front and center:

You should read Kerns full article, as it breaks the various bills down into four categories: banning censorship, reporting hateful content, regulating algorithms, and mandating transparency including interesting discussions on each category.

Of course, as youll note in the chart above, while Texas, Florida, and New York are the only states so far to pass such laws, the Florida and Texas ones are both on hold due to courts recognizing their problems. While New Yorks only passed bill (it has more in the hopper) perhaps isnt quite as bad as Floridas and Texas, its still awful and hopefully someone will challenge the constitutionality of it as well.

However, part of the problem is that for the apparently dwindling collection of people who still believe in free speech online, all of these bills (and many of the states listed above arent doing just one bill, but multiple crazy bills all at once) are creating a sort of distributed denial of service attack on free speech advocates.

We simply cant respond to every crazy new bill in every crazy state legislature trying to regulate speech online. We (and here I mean literally us at the Copia Institute) are trying to help educate and explain to policymakers all across the country how dangerous and backwards most of these bills are. But were a tiny, tiny team with extremely little resources.

Yet, at the same time, many in the media (without noting that they compete with social media for ad dollars) seem to be cheering on many of these bills.

And, speaking of free speech advocates, it is beyond disappointing in Kerns article to see the Knight First Amendment Institute, which Ive worked with many times, and which I respect, quoted as supporting some of these clearly unconstitutional bills. There seems to have been an unfortunate shift in the Institutes support for free speech over the last year or so. Rather than protecting the 1st Amendment, it has repeatedly staked out weird positions that seem designed to chip away at the 1st Amendment protections that are so important.

For example, they apparently see the ability to regulate algorithms as possibly not violating the 1st Amendment, which is crazy:

However, Wilkens, of the Knight First Amendment Institute, said that while the bill may implicate the First Amendment, it doesnt mean that it violates the First Amendment. He said that while its still up for interpretation, the legislation if it became law may be held constitutional because the states interest here in protecting young girls seems to be a very strong interest.

Im not going to go deep on why this is disconnected from reality both the idea that the bill being discussed (Californias AB 2048) would protect young girls (it wouldnt) and that it might be constitutional (it obviously is not), but its distressing beyond belief that yet another institution that has taken in many millions of dollars (way more than Copia has received in nearly 25 years of existence) is now fighting against the 1st Amendment rather than protecting it.

Theres a war going on against online speech these days, and much of it is happening in state houses, where it is very, very difficult for the remaining advocates of online speech to be heard. And its not helping that others who claim to be supporters of free speech are out there actively undermining it.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, california, florida, free speech, online speech, regulating social media, state legislatures, states, texas

Link:

More Than Two Thirds Of States Are Pushing Highly Controversial (And Likely Unconstitutional) Bills To Moderate Speech Online - Techdirt

Mayor Eric Adams has one of the biggest bully pulpits in the country and for months hes used it to drive home this message: Get rid of violent imagery on social media.

Look at what we are showing now on social media, the mayor said during a May interview on Pix 11. We should be using artificial intelligence to identify words, identify phrases, to immediately remove and censor some of this information.

He later added, The type of violence that's being promoted on social media is beyond anything I've ever witnessed before.

The mayor was responding to the online history of two recent mass shooting suspects. The man accused of the April subway shooting in Sunset Park had posted videos of violent ramblings on social media, and the suspect in the Buffalo grocery store shooting was live-streaming as the horror unfolded. The postings hurled Big Tech into the spotlight and inspired city and state leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, to demand more from internet companies when it comes to policing the violence on their platforms.

The attack on social media has been a recurring theme in the mayors rhetoric, but his May remarks came just days after his own police department posted surveillance footage of violent perpetrators pointing guns at their victims.

The New York City Police Department has long used social media to share information on crimes under investigation and to get the publics help finding suspects. Surveillance footage and imagery have become commonplace on the departments Twitter and Facebook pages. But as technology progressed, so did the frequency of graphic imagery on the departments online channels, creating a cycle of sometimes shockingly graphic imagery being shared online, picked up by local news outlets, and transmitted across the airwaves.

So while the mayor has been inveighing against the varied images of violence by civilians, theres been no shortage of it streaming from the NYPDs social media channels. The mayors office declined to comment, but the NYPD told Gothamist there was value in showing video of certain crimes in progress because it might motivate the public to help catch criminals.

The footage is often raw and unedited, except for the obscuring of victims faces. The posts often get picked up and shared by local media outlets and distributed on other social media platforms.

A tweet from June 7th showed a suspect tossing a 52-year-old woman onto subway tracks in the Bronx. A post on May 25th showed a 37-year-old woman getting violently kicked in the head and falling onto her back. On May 16th, the department posted footage on Twitter of a suspect in Queens beating a 24-year-old man over the head with a firearm. Another post from May 11th showed a suspect in Staten Island hitting a 54-year-old store employee on the head with a glass bottle and choking him. A tweet from May 4th showed a man in the Bronx punching a 77-year-old man in the face, knocking him over.

In an interview with Gothamist, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information John Miller said the department posts imagery like this to engage the public.

Sometimes, one way to engage is to show either the incident or the brutality of the incident or the wanton nature of the incident, where you can tell these people are firing guns on a crowded street, Miller said. And there are children in the background. There are mothers in the background. There are elderly people in the background. There's a park behind them and they just don't care where those bullets go. And sometimes, that in and of itself will add power to the imagery that goes with it.

Miller added that New York City is still one of the safest big cities in the country by most measures, with the number of shootings down from one year ago, but still up from pre-pandemic levels.

But sociologist Barry Glassner, who wrote Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, told Gothamist that the proliferation of images and videos of crimes in progress could make people feel more afraid than the crime statistics warrant without necessarily helping catch the perpetrators of crimes.

Any added value for actually succeeding at the police work, I would be pretty confident is not as great as the damage done by all these violent videos circulating around and creating more fear in the population and more sense that there's crime everywhere you turn, Glassner said. And that it's very scary.

Glassner said the more people are inundated with the prevalence of crime the more they see violent imagery online, such as the footage the NYPD shares the more anxious the general public becomes, regardless of statistics.

He also said the recordings of crimes in progress present an incomplete picture.

The recording of the event by the police presents one perspective, he said. [It] doesn't capture the full context of what occurred. And so people watch this and it seems strictly factual and complete, and it can't be its not possible.

When determining what to share, and how to share it, Miller said officers comb through security footage and try to find identifiable images of the particular suspect. In many cases, he said, the department will share video footage so the public can see how a suspect might walk or move. If a victim is involved, he said, officers notify them about disseminating footage with their faces blurred.

The deal with videos and imagery of violence that we put out has to do with a different set of obligations, he said. And we shouldn't be considering whether it increases fear or not. Our first obligation is to the victim of that crime. The victim of that crime, above all considerations of perception and public relations and spin, the victim of that crime deserves justice.

Read the original:

Turn the other tweet: NYPD not heeding Adams' call to censor violence on social media - Gothamist

One of the reasons that Russian media has been completely blocked in the West, along with the unprecedented control and censorship over the Ukraine war narrative, is the fact that western governments simply do not want their public to know that the world is vastly changing.

Ignorance might be bliss, arguably in some situations, but not in this case. Here, ignorance can be catastrophic as western audiences are denied access to information about a critical situation that is affecting them in profound ways and will most certainly impact the worlds geopolitics for generations to come.

The growinginflation, an imminent globalrecession, a festering refugee crisis, a deepening food shortage crisis and much more are the kinds of challenges that require open and transparent discussions regarding the situation in Ukraine, the NATO-Russia rivalry and the responsibility of the West in the ongoing war.

To discuss these issues, along with the missing context of the Russia-Ukraine war, wespokewith Professor Noam Chomsky, believed to be the greatest living intellectual of our time.

Chomsky told us that it should be clear that the (Russian) invasion of Ukraine has no (moral) justification. He compared it to the US invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an example of supreme international crime. With this moral question settled, Chomsky believes that the main background of this war, a factor that is missing in mainstream media coverage, is NATO expansion.

This is not just my opinion, said Chomsky, it is the opinion of every high-level US official in the diplomatic services who has any familiarity with Russia and Eastern Europe. This goes back to George Kennan and, in the 1990s, Reagans ambassador Jack Matlock, including the current director of the CIA; in fact, just everybody who knows anything has been warning Washington that it is reckless and provocative to ignore Russias very clear and explicit red lines. That goes way before (Vladimir) Putin, it has nothing to do with him; (Mikhail) Gorbachev, all said the same thing. Ukraine and Georgia cannot join NATO, this is the geostrategic heartland of Russia.

Though various US administrations acknowledged and, to some extent, respected the Russian red lines, the Bill Clinton Administration did not. According to Chomsky, George H. W. Bush made an explicit promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany, perfectly explicit. You can look up the documents. Its very clear. Bush lived up to it. But when Clinton came along, he started violating it. And he gave reasons. He explained that he had to do it for domestic political reasons. He had to get the Polish vote, the ethnic vote. So, he would let the so-called Visegrad countries into NATO. Russia accepted it, didnt like it but accepted it.

The second George Bush, Chomsky argued, just threw the door wide open. In fact, even invited Ukraine to join over, despite the objections of everyone in the top diplomatic service, apart from his own little clique, Cheney, Rumsfeld (among others). But France and Germany vetoed it.

However, that was hardly the end of the discussion. Ukraines NATO membership remained on the agenda because of intense pressures from Washington.

Starting in 2014, after the Maidan uprising, the United States began openly, not secretly, moving to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command, sending heavy armaments and joining military exercises, military training and it was not a secret. They boasted about it, Chomsky said.

What is interesting is that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected on a peace platform, to implement what was called Minsk Two, some kind of autonomy for the eastern region. He tried to implement it. He was warned by right-wing militias that if he persisted, theyd kill him. Well, he didnt get any support from the United States. If the United States had supported him, he could have continued, we might have avoided all of this. The United States was committed to the integration of Ukraine within NATO.

The Joe Biden Administration carried on with the policy of NATO expansion. Just before the invasion, said Chomsky, Biden produced a joint statement calling for expanding these efforts of integration. Thats part of what was called an enhanced program leading to the mission of NATO. In November, it was moved forward to a charter, signed by the Secretary of State.

Soon after the war, the United States Department acknowledged that they had not taken Russian security concerns into consideration in any discussions with Russia. The question of NATO, they would not discuss. Well, all of that is provocation. Not a justification but a provocation and its quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits.

Chomsky continued, Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldnt refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now, censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to read the Russian position. Literally. Americans are not allowed to know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages. If the Russians make an offer for a negotiation, you cant find it. Thats suppressed. Youre not allowed to know what they are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this.

Regarding his views of the possible future scenarios, Chomsky said that the war will end, either through diplomacy or not. Thats just logic. Well, if diplomacy has a meaning, it means both sides can tolerate it. They dont like it, but they can tolerate it. They dont get anything they want, they get something. Thats diplomacy. If you reject diplomacy, you are saying: Let the war go on with all of its horrors, with all the destruction of Ukraine, and lets let it go on until we get what we want.

By we, Chomsky was referring to Washington, which simply wants to harm Russia so severely that it will never be able to undertake actions like this again. Well, what does that mean? Its impossible to achieve. So, it means, lets continue the war until Ukraine is devastated. Thats US policy.

Most of this is not obvious to western audiences simply because rational voices are not allowed to talk and because rationality is not permitted. This is a level of hysteria that I have never seen, even during the Second World War, which I am old enough to remember very well.

While an alternative understanding of the devastating war in Ukraine is disallowed, the West continues to offer no serious answers or achievable goals, leaving Ukraine devastated and the root causes of the problem in place. Thats US policy, indeed.

(The interview with Noam Chomsky was conducted jointly with Italian journalist, Romana Rubeo)

Read more from the original source:

'Rationality Is Not Permitted': Chomsky On Russia, Ukraine And The Price Of Media Censorship OpEd - Eurasia Review

Proceeds from an auction of an unusual edition of Margaret Atwoods classic dystopian novel The Handmaids Tale will go to the free expression advocacy group PEN America, as the group stands up to right-wing attempts to ban books in the United States.

The single copy of the novel is made entirely of flame-resistant material, as evidenced in a video released on May 24 in which Atwood herself attempted to light the book on fire.

Atwood and the publishing company Penguin Random House announced Monday that the book will be auctioned off at Sothebys New York, both to help PEN America fight censorship and as a challenge to enacted and attempted book bans.

To see her classic novel about the dangers of oppression reborn in this innovative, unburnable edition is a timely reminder of whats at stake in the battle against censorship, said Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House.

The publisher worked with Atwood, PEN America, the Toronto-based creative agency Rethink, and a bookbinding studio called the Gas Company to create the book.

The flame-proof copy is made of thin sheets of Cinefoil, an aluminum product, and was sewn together using nickel copper wire.

The creation of the book comes as attempts to ban books by lawmakers and school districts have surged to their highest level since the American Library Association began recording such censorship two decades ago.

The group reported 729 challenges to materials in schools and libraries. Last week, more than 1,000 childrens book authors and artists signed a letter condemning the efforts by organized groups to purge books from our nations schools.

The Handmaids Tale was banned in schools in Texas and Kansas last year.

According to PEN America, as Republicans center their 2022 electoral campaigns largely on protesting the teaching of the United States long history of racial injustice and discussions of gender identity in public schools, GOP lawmakers in 42 states have proposed nearly 200 pieces of legislation seeking to limit school discussions of such topics.

The unburnable copy of The Handmaids Tale is an unforgettable visual metaphor for the current political climate in the U.S., Atwood said.

Excerpt from:

Battle against censorship: Fire-Proof edition of "Handmaid's Tale" released to fight GOP book-banning - Milwaukee Independent

TAIPEI, Taiwan

Most internet users trying to get past Chinas Great Firewall search for a cyber tunnel that will take them outside censorship restrictions to the wider web. But Vincent Brussee is looking for a way in, so he can better glimpse what life is like under the Communist Party.

An analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, Brussee frequently scours the Chinese internet for data. His main focus is information that will help him understand Chinas burgeoning social credit system. But in the last few years, hes noticed that his usual sources have become more unreliable and access tougher to gain.

Some government websites fail to load, appearing to block users from specific geographic locations. Other platforms require a Chinese phone number tied to official identification. Files that were available three years ago have started to disappear as Brussee and many like him, including academics and journalists, are finding it increasingly frustrating to penetrate Chinas cyber world from the outside.

Its making it more difficult to simply understand where China is headed, Brussee said. A lot of the work we are doing is digging for little scraps of information.

One of the most sweeping surveillance states in the world, China has all but closed its borders since the start of the pandemic, accelerating a political turn inward as nationalism is on the rise and foreign ties are treated with suspicion. A harsh zero-COVID policy has contributed to the attrition of foreign residents, particularly after a long and bitter lockdown this spring in Shanghai, Chinas largest and most international city.

At the same time, academics and researchers have complained that the digital window into China seems to be constricting too. That compounds a growing concern for China experts locked out of the country amid deteriorating relations with the West. A tightening of internet access means observers will struggle to decipher what internal pressures Chinas leader Xi Jinping may be facing and how to keep track of Beijings diplomatic, technological and military ambitions.

Comprehensive analysis on whom Chinas Great Firewall keeps out is scarce; much of the focus on the countrys internet freedom remains on domestic censorship. But many researchers who have experienced such challenges suspect that their limited access is part of Chinas attempt to ward off what it sees as international meddling, and present its own tightly controlled narrative to the outside world.

Several researchers, for example, noted difficulties accessing Xinjiang government data from abroad, likely a response to international criticism on reports of forced labor and human rights abuses against the western regions Uyghur population. More puzzling to Brussee was when he encountered similar barriers to the government website of Anhui province, a decidedly less controversial part of China.

Brussee said websites have also added guards against data scraping, limiting how much information he can retrieve via automation on public procurement of surveillance systems, policy documents and citizens or businesses affected by the social credit system. Some bot tests known as CAPTCHA require manual input of Chinese characters or idioms, another barrier for those unfamiliar with the language.

China is keen to project an image of power and superiority. But that has been undermined at times by embarrassing revelations, including recent videos of Shanghai residents protesting harsh lockdown restrictions. The posts were quickly wiped from the Chinese web but continued to circulate beyond the Great Firewall, challenging Beijings claims that its zero-tolerance COVID policy was better at containing the pandemic than programs in the West.

Comments on Chinas internet can also cast an unflattering light. Earlier this year, users on the nations Twitter-like Weibo platform drew condemnation for sexist comments welcoming beautiful Ukrainian women as war refugees. An anonymous movement that translates extreme and nationalistic posts from Chinese netizens has outraged state commentators who call it an anti-China smear campaign.

In order to squeeze through bottlenecks, Brussee uses a virtual private network, or VPN, which routes an internet users web traffic through servers in a different geographic location. Though its a commonly used tool for Chinese netizens to circumvent the Great Firewall, Brussees aim is to appear to be visiting websites from within Chinas borders.

But VPNs arent foolproof. Chinese authorities have cracked down, making connections in and out of China slow and erratic. Brussee said he went a month without a VPN last fall, when his main provider inexplicably stopped functioning. After five fruitless calls to the company, he could only wait for service to eventually resume. His last resort would be to use a Chinese company with more reliable servers inside the country, but he said installing Chinese software comes with additional security risks.

I dont think the VPN is enough anymore a lot of the time, said Daria Impiombato, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who uses VPNs to bounce around to different locations when trying to visit Chinese government websites. You find workarounds, but it takes way longer.

One alternative source of information that Impiombato has relied on is WeChat, the ubiquitous social messaging app owned by Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Many party agencies have their own pages on WeChat where they post notices, but it requires a lot of mobile scrolling to find the relevant material, she said.

Signing up for an account, however, has become more challenging for foreigners in recent years as Chinese platforms like WeChat, Weibo and others have implemented additional screening, such as a Chinese phone number and official identification. In some cases, those registration requirements can be more prohibitive than geoblocking, ruling out resources from online discussions to official documents to industry databases.

Graham Webster, editor in chief of the DigiChina Project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, has searched for a way to use Weibo since losing the use of his Chinese phone and subsequently his account. The closest solution he could find was a service that provided temporary, and he suspected fraudulent, phone numbers.

We are talking about something that would be on the internet for one-fifth of the worlds population and not for the other four-fifths, Webster said. This is one more wedge in a steepening curve of barriers between China and the outside world. It leaves a lot more ground for suspicion and uncertainty.

Blocking foreign internet users, particularly from sensitive information, is not unique to China. According to a 2020 report from Censored Planet, which studies internet freedom and censorship, the U.S. government had blocked about 50 websites from being viewed from Hong Kong and mainland China, including official military home pages and stores of economic data.

But Chinas control of information appears more expansive. The government, according to researchers and academics, had made files and data available online over the last decade. But in recent years as China has become more sensitive about its global image and more critical of the West that degree of openness has run into a trend to deter outsiders from peering in.

Its the effort of openness coming up against the current push towards closedness, said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. The result is some strange hybrid landscape, where you can have access to a lot of information if you go through all these hoops, specifically because they are not designed for you to have access to them.

Some who have developed ways to bypass blocks were reluctant to share details, aside from generally trying to emulate a Chinese location, fearing those channels would be plugged as well.

Describing to a newspaper the workarounds to access blocked Chinese sites ensures that the workarounds will be blocked, too, one U.S. academic researcher wrote via email. The only thing I can add, without cutting short my own career, is another common sense measure, namely, scrape and cache whatever one discovers the first time around.

Thats turned into standard practice for Impiombato, who has grown paranoid about saving her own copies of everything as government web pages, news releases and social media posts have vanished unexpectedly amid her research.

Sometimes you see the perfect piece of information that you need and then suddenly its gone, she said. You almost have to start from scratch every single time.

Katherine Kaup, a professor at Furman University who studies Chinas ethnic policy, said the countrys changes have forced her and others to consider entirely new research topics and techniques. She has reservations about one day returning to China for field work, and even virtual discussions with people in the country have been dampened by concerns over repercussions for speaking too frankly amid a growing clampdown on dissent.

I sometimes feel like Im in a bad sci-fi movie, she said. The type of research that we used to do is not going to be possible moving forward in the next few years.

Original post:

As China shuts out the world, internet access from abroad gets harder too - Los Angeles Times

from the who-does-this-help? dept

This post analyzes California AB 587, self-described as Content Moderation Requirements for Internet Terms of Service. I believe the bill will get a legislative hearing later this month.

A note about the draft Im analyzing,posted here. Its dated June 6, and its different from theversion publicly posted on the legislatures website(dated April 28). Im not sure what the June 6 drafts redlines compare tomaybe the bill as introduced? Im also not sure if the June 6 draft will be the basis of the hearing, or if there will be more iterations between now and then. Its exceptionally difficult for me to analyze bills that are changing rapidly in secret. When bill drafters secretly solicit feedback, every other constituency cannot follow along or share timely or helpful feedback. Its especially ironic to see non-public activity for a bill thats all aboutmandating transparency. _()_/

Whos Covered by the Bill?

The bill applies to social media platforms that: (A) Construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system created by the service. (B) Populate a list of other users with whom an individual shares a connection within the system. [and] (C) View and navigate a list of connections made by other individuals within the system.

This definition of social media has been around for about a decade, and its awful.Critiques I made8 years ago:

First, what is a semi-public profile, and how does it differ from a public or non-public profile? Is there even such a thing as a semi-private or non-public profile?

Second, what does a bounded system mean?The bounded system phrase sounds like a walled garden of some sort, but most walled gardens arent impervious. So what delimits the boundaries the statute refers to, and what does an unbounded system look like?

I also dont understand what constitutes a connection, what a list of connections means, or what it means to populate the connection list. This definition of social media was never meant to be used as a statutory definition, and every word invites litigation.

Further, the legislature shouldbut surely has notrun this definition through a test suite to make sure it fits the legislatures intent. In particular, which, if any, services offering user-generated content (UGC) functionality do NOT satisfy this definition? Though decades of litigation might ultimately answer the question, I expect that the language likely covers all UGC services.

[Note: based on a quick Lexis search, I saw similar statutory language in about 20 laws, but I did not see any caselaw interpreting the language because I believe those laws are largely unused.]

The bill then excludes some UGC services:

The Laws Requirements

Publish the TOS

The bill requires social media platforms to post their terms of service (TOS), translated into every language they offer product features in. It defines TOS as:

a policy or set of policies adopted by a social media company that specifies, at least, the user behavior and activities that are permitted on the internet-based service owned or operated by the social media company, and the user behavior and activities that may subject the user or an item of content to being actioned. This may include, but is not limited to, a terms of service document or agreement, rules or content moderation guidelines, community guidelines, acceptable uses, and other policies and established practices that outline these policies.

To start, I need to address the ambiguity of what constitutes the TOS because its the most dangerous and censorial trap of the bill. Every service publishes public-facing editorial rules, but the published versions never can capture ALL of the services editorial rules. Exceptions include: private interpretations that are not shared to protect against gaming, private interpretations that are too detailed for public consumption, private interpretations that governments ask/demand the services dont tell the public about, private interpretations that are made on the fly in response to exigencies, one-off exceptions, and more.

According to the bills definition, failing to publish all of these non-public policies and practices before taking action based on them could mean noncompliance with the bills requirements. Given the inevitability of such undisclosed editorial policies, it seems like every service always will be noncompliant.

Furthermore, to the extent the bill inhibits services from making an editorial decision using a policy/practice that hasnt been pre-announced, the bill would control and skew the services editorial decisions. This pre-announcement requirement would have the same effect as Floridas restrictions on updating their TOSes more than once every 30 days (the 11th Circuit heldthat restriction was unconstitutional).

Finally, imagine trying to impose a similar editorial policy disclosure requirement on a traditional publisher like a newspaper or book publisher. They currently arent required to disclose ANY editorial policies, let alone ALL of them, and I believe any such effort to require such disclosures would obviously be struck down as an unconstitutional intrusion into the freedom of speech and press.

In addition to requiring the TOSs publication, the bill says the TOS must include (1) a way to contact the platform to ask questions about the TOS, (2) descriptions of how users can complain about content and the social media companys commitments on response and resolution time. (Drafting suggestion for regulated services: We do not promise to respond ever), and (3) A list of potential actions the social media company may take against an item of content or a user, including, but not limited to, removal, demonetization, deprioritization, or banning. I identified 3 dozen potential actions in myContent Moderation Remedies article, and Im sure more exist or will be developed, so the remedies list should be long and Im not sure how a platform could pre-announce the full universe of possible remedies.

Information Disclosures to the CA AG

Once a quarter, the bill would require platforms to deliver to the CA AG the current TOS, a complete and detailed description of changes to the TOS in the prior quarter, and a statement of whether the TOS defines any of the following five terms and what the definitions are: Hate speech or racism, Extremism or radicalization, Disinformation or misinformation, Harassment, and Foreign political interference. [If the definitions are from the TOS, cant the AG just read that?]. Ill call the enumerated five content categories the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content.

In addition, the platforms would need to provide a detailed description of content moderation practices used by the social media. This seems to contemplate more disclosures than just the TOS, but that definition seemingly already captured all of the services content moderation rules. I assume the bill wants to know how the services editorial policies are operationalized, but it doesnt make that clear. Plus, like Texas open-ended disclosure requirements, the unbounded disclosure obligation ensures litigation over (unavoidable) omissions.

Beyond the open-ended requirement, the bill enumerates an overwhelmingly complex list of required disclosures, which are far more invasive and burdensome than Texas plenty-burdensome demands:

All told, there are 7 categories of disclosures, and the bill indicates that the disclosure categories have, respectively, 5 options, at least 5 options, at least 3 options, at least 5 options, and at least 5 options. So I believe the bill requires that each services reports should include no less than 161 different categories of disclosures (75+75+73+75+75).

Who will benefit from these disclosures? At minimum, unlike the purported justification cited by the 11th Circuit for Floridas disclosure requirements, the bills required statistics cannot help consumers make better marketplace choices. By definition, each service can define each category of Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content differently, so consumers cannot compare the reported numbers across services. Furthermore, because services can change how these define each content category from time to time, it wont even be possible to compare a services new numbers against prior numbers to determine if they are getting better or worse at managing the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content. Services could even change their definitions so they dont have to report anything. For example, a service could create an omnibus category of incivil content/activity that includes some or all of the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content categories, in which case they wouldnt have to disclose anything. (Note also that this countermove would represent a change in the services editorial practices impelled by the bill, which exacerbates the constitutional problem discussed below). So who is the audience for the statistics and what, exactly, will they learn from the required disclosures? Without clear and persuasive answers to these questions, it looks like the state is demanding the info purely as a raw exercise of power, not to benefit any constituency.

Remedies

Violations can trigger penalties of up to $15k/violation/day, and the penalties should at minimum be sufficient to induce compliance with this act but should be mitigated if the service made a reasonable, good faith attempt to comply. The AG can enforce the law, but so can county counsel and city DAs in some circumstances. The bill provides those non-AG enforcers with some financial incentives to chase the penalty money as a bounty.

An earlier draft of the bill expressly authorized private rights of action via B&P 17200. Fortunately, that provision got struckbut, unfortunately, in its place theres a provision saying that this bill is cumulative with any other law. As a result, I think the 17200 PRA is still available. If so, this bill will be a perpetual litigation machine. I would expect every lawsuit against a regulated service would add 587 claims for alleged omissions, misrepresentations, etc. Like the CCPA/CPRA, the bill should clearly eliminate all PRAsunless the legislature wants Californians suing each other into oblivion.

Some Structural Problems with the Bill

Although the prior section identified some obvious drafting errors, fixing those errors wont make this a good bill. Some structural problems with the bill that cant be readily fixed.

The overall problem with mandatory editorial transparency. I just wrote awhole paper explaining why mandatory editorial transparency laws like AB 587 are categorically unconstitutional, so you should start with that if you havent already read it. To summarize, the disclosure requirements about editorial policies and practices functionally control speech by inducing publishers to make editorial decisions that will placate regulators rather than best serve the publishers audience. Furthermore, any investigation of the mandated disclosures puts the government in the position of supervising the editorial process, an unhealthy entanglement. I already mentioned one such example where regulators try to validate if the service properly described when it does manual vs. automated content moderation. Such an investigation would necessarily scrutinize and second-guess every aspect of the services editorial function.

Because of these inevitable speech restrictions, I believe strict scrutiny should apply to AB 587 without relying on the confused caselaw involving compelled commercial disclosures. In other words, I dont thinkZauderera recent darling of the pro-censorship crowdis the right test (I will have more to say on this topic). Further, Zauderer only applies when the disclosures are uncontroversial and purely factual, but the AB587 disclosures are neither. The Targeted Constitutionally Protect Content categories all involve highly political topics, not the pricing terms at issue in Zauderer; and the disclosures require substantial and highly debatable exercises of judgments to make the classifications, so they are not purely factual. And even if Zauderer does apply, I think the disclosure requirements impose an undue burden. For example, if 161 different prophylactic just-in-case disclosures dont constitute an undue burden, I dont know what would.

The TOS definition problem. As I mentioned, what constitutes part of the TOS creates a litigation trap easily exploited by plaintiffs. Furthermore, if it requires the publication of policies and practices that justifiably should not be published, the law intrudes into editorial processes.

The favoritism shown to the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content. The law privileges the five categories in the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content for heightened attention by services, but there are many other categories of lawful-but-awful content that are not given equal treatment. Why?

This distinction between types of lawful-but-awful speech sends the obvious message to services that they need to pay closer attention to these content categories over the others. This implicit message to reprioritize content categories distorts the services editorial prerogative, and if services get the message that they should manage the disclosed numbers down, the bill reduces constitutionally protected speech. However, services wont know if they should be managing the numbers down. The AG is a Democrat, so hes likely to prefer less lawful-but-awful content. However, many county prosecutors in red counties (yes, California has them) may prefer less content moderation of constitutionally protected speech and would investigate if they see the numbers trending down. Given that services are trapped between these competing partisan dynamics, they will be paralyzed in their editorial decision-making. This reiterates why the bill doesnt satisfy Zauderer uncontroversial prong.

The problem classifying the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content. Determining what fits into each category of the Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content is an editorial judgment that always will be subject to substantial debate. Consider, for example, how often the Oversight Board has reversed Facebook on similar topics. The plaintiffs can always disagree with the services classifications, and that puts them in the role of second-guessing the services editorial decisions.

Social media exceptionalism. As Benkler et als book Network Propaganda showed, Fox News injects misinformation into the conversation, which then propagates to social media. So why does the bill target social media and not Fox News? More generally, the bill doesnt explain why social media needs this intervention compared to traditional publishers or even other types of online publishers (say, Breitbart?). Or is the states position that it could impose equally invasive transparency obligations on the editorial decisions of other publishers, like newspapers and book publishers?

The favoritism shown to the excluded services. I think the state will have a difficult time justifying why some UGC services get a free pass from the requirements. It sure looks arbitrary.

The Dormant Commerce Clause. The bill does not restrict its reach to California. This creates several potential DCC problems:

Conclusion

Stepping back from the details, the bill can be roughly divided into two components: (1) the TOS publication and delivery component, and (2) the operational disclosures and statistics component. Abstracting the bill at this level highlights the bills pure cynicism.

The TOS publication and delivery component is obviously pointless. Any regulated platform already posts its TOS and likely addresses the specified topics, at least in some level of generality (and an obvious countermove to this bill will be for services to make their public-facing disclosures more general and less specific than they currently are). Consumers can already read those onsite TOSes if they care; and the AGs office can already access those TOSes any time it wants. (Heck, the AG can even set up bots to download copies quarterly, or even more frequently, and I wonder if the AGs office has ever used the Wayback Machine?). So if this provision isnt really generating any new disclosures to consumers, its just creating technical traps that platforms might trip over.

The operational disclosures and statistics component would likely create new public data, but as explained above, its data that is worthless to consumers. Like the TOS publication and delivery provision, it feels more like a trap for technical enforcements than a provision that benefits California residents. Its also almost certainly unconstitutional. The emphasis on Targeted Constitutionally Protected Content categories seems designed to change the editorial decision-making of the regulated services, which is a flat-out form of censorship; and even if Zauderer is the applicable test, it seems likely to fail that test as well.

So if this provision gets struck and the TOS publication and delivery provision doesnt do anything helpful, it leaves the obvious question: why is the California legislature working on this and not the many other social problems in our state? The answer to that question is surely dispiriting to every California resident.

Reposted, with permission, from Eric Goldmans Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Filed Under: ab 587, california, content moderation, disclosures, internet regulations, terms of service, transparency

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California Seems To Be Taking The Exact Wrong Lessons From Texas And Florida's Social Media Censorship Laws - Techdirt

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Social media sensation Libs of TikTok was locked out of its Twitter account on Wednesday for a tweet about kids at drag shows that was deemed to be "abuse and harassment."

Only after losing an appeal and deleting the offending tweet was Libs of TikTok allowed to tweet again. "Twitter thinks its abuse to document drag shows. I think its abuse for drag shows to be taking place in front of kids," Libs of TikTok wrote in an update on their Substack about the ordeal, which included the news that the tweet was banned in Germany.

On Wednesday night Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon reported, "BREAKING: Twitter just locked out @libsoftiktok for posting a thread about several recent drag shows for kids. The thread allegedly violates Twitter's rules against abuse and harassment. You know what's actually abusive? Drag shows for kids."

According to screenshots, the specific tweet flagged by Twitter read, "~MEGA DRAG THREAD~ They say its innocent. They say its just about inclusion and acceptance. They say no one is trying to confuse, corrupt, or sexualize kids. They lie." It was originally posted on May 30.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST: GUNS HARM CHILDREN MORE THAN CHILD PORNAGRAPHY, SO LETS RESTRICT THEM

The Libs of TikTok account, which shares videos of left-wing individuals openly expressing their social and political views, was locked out of Twitter. (Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

"You can promote drag shows for kids on Twitter. That's fine. You can even share videos of yourself performing in them. The only thing you can't do is criticize them," Dillon tweeted. "Somehow the feelings of a few drag queens matter more to Twitter than the corruption of a generation of children."

In an update on Thursday morning, Dillon also announced that Twitter denied Libs of TikToks appeal to overturn the violation.

"Twitter has denied Libs of TikTok's appeal," Dillon tweeted with an image reading that Twitter determined "a violation did take place" of their "rules against abusive behavior" with the tweet.

Libs of TikTok tweeted later on Thursday afternoon, confirming that the account was reopened. The offending tweet has been replaced with the message "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules. Learn more."

"Im back! Apparently posting videos and flyers of drag events is abusive but the actual events are just innocent family friendly entertainment," the accounted tweeted.

Dillon previously reported shortly after Libs of TikToks original tweet in May that the account was banned from participating in Twitter ads, though the notification did not specify the reason.

Twitter app displayed on an iPhone screen in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

SCHOOLS, ORGANIZATIONS CELEBRATE PRIDE MONTH WITH DRAG SHOWS FOR MINORS

"Libs of TikTok has been banned from running ads on Twitter. A notification of ineligibility was sent out that failed to offer a specific reason," Dillon tweeted at the time.

In May, Libs of TikTok was also suspended from Instagram over the claim that the account violated the platforms Community Guidelines but it was not specified how. Instagram later restored the account over twelve hours later claiming that Libs of TikTok was "disabled by mistake."

The Libs of TikTok account usually shares videos of left-wing individuals openly expressing their social and political views on social media. It has been suspended from Twitter twice so far, once only hours it had been reinstated.

The TikTok logo is seen on an iPhone. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Both Twitter and Dillon did not immediately respond to Fox News requests for comments.

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The recent moves by Twitter follow years of conservative users complaining that social media is attempting to censor their views. Dillons own company Babylon Bee was locked out its Twitter account back in March.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.

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Twitter censors Libs of TikTok, labels their tweets showing kids at drag shows 'abuse and harassment' - Fox News

India's tech-related policies continue to create controversy, with fresh objections raised to a pair of proposed regulation packages.

One of those regulations is the infosec reporting and logging requirements introduced by India's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in late April. That package requires VPN, cloud, and numerous other IT services providers to collect customers' personal information and log their activity, then surrender that info to Indian authorities on demand. One VPN provider, ExpressVPN, last week quit India on grounds that its local servers are designed not to record any logs so compliance would be impossible. ExpressVPN will soon route customers' traffic outside India.

On Tuesday, another VPN Surfshark announced it would do likewise.

The company announced its decision in a post that labelled CERT-In's rules "radical action that highly impacts the privacy of millions of people living in India."

India's government decide what millions of Indians can or cannot say online.

CERT-In's rules have also been criticized by The Internet Society, the nonprofit that advocates for an open internet.

In an Impact Brief [PDF] that assesses the impact of CERT-In's rules, the Society rates the requirement to sync with India-controlled network time protocol servers as creating a dangerous single point of failure. The Brief also takes issue with the rules' requirement to collect user data, as India lacks data privacy and data protection laws. The Society also suggests that CERT-In is not the appropriate body to collect data, as it is not a law enforcement agency.

Those criticisms come on top of similar suggestions from BSA The Software Alliance and ten other tech-related lobby groups, all of whom suggest the rules make India a less attractive destination for foreign investment.

India's government has so far shrugged off that criticism, but has earned itself more of the same at home by revising the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules that it introduced in 2021. Those rules saw social media companies push back on grounds that the regulations required them to identify users and could restrict free speech.

On Monday India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) published proposed amendments [PDF] to the Rules that, among other things, propose the creation of a government-run committee that would consider citizens' grievances about content posted to social media. That committee would have the power to override social networks' content moderation decisions.

That's scary, given that Indian police last year visited Twitter's local office to inquire why the microblogging service chose to label posts by a government spokesperson as "manipulated media."

India's Internet Freedom Foundation characterised the proposed committee's powers as follows:

Complicating perceptions of the proposed amendments is that MeitY published them last week, but then took down the file. An identical proposal re-appeared on Monday.

India's IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said the amended Rules add "more effective grievance addressal ensuring constitutional rights of citizens are respected" and will have "no impact on Indian Startups."

Many nations have laws that give local authorities the power to compel social media to remove content under specific circumstances.

India's proposed amendments allow citizens to seek takedown orders whenever they feel aggrieved.

The Register will be surprised if the proposed amendments don't generate another wave of letters from international lobby groups protesting India's plans.

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Another VPN quits India, as government proposes social media censorship powers - The Register