Ctrl-Alt-Speech

Can't Take(down) A Joke?

• Ben Whitelaw & Prateek Waghre • Season 1 • Episode 54

Share episode

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by guest host Prateek Waghre, former executive director at the Internet Freedom Foundation and currently a fellow at Tech Policy Press. Together, they cover:

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at podcast@ctrlaltspeech.com and sponsorship enquiries to sponsorship@ctrlaltspeech.com. Thanks for listening.

Ben Whitelaw:

So in today's control alt speech, we're taking a musical vibe. and partly in, response to the guest host we have today at Pratik. I want you to, uh, use Garner's, call to action Garner being a, a kind ofd Indian music app. To start today's episode for us, Ghana asks users to cue their vibe. And so I want you today to kind of start today's podcast by helping us set the tone for. Today's recording. What's your vibe?

Prateek Waghre:

It, it's interesting. I'm, I'm actually gonna do a little bit of wordplay, since we're using an Indian, Indian app. So, you know, I, I think they mean Q in the sense you know, cue your Q playlist, but Q is also the Hindi word for why, right? and if you look around the world right now, it's like, why? What is going on? Right? So in many ways, in many ways that's, that's, currently my vibe.

Ben Whitelaw:

I love that it's the kind of running theme of Control Al speech as well. Why? Well, my, you know, my vibe today is I'm, very much here and ready to listen and learn to you as a, an expert in the Indian tech policy field. So it's great to have you here. Uh, looking forward to getting into it today.

Prateek Waghre:

Thank you for having me.

Ben Whitelaw:

Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation. It's April the 10th, 2025, and this week's episode is brought to you with financial support from the future of online trust and safety fund. This week we're talking about not so funny de platforming of comedians in India. Moves in the Kenya courts and Substack subtle shift towards standards. Mike is taking a very well earned break this week. You'll be glad to hear, and I'm very lucky to be joined by Pratik Waghre, a good friend of mine and of the podcast. How are you today, pik?

Prateek Waghre:

Doing well. Happy to be here.

Ben Whitelaw:

Very good. Well, Pratik is a fellow at the Tech Policy Press website, which many of you will know. Uh, he's a public policy researcher by trade, and he was the former exec director of the Internet Freedom Foundation up until late last year. IFF advocates for Digital Rights for Indian Citizens. and he's got a vast experience of thinking about tech policy and, and internet regulation. We actually came across each other Pratik, because of a newsletter you wrote. the information ecologist. We're internet friends, aren't we Newsletter friends. and it's great to have you on the podcast. We brought Pati on because last week or a couple of weeks ago, Mike and I were talking about a case that Elon Musk's ex was bringing against the Indian government for, unlawful content regulation. some of you will have listened to that episode and so, you know. T'S experience is incredibly valuable. Now as, we delve into some stories that are outside the remit of, traditional countries that we talk about on controlled speech. So we're talking about India today. We're talking about Kenya, and you know, speech is a global issue and it's important us to talk about it in those terms. so I pretty, you kind of wanted. To talk a bit about what the, the context of speech and injury is right now, because it's been a fascinating time, very much since the election last year, which we'll get into. before we jump into, into the stories, can you give us a sense of, what, the feeling is towards online speech in the country right now and some of the kind of key legislations that we should be looking out for and that we'll be talking about today?

Prateek Waghre:

India is a very, very interesting space, and I think at, some point, at different points, both I think Evelyn Dwe and Rasmus Nielsen had had said that, you know, the battle for freedom of speech in India is probably one of the most important ones, the internet. Right. Uh, they said this a couple of years ago. I think, you know, the US is potentially a little more interesting at this point. but in that sense, India sort of continued on this, trend of what I like to describe as stable dysfunction, right? In the sense that some of the problematic practices continue. A lot of us have gotten used to them, but they. continue to escalate. So you're still, of course, extremely worried about them and, be still. See, quote unquote new innovations in terms of the way restrictions, in speech, speech are applied, right? and so, with that, I think, you know, we'll talk a little bit, go a little bit into some of the key legislations are in place so that or that are used today in this space, right? So I think one. and as you'd expect with every country is You have criminal codes, in place which are used to prosecute people very often. In fact, I track the news and you see cases, a couple of cases every day. I. where, people are prosecuted for things that they said that could incite anonymity between, different communities. Uh, you of course have your standard defamation or defamatory speech, kind of thing, right? So there there are whole number Of provisions that are there in in the criminal codes. the interesting side note about the criminal codes, is that they were recently overhauled. I think we had, you know, three sets of criminal laws. right from colonial times. But they were recently overhauled in a session of parliament where one 50 members of opposition were suspended. so we had a situation where the entire, you know, in the sense that the criminal justice system was overhauled. but 150 members of parliament from the opposition were not there to debate it right now. It's, it's debatable with the way Parliament is functioning, how much of a difference it would've made. Uh, but, you know, just the fact that they weren't there, is an extremely, you know, concerning development. Right. Indian Canon One, you know, a website that tracks, Indian legislation maintains, uh, an archive library of them actually, when, when these went into effect, said, Hey, we weren't expecting this to happen. It, it's Just a way in which, they were overhauled, right? Almost. a shock doctrine sort of being applied. But so, so on the one hand you have the criminal codes, then you have. the Information Technology Act of, of 2000, relatively, relatively old, I think by, you know, by internet standards at the time was written to govern e-commerce transaction. Cyber crime, has certain provisions on, you know, just about what type of content you can, cannot transmit obscenity, obscene content, impersonation. cybercrime and stuff like that, right? So it's, it's a broad volumous, act. the IT act. Right now, under the IT Act you have various, subordinate legislation, and one of them being the infamous IT rules of 2021, right? The Information Technology rules of, 2021.

Ben Whitelaw:

And it is worth noting. This is, um, this is where I started to come kind vaguely familiar with, you know, the way that India governed it, internet space, because this was a big moment, a big update to the, it act of 2002, right? This is, this is kinda when it, things all started to kinda shift a little

Prateek Waghre:

So, so you, you had, you had from, uh, from, 2008 that were in, place before that to do with, with intermediaries and their liability. and the backstory also is, fascinating'cause these were notified just after, you know, in early 2021 when there were these pharma protests that were happening, in India. And, for the context of this conversation, what, what's relevant is that Twitter at the time, you know, then Twitter and I still say Twitter. Invariably, so I'll probably keep doing that. But Twitter at the time pushed back against a number of take down orders that the government of India had issued. So initially, it initially, took action against all of them, and then reversed costs on what it said were accounts belonging to activists, politicians, journalists, and, and things like that. So it reversed action and there, and there was this, tussle of sorts going on between the government of India and, and Twitter. Right? And in late February, out of nowhere, you have, these, IT rules being notified. Now, the last consultation happened, in late 2018. right. and the rules that came out were in very, very different, very different form. Right. And, and, and some of the interesting things that they did with, the IT rule was that they split up how it was going to be administered. Right? so it had, PRA pertaining to, to the intermediaries. It had pertaining to your streaming platforms. They've of course, used different terms in, in the actual legislation, but I'll just use the one that we use commonly. Right. And then there was one for, You know, and parts pertaining to news publishers, and the way this was split up was that the Ministry of Electronics Information Technology would administer the part related to the intermediaries, right? Which would cover your social media platform and, and your hosting providers and pretty much any service, on the internet. And then you had the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which would administer the parts to do with, you know, your streaming platforms. So your Netflix, Amazon Prime, you know, various Indian platforms. Would come under them. And also about, digital news publishers, right? and some of the digital news publishers went to court, shortly after these, these rules Were notified and they were able to get some parts of this, some parts of this state, but it effectively for Them placed a three tier, mechanism, for governance. So You have a self-regulatory body. you know, you have, you have the, they have their own set of grievance. of officer that they do, and then there have a self-regulatory body, and then there's a government body, on top of that. And the concern was that if you have a government body top of that. it has very severe implications for the freedom of press, right? So, so parts of these certain sections, not in the entirety, but certain sections were withheld or, you know, not applied to, to produce publisher, right? The streaming platforms did not push back, at least at least publicly. So they've sort of been in effect with them since, on the other side with the intermediaries, you had, you know, new provisions being. Introduced in terms of, requirements for in-person or in-country, compliance officers and grievance council officer. Right.

Ben Whitelaw:

This is, this is what Mike calls the hostage laws, right? This is one of his, one of his famous things. Yeah.

Prateek Waghre:

you know, and I think at the time a number of countries were, were doing this and, you know, and, and, and, and India also happened to, to do it around, around the same time. So, you know, and it changes the. calculus significantly for companies, right. Who. always traditionally in India complied, there's, anyway, not been a lot of, spirited pushback publicly right now. Again, I'm not in some of the closed door meetings. I don't know if they, push back privately, but at least publicly, with the exception of Twitter a couple of times, most of them haven't, haven't really pushed back. But this changes the catalyst significantly, right? Because now the risk of non-compliance is employee safety, so, so it had the, it had the hostage taken, clause built in that traceability requirements, right, which were to do with end-to-end encryption, which are also challenged. These were then amended in 2022. again, there were a couple of admin, but the one I'll talk about, was to do with how they changed obligations for intermediary, right? earlier what used to happen was that intermediaries were. Obliged to inform their users not to host certain types of content, right? Not to host, share certain types of content, but could do with impersonation, illegal content. Obscene content, harmful to children, a number of other conditions. There are about, I think at to date, I think now there are about 10, 11 of them. Uh, there were a period of time. what this amendment did was that it changed the obligation to say you no longer have to just inform them. You have to make reasonable efforts not to cause your users to do not host such such content. Right. and That becomes problematic because again, this is not well defined. and it's been used a couple of times to say, Hey, you guys should be taking this, taking this down, right? And there wasn't, pushback significantly back then. There's just one other important amendment to cover, which. is in 2023, you had what we call the fact checking amendments, right? where there was, an obligation. being imposed on intermediaries to take action against content, that, fact checking department or a fact checking unit notified by the government you have to take action against them if they flag any information about the union government as fake, false, or misleading. Right? And this applied, in conversation with mainly social media, but The way it was written, it applies to everyone, right? So it would not just be a social media platform, could go to a hosting provider. You could go to a DNS provider, with this and say, Hey, you guys, you know, you're obliged to take action. against this. This was challenged in court. And, as of last year the Bombay high court did strike it down as being, as being unconstitutional. Currently, the union government has challenged it, but it hasn't. in the Supreme Court, but it hasn't come up. since then, right? So that's the IT rules. there are other aspects that play into it. In terms of content blocking, and there's some other conversation around, broadcasting bill, which we'll probably get into, as this conversation goes on. But this is one, you know, the, the IT rules in the IT act and the criminal code, the one big chunk of what we have in place.

Ben Whitelaw:

Really, really helpful.'cause a lot of listeners will, be aware of, some of these stories that we talk about each week. And, and to be honest, you know, I'm, talking to you is one of the reasons why I, I'm familiar as I am with the IT rules and what they do. And so I appreciate you kind of breaking out their introduction and, and those updates in subsequent years. let's talk a little bit about the know, the political situation in India, there was a big election last year. the ruling BJ party led by Aandra Modi, failed to form a government in and of itself, but as part of a larger coalition. can you give us a sense of like what the tone, is within the political sphere at the moment around online speech and safety? What, what has changed maybe in the last 12 months or 18 months?

Prateek Waghre:

that's been an, it's been an interesting shift to watch. Right. so what happened? Happened was that they, you know, they still formed the government, but as, as you said, unlike the previous two terms where they commanded a majority by themselves this time, you know, it was with the help of, coalition partners, right? and, this at the time was came off as. a surprise to a lot of people. you know, And I guess if you look back now, at a lot of the election in 2024 where the incumbents did badly, in retrospect, I guess, the, the party and their supporters may not be that, uh, that unhappy. uh, Right? in the sense that was still able to come back into power. Right Now in the previous term, there was conversation around, digital India bill, right? It was, in many ways mirrored, the online safety, online safety act, right? but. Minus a lot of the articulation that went along with, the online Online Safety Act. Right. that. conversation does seem to have slowed down, a little. It, it, you know, it slowed down on the buildup to the election. Then it's not really come back, in a major way. Couple of other things that were on the Anil in the last term around, around competition regulation, and things like that. Some of that also now seems to have, slowed down There have been some report in some, some report in press last week about how you know, the sources in the government say that, they're going easy on some of this stuff, for now. Right. But what has come into conversation is things like, the broadcasting bill, uh, which is essentially about bringing.

Ben Whitelaw:

bringing.

Prateek Waghre:

All forms of so you're talking about your satellite broadcasting right? and internet broadcasting and, things like that. Right. under one regulation. Right. Today, some of these are under the cable television news, regulation and, things like that. So you're, you're trying to bring that in the internet all into, under 1, 1 regulation.

Ben Whitelaw:

so maybe that's a good place to kind of lead us into our first story.'cause I think, we'll, talk about the broadcasting, but it's a very interesting, piece of legislation that you and I talked about before we started. I mean, this first story that you've brought to control speech this week. Critique is, is one that illustrates some of the challenges, that we're seeing in India and actually elsewhere in the world as well. it's kind of a story that ends up with a kind of de platforming you could say. Of, a user, although the, conditions of that are a bit mysterious, so we'll talk about those, but just generally shows the kind of highly politicized nature in which, political opponents are operating online in India. Give us an overview of like, the chronology of this story.'cause it starts way back in February, with a kind of a comedian getting up on stage and, delivering some gags,

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so this, you know, this is to do with, with Al Kam. Was one of the first petitioners against, the fact checking amendment of, the IT rules, and then subsequently joined by the editor, Guild of India, association of Indian Magazines, you know, uh, some, some others as well, right? So he's been, continuously outspoken, in some ways, right? and, there's a joke by another comedian. which I was mentioning to you, earlier, right? Who, who basically said that, look, there's an order to these things, right? We first, we write up a comedy show, we tour with it. At the end of it, we put it on YouTube, and then we go to jail. Right? Now, fortunately in this case, it's not, you know, no one has gone to, no one has gone to prison, just yet, right? But, that's, you know, in a way, what happened, right? He was, in early February, I think sometime in early February in Mumbai, he recorded. This committee special, which is called Aya India. Right. Translates to New India. Right. Uh, essentially, again, political, overtones in that, naming, where he essentially, you know, so I, Mumbai is in the state of Ashra. Right. Uh, which has a coalition government, B and the party, and a couple of other parties, including one faction of the Sena, and another faction of the, Nationalist Congress Party, right, or the NCP. Uh, now, he essentially made a comment about, uh. The leader of the ena of, of, it's a faction of the shina, uh, hinde, essentially alluding to the fact that he switched loyalties, and calling him, in Hindi a gaar, which translates to, to traitor or being, being, being unfaithful. right. and again, it was just one, one, joke with political over, you know.

Ben Whitelaw:

Right, but, but you know, nothing, nothing, nothing that at most comedians don't do in a regular show. Right. You know, it's kind of pretty common

Prateek Waghre:

Well, in in India nowadays. Not so much Right. Uh,

Ben Whitelaw:

for reasons we'll go into.

Prateek Waghre:

yeah, right. Uh, but like you said, it should be something that, very normal. Right? That, you say something funny about, about a politician because they've done something funny or they've done something we find funny. We just critiquing them. Right. it shouldn't be an act of bravery, right? Uh, to, to critique a politician. But that's sort of where we are. Now, what happened? with that was, so in late March, this video was actually uploaded, onto YouTube somewhere around 22nd, 23rd March. Right. And I think, you know, it got traction over the weekend. and I think, between Sunday and Monday you actually had, people support of the party go in and vandalize, the studio, right? Or, or the location where,

Ben Whitelaw:

where it was hosted.

Prateek Waghre:

Where it was hosted and there was actually Another show going on at the time. and They cleared it out and then they proceeded to, Vand.

Ben Whitelaw:

okay.

Prateek Waghre:

Analyze the space and, and I, and I was, I was joking about this, that, you know, we are, we are graduating from content. take down because they've Not actually. taken down the video in this case where we're sort of shifting from content take down to when you take down. Right. We just going the, the, place you know, the, the special was, recorded. Right. and you of course then had Other elements that we've now. seen, unfortunately all too often is that you had the police coming in, filing. NFIR against Al Kamra, who subsequently gone. So he, he's not in the state of Ashra, he's in another state in the southern part of the country called, Tam Nadu.

Ben Whitelaw:

Remind listeners what an FIR is pr.

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah. So NFIR is the first information report, right, which you basically procedurally file. as a complaint comes in. Now again, in reality, you, that doesn't always happen. There's a lot of discretion that the police officers show, but you know, it's essentially the first step, in, in the investigation. Then, you know, they asked him to come to Ashra and, be part of the investigation Right. now, again, that's the way of saying it. There is Potentially a a larger risk, larger risk there, right? so he's gone to court, in another state. to the Madras High court and essentially asked for protection from arrest. And for now he's been given interim protection, that sense. And, you know, I think that that will continue until another, another hearing. Right. But so you have the scenario where you're having to, you you've cracked a joke. place where you recorded it has been, has been vandalized, and the police is, coming after you. while there has, there has also, and I should, I should, state this in, fairness, that there has also been, investigations against some of the people who are part of the mob. that vandalize it. Some of them got arrested, but there's also some curious reporting coming out of that based on analyzing the CCTV footage was that, police nel seem to been, present around the time the vandalism was taking place, but did not, intervene. Right. So, again, that, that's quite concerning. cause again, you've taken into account. that it's the same party in government, in that state. Right. And law enforcement is answerable. To them. so, so, you know, so they didn't really intervene, in that sense. the other side of it was that, over last weekend, it's around, you know, around Saturday, around fourth April, I think, if I'm getting my dates right. the India today reported that Kunal cameras profile on book my show had got delisted. Now book my show, essentially a ticketing platform and the largest one in India with, with a significant, market share, And they seem to have removed his, profile or his profile could no longer be found. Right. And the short screenshots in there, it basically showing when you search for his name, nothing, nothing turned up. now it's unclear. I think From Sunday onwards, you could, I, I could see it and it again, there was reporting on, you know, back from Monday that, it seemed to have been back online, and book my show themselves. Have, issued a statement. which is not very easy to understand. There's, you know, there's about 150 words in there. We Don't say much, but seem to imply that they did not deactivate the profile and spoke about how different partners have, control over things like that. So it's not, it's not really clear at this Point Two things, right? one is, who actually delisted the profile, whether it was. book my show or someone else, and whether any shows were actually delisted because I don't actually know at the stage whether he had shows listed, beyond those dates. I think the other bit that's relevant to mention here is that, the party that, the shift, ena and, and members of the party actually Wrote to book my show before the profile went down. They actually wrote to book my show asking, essentially, asking for some form of action. to be taken. and it was, it was after that that, the account profile seemed to have been missing. Right. So it's, it's still, it's in terms of what really happened there.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, and I just wanna read a little bit out from that letter'cause I have it in front of me. You know, it's from, I think the General, general Secretary of the Shiv Center party. And it's, you know, it's a really interesting letter that he says. Is in his individual capacity as a concerned citizen. So first of all, he's, you know, he is part of the The ruling political party in, The region, but he's also talking as a kind of individual citizen, which I think is always an interesting thing to mention in your first paragraph of letter. But then he says, you know, the actions of the comedian appear to be part of a broader criminal conspiracy driven by ulterior motives that extend far beyond the realm of humor and satire. Mr. Cameron's premeditated, scripted, provocative, and malicious statements have consistently crossed ethical and legal boundaries. So it's, it's very kind of like card hitting letter, that's been, sent to. This ticketing platform and then as you say, has led to the profile of the comedian and go down or kind of go missing For we think kind of maybe a day or two, really interesting story, particularly to what extent does this kind of, I guess like, is this a symptom of the way that politics and online speech are intertwined in the country, and like how, how often does this come to a, to a head, would you say? Like, is this relatively common?

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah, there's an interesting thing here, right? In the sense that if you look at the way they've gone about and done it, right, they've not really followed any, any norm in the sense, right? They've gone and. Look, you have a problem. with your video. You, you either complaint and look there, there Are technically under the IT rules, there are provisions where you can file a grievance and stuff like that, right? They've not, bothered with, with any of that. Right? they've gone and it, so it's almost norm entrepreneurship, right? You can, you can call it, in a sense, right? And that is. Unfortunately, I would say happens reasonably frequently. another case, which is again, happening right now or in some form is to do, and this Is you know, not, not a political act of an individual. This is the actual, the government itself. Which blocked the website of a very old magazine in Tam Ladu called Witton. Right. and what the magazine had done was that, around the time, president Donald Trump made Prime Minister in the Modi, in, in the us. They published a caricature or a comic, which, showed them, you know, meeting each other with, Prime Minister Modi chains and Donald Trump looking, looking happy. Right? and It was meant to be a comment on how India, the Indian government has not pushed back, strongly and, and things like that. And, and what happened was that their entire website was blocked, right? Without any notice being given to them. Uh. So Around the 15th of February, the website just suddenly became inaccessible, from most parts of the country, all parts of the country. A day later, they got a notice from the Ministry of Information Broadcasting, because like, remember I said it rules. Now this stuff goes under Ministry of Information Broadcasting. They got a notice, from them. but this notice seemed to be specifically about that comic strip, right. Not about the entire website being blocked. And they Were called to participate in, an interdepartmental committee hearing. right? Uh, which, which tend to Be confidential. You don't really know what? happened in there. You're not supposed to say what, you know, what the proceedings were. But it, that, you know, that committee essentially ruled that. It would continue to stay down again. Still fuzzy on what, you know, what happened to the website. But, so they went to court. to Madras High court with this. and what the court has said, it did give them, interim relief. I, I think there's a caveat here in the way it happened because they asked for the website to be unblocked. but they said that the cart you need to take down the, comic strip before the website gets, gets activated. Right. And now What the court has said is that we'll decide the question of whether that, particular comic strip violated the blocking rule, you know, violated the law or not is secondary and that needs to be decided. But for now, keep it down. Right? But what's happened is that. it's effectively a take down order, right? Because, because you've gone and, taken down the whole website first, right? As opposed to asking them to come for the hearing without actually taking any action and then ruling on it. Uh, because you've, like I said, you know, you're being an entrepreneur with thoms. Uh, you've, you've first, gone a hundred feet forward, and then you've stepped back five feet, in a sense, so maybe 10 feet, right? however you wanna quantify that, but in a sense that, comic step today remains blocked, right? There's of course, in both these, in both these, there's a stress and effect element here, right? think,

Ben Whitelaw:

Michael will be delighted to hear

Prateek Waghre:

Mike would be happy, right? That, sort of spoken about the stend effect. I think the caveat that I'll add, and we were discussing earlier, is that, there's an addendum, I guess to the stend effect, right? And, in low rule of law jurisdictions that, one can think of is that, once tri sand is bad, is counterproductive or bad pr. Multiple Tric signs are a demonstration of capability, right? Because now if you, Imagine this happening, repeatedly, and again, it's happened multiple times. in the past. You're essentially then creating a chilling effect right now. for example, what happened with Witten happened with another magazine a couple of years earlier with the caravan, right? and again, it, it's common for. Comics to be targeted for standup comics in India, to be targeted and as, as, as a result, what's happened is very few of them actually do, political comedy anymore. Right? to the extent that the few, the ones who do it, we call them brave, right? And, not to take nothing away from them. They are brave. but we shouldn't have to be in an environment where, like I said, just critiquing the government is considered. bravery, right? So we have a, we have an addendum to the Stend effect, right? A St. Andum, if you want to call it that.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. Interesting. And then so, these two examples, and I think, I guess the, updates to the IT rules that you've mentioned at the top of today's episode, which, put more of emphasis on, platforms preventing users from uploading speech that is, likely to kind of contravene the IT rules again, gives a sense to me, at least from as an outsider, that there's a kind of concerted effort to. push back against users' rights in terms of what they can say online To what extent are you concerned, and like, are other people concerned in the country about the direction of travel? You know, you worked for the IFF you, you were dealing with this day in, day out. listeners might be kind of quite shocked to hear this, that this happens in India. Like what is the perception amongst like the general public people like yourself who are clued into these issues?

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah, so this is where, you know, the term stable dysfunction comes in, comes back, right in the sense that, as you said it, is the direction is concerning. But we are sort of seeing the same, you know, the same things happen, again and again. and it's not just at the level of content removal, right? I think there's a number of formal informal mechanisms that I used to pressure, uh. to pressurize people. For example, if you go and if you go and vandalize the space, venues are no longer are, are gonna think twice whom they host, right? Uh, similarly, if you send income tax notices to various organizations. right? or you go after their. their ability to receive foreign funding under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act or the FCRA, you're sort, sort of tightening the ability for them or you're, you're, shrinking the space for them to really say things right? E every organization is going to organization. Individuals are gonna think twice, uh, before speaking out. and it also happens, and it's not just union government. that does it, right. This is. unfortunately, almost a feature of the Indian politician, right, in terms of wanting to control speech in some shape or form. So even when you have different parties in government at, you know, at the state level. You find that they do things like go after journalists or go after, you know, local opposition leaders, and things like that, right? So there is, you know, some of them are coming up with their own fact checking units and social media surveillance mechanisms where they want to be able to, quote unquote monitor the Conversation. on social media, right? And, all of this often with law enforcement, involved. So then you know it's going to have a coercive element to it as well. Right now, it, it's, I guess trying very hard look at silver lining, it's not as efficient today. So there are still some spaces, There are of course, folks who are able, who continue to speak out and are able to, to speak out. but the trends have been. have been concerning, for a while. Right. And I think that's, that's the challenge.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. And you were mentioning before we start recording about how there's been this surge of people using the internet in India that kind of happened in the 20 15, 20 16. And, and since then, the country's been ruled by the BJP. So a lot of this, a lot of the kind of internet regulatory regime in India has been kind of decided and defined by one party. Obviously since election last year, that shifted a little bit and you've seen a little bit of a, a shift in the approach as a result of this coalition. Talk a little bit about that and, and maybe what, you see future looking like.

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah, so I, I think there's, you know, like I said, there's unfortunately this thread that, runs through right in the sense that, some of the problematic regulation that the party is using today or the BJP using today. not necessarily all, you know, in, in the online speech domain, but in other cases as well have Been initially or initiated by previous government right? Or the UPA government which had the Congress party at at, at. At it, at its center. But there is. of course there's been a difference in, or certainly an escalation in the way they've been utilized and the extent to which they've been utilized. And as I was talking about, the informal mechanisms being used as well. Right? So, it's not just taking down the speech, it's also creating enough disincentives for people to speak out in the first place. Right. And, that, like I said, you know, unfortunately lot of parties do it, but it's again, there's been an escalation, on that front

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, I mean, that's a really, really helpful overview. I mean, I feel like I've learned more in the last 30 minutes about, the Indian kind of regulatory regime and online speech in the country than I have for a long time. So thank you for, for sharing some of that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We'll, we'll come back to that before we wrap up. if nothing else and, do a bit of a look forward. talking of kind of disincentives for speech, I mean, kind of brings us neatly onto our next story, which is, from Kenya. This is a story that actually broke just after we recorded last week, but is is important enough I think for us to go a bit deeper on it today. there are three. Happening in Kenya, as many of our listeners will know. and this latest development is related to one of them. So I was gonna kind of just unpack a. So there are three cases. One with, a guy called Daniel Mott, who is a moderator for a company called Sam, who is taking meta to court for mental health. challenges a result of the work he did and also union busting. He went on to become kind of, I think he was on the front cover of time. has been, uh, a Mozilla, person of the year I think. So he. Courage to speak out is something that many people have recognized, and that case is still ongoing. he is also part of a larger group of moderators, 185 who are taking meta, to court for, the kind of illegal, allegedly illegal mass firings, that they all suffered as a result of that case. so, 185 of them lost their jobs. a very short notice, as meta moved away from one. BPO one outsourcing company and, and moved to another, that was given the go ahead to be heard in Kenya last, September. And this, the third case, is with two men. the son of a man who was killed during the Ethiopian civil uprisings a couple of years ago in 2022. And an Amnesty International researcher, They are arguing and, this is where of this week's developments have taken place. They are arguing that meta's algorithmic amplification of posts on the platform led to, the professor's death and, led to the hate speech that the researcher faced and. this is is a case that's been put off, several times and was postponed in January this week. It was given the approval by the Kenyan high court to go ahead in Nairobi. Now, that's a significant development for a number of reasons. it means that meta can be sued now for the alleged violence related to. These cases in Ethiopia. and that's kind of obviously significant for the two plaintiffs. and for the issues, around the kind of Ethiopian civil war, which were, I've covered in everything in moderation, at the time, but it also might open the gates for similar suits in other countries, which I think is also really significant. And, you know. you've seen some of these, cases of meta products leading to violence in India yourself over the past few years, which we can talk about. But you know, previously Meta has faced court cases, mainly in the US and mainly in Ireland, where it's got kind of two major hubs. but if, this case obviously goes to court now. And is ruled in, in favor of the plaintiffs, then it might lead to others who want to bring matter to court in countries like Nigeria or South Africa or Brazil, where we know there are kind of ongoing issues that could open the door to many more cases. And that's really interesting. I think, you know, this is, a small, relatively small country, Kenya, challenging matters, significant dominance, and obviously the, Bringing a platform to kind of heal for some of the challenges, uh, and the harms that it's allegedly created. what did you think about this story critique and like, you talked a bit about the farmer rights in India and some of that was WhatsApp driven. how do you feel about how matter and, and it's being challenged in Kenya.

Prateek Waghre:

So just to clarify, the, the pharma protests, didn't have a WhatsApp connection, but, but there have been over the years, multiple cases of. Lynchings where rumors have spread on WhatsApp. Right. I think it, that's a little not extremely familiar with, with the, with the Kenyan context, but I think, if I just draw on my length from the Indian experience, I'm, I'm honestly a little torn about it, right? Because, on the one hand, yes, you know, we, we do want ways to hold, platforms accountable. the question that always, you know, when, when I've looked at these debates in India is that you tend to then put too much of the emphasis on the platform and their actions, at some time and often to ignoring the existing social problems. in society, right? Again, like I said, I'm, Not commenting directly. on, on the Kenyan case because I'm not as familiar with, the specifics, right? Uh, in terms of, you know, what evidence there is that meta was actually negligent and things like that. And, you know, and, if there is evidence to that point, then yes, there's potentially some merit there. but just on the broader question, how do we, you know, where do we. index between looking at social problem or, putting the emphasis on, platform and platform action while ignoring, potentially ignoring the, the social problem. Right? And, and that's where, you know, honestly, I'm a little tone right.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, and I think that's fair. I mean, the interesting part about Kenya, is that. Kenya has a, a large unemployment issue, particularly among you know, the youth population there and content moderation, data labeling, these kinds of jobs. And the BPOs and the outsourcing companies that provide those jobs are a massive focus for the Kenyan government. And last year as this case was kind of rumbling on in the background, actually, president Ruto. Met a contingent from Meta, including, Nick Clegg or so Nick Clegg, I think I, I should call him. and there was a conversation about investment in the kind of tech and AI space in Kenya, because Kenya obviously sees as a way of addressing the unemployment challenge. So yes, you're right. There is, there's always a kind of existing social. Issue that, that maybe the, tech companies are trying to, to address and, and that politicians are trying to address as well. which maybe is a, broader point, but I think this is, potentially very, very important. And, and you know, this has been running, this case has been running for more than two years now and, the appeals and the kind of ongoing issue. It's something we've talked a bit about on control speech a lot, and so it's just, it, I'm just kind of, I guess it's an interesting to see the perseverance needed to bring a case like this to, court and it's likely the matter will appeal and we don't know, when the case will go ahead and, and if that will appeal, will come. But nonetheless, this is Kenyan's kind of highest court saying that. This case can go ahead in the country. the specific point that I will mention is that Meta had pushed back and said, Kenya doesn't have a jurisdiction here. we don't have a kind of setup here. We don't have operations here, but the point that the, the high court has made is that Nairobi, was the place where the content was moderated, in relation to the Ethiopian, users. So, a lot of the base was in Nairobi and therefore, it does have a jurisdiction to, to take this case. So. Again, it's a, I think it puts a pressure on the outsourced nature of content moderation for large platforms because you know, it's a risk really for platforms to have these outsourced companies that are. Applying policies that are, have been set up. But the companies will say there are strict provisions in place and strict standards in place, but actually it's very hard to control the number of moderators that the outsource companies, employ. And so I, I can foresee in time actually this accelerating. They move to a more automated moderation, a move away from, BPOs and, potentially, with the issues that, that come with those shifts, you know, away from a more, away from a human led moderation to a more automated, kind of almost invisible moderation. So yeah, big update in terms of those stories. and we'll

Prateek Waghre:

And maybe just to add to your, to your last point, I. Automated moderation and, a sense, isn't that what, at least in the US context, mark Zuckerberg announced earlier in the year that they, they do want to shift, to automated action. combined with user flagging.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yes, exactly. I think that's exactly the case. And, you know, focusing more on illegal harms, leaving users to do the rest and having kind of automated. Tooling and technology root, some of those reports in a way that's sufficient for the company in a way that outsourcing companies aren't right now and, and are quite expensive. So yeah, interesting to see that issue, come to the fore again this week. I. Pratik, let's go to a couple of other smaller stories that we've flagged this week. I, have got one that wanted to talk through, but you, you pulled out a really interesting Reuters story that, came out yesterday about how social media is gonna become a, one of the ways that the US administration screen immigrants. this feels like a kind of, maybe an episode from the upcoming series of Black Mirror. this is frightening stuff.

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah, no. Extremely dystopian and that's precisely what got my a. as well, right? Because again, and, and again sitting here, you know, we are hearing about, people from India either self deporting or being asked to self deport and things like that, right? And so, you know, some of them just waking up suddenly getting an email saying that, your status is, is too long or valid, and you, you need to move back, right? so, so you put, You're putting that on, steroids, especially in a, in a speech context, right? Where you're essentially saying that. If you have said, and you know, and it seems like, if you've taken any stance that's in support of, the Palestinian people that's being considered, anti-Semitic, right. Uh, in at least the, the way the report has, has been worded. And now for that to have implications for, people's visa status, including. I'm including I think those present, in the country. Uh, I think that just, that just sounds severely dystopian and very running. Right. and I think from a global perspective, it's also more concerning because on the one hand, you know, you're used to, America being this champion free speech in a sense, right? and yes, the First Amendment is, you know, Not an expert on it, but you know, it it held up as this exceptional thing. and you're now then seeing that, if America is gonna act this way, how are the other more authoritarian? leading, leaning governments or outside authoritarian governments, going to react or going to respond, or going to continue to do, use it as justification for doing what they want.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, it's, it's goes back to that, thing that Mike and I talked about, about free speech being selectively applied in the US at the moment, isn't it? And, and yeah, this is frightening, you know, an actual government, organization, a, an agency of the Homeland Security Department, I. Basically reviewing somebody's social media posts and deciding on the basis of that, and their support for, for the Palestinian state, that, that, means that they are antisemitic, which, which we know is those two things are not necessarily the same thing. and potentially kind of deporting them or, rejecting Visa applications on the basis of that. I mean this, you know. could potentially affect tourists as well. people coming into the country, again, from the information we have from the Reuters report, if you are wanting to spend any time in the US but have previously, indicated support for, the Palestinians, then there's a sense that you may be rejected. and again, this is. been widely criticized by groups of all kinds, which I think is really heartening. it's the fact that, free speech groups and also groups that are fighting antisemitism have both turned around and said, this isn't, this isn't right. which is pleasing, but may not stop, this going into effect. But yeah. what else is kind of, uh, on your plate critique? I mean, any other stories that you, you want to talk through? I mean, should we talk a bit about the kind of Kana Tucker X update? Mike and I talked a bit about this on the podcast a few weeks ago. helpfully, there's been a bit of an update this week that you can speak to.

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, maybe it'll help if I just talk through how the, how blocking provisions work.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, talk us.

Prateek Waghre:

there, there there are two approaches. There are two ways, that this happens. so there's, you know, what we call Approach one, right? which specifically uses, certain basically Section 69 A of the IT Act. And what that implies is that, certain conditions about, you know, to do with security of the state regulations with. foreign countries, you know, public order, a couple of conditions, under which, an order can be, can be issued, right? And, you know, in this case, these are meant to be, uh, written orders. They're meant to be reasoned. now that does not always, always happen, right? And they work alongside what's called the 2009 Blocking Rule, which, specifies the procedure and also has the ability to. issue these orders in a confidential way or confidentially, which means that, as an example, if, the government of India was to send Twitter, a take down order related to something I have said, Twitter cannot show the order to me and they cannot. tell me which of These four. or five conditions of which of these conditions the government believes I violated, which then means I don't even, I, you know, it's hard for me to actually challenge, challenge it and say, you know, this was a problem. Right. And this is the one, that, was used in, in the, in the ton, ton case. Right? It was under, they were issued under, under this mechanism section 69 A,

Ben Whitelaw:

And also, did Twitter use this previously before Elon Musk took over the company?

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah. so so, so this approach one is what Twitter had challenged. previously, uh, a couple of years ago, back in, back in, I think mid 2022. where they argued back then, that you know, the government really wasn't following. the laid down procedure. it wasn't reasoning the orders, particularly well. and it was also, you know, using it to block accounts, right? So you're supposed to give URLs and instead of giving specific posts, they would give a user's account. Right. Which is, which we argued is also. a restriction of future speech, right? So you're not just taking down something they said in the past restricting the ability to speak in, in the future. Right. In that case, the K high court actually ruled against Twitter at the time. and even imposed costs on them. And by the time this happened, you know, the Twitter acquisition had

Ben Whitelaw:

treated,

Prateek Waghre:

Elon Musk was in, was was in charge, right.

Ben Whitelaw:

he was carrying his sink into the office. At that point, probably that was his famous, he had more things on his mind.

Prateek Waghre:

Yeah. So, but, so, you know, I wasn't sure. if, if an adversarial ruling came out with, uh, adverse ruling came out with Twitter, actually challenge it. But they did. they did challenge it. Now, that challenge is still going on, that, that's not the one that, you know, that's recent, but that's still going on in pattern. the recent challenge is to do with what is approach two, right? and this. The first two, again, a specific section in the IT Act, section 79 3 B, which essentially talks about the platform having to respond. once it has actual, knowledge, right? And there's context to what actual knowledge means, but when it has actual knowledge for unlawful content, it needs to act otherwise there is a risk to it. Safe harbor status now. Actual Knowledge in a previous, court case, uh, 2015 chair, single judgment was basically specified as it should be either, a notice from a authorized government agency. Or a court order, right? So it can't be, it can't be me complaining to Twitter saying, Hey, take this, take this down. Right? So, so There was a specific definition for what. what actual knowledge meant. But the way this is being used more recently is that, uh, now it says no, you know, it says authorized government agency, but what's happening is that the number of agencies that are being authorized to do this is increasing. and and recent example is just that you know, the Department of Railways was this, was given this ability to do this in December last year. And since then they've, they've used it about, about seven times, right? As per a report in Hindustan times, including, and this is relevant when they were reports of a stampede. in New Delhi railway station, right? And to do, and Twitter was, was issued a notice to take down, media related to the stampede, right? So Twitter Arguing that you know, now this, method doesn't have any of the checks and balances. That approach, one has. Right? Which additives, you know, civil society feels inadequate, but okay, at least in theory, there's something, this doesn't even have that right. so this is what Twitter is, is challenge, had challenge, basically saying that, look, you've now created an alternate mechanism where you are not following whatever procedures you're supposed to follow under approach one. and essentially leading to to that, right? And there was another part which they challenge specifically around the use of a portal. the, uh. Where number of government agencies and and intermediaries would communicate about take down orders. Right. and I think they, basically asked not to be forced to participate, in, in that portal because they felt it enabled it, you know, it sort of furthered this regime. Right. So that, was, what, what could argued now what the. government has, defended its, used in, in, in an affidavit that it filed, uh, essentially saying, and they use this term, which I thought was quite interesting. They said these two approaches operate in mutually exclusive claims. right. Which was, which is interesting phrasing, but Essentially. saying that. One constitute orders. So approach one constitute orders, the written orders, and they're supposed to be. And, and it comes with penal provision. If, if you don't comply, the other approach is notices, right? and that's a term that they've used. And it has just, it just has implications safe harbor. That's how the government is, defending it. But you know, this, the existence of this, of this approach is something that, You know, again, suicide has been concerned about for a while, for precise this reason. and more so because now you're seeing, for example, the Delhi police can issue orders this way. Right? And this is not just union government agencies, state government agencies, like I said, Delhi Police and things like that, right? So you are giving more Government. agencies the ability to issue take down orders what are essentially take down orders. You can call them a notice, right? But. your safe harbor status is at risk, right? It's a ality, right? Uh, no platform is actually gonna risk that, right? It's essentially a, take down order minus whatever. li limited safeguards you know, approach one has, uh, right. So, I fully Expect. a lot of good departments to be very trigger happy with this.

Ben Whitelaw:

Yeah, I mean this is, really interesting context'cause this is obviously what makes the pushback from Twitter X so interesting. You know, it seems like there's a justifiable, case there and, we'll continue to kind of track this one. and, We're probably at the point where we will wrap up today, prt, but context you've given us is so valuable in terms of understanding the nature of, online speech in the country. And I just wanna thank you for making the time today to share your knowledge. we haven't even touched, probably scratched the surface of some of the other legislation we could have gone into. but, just wanna thank you for your time and hopefully we'll have you back on control speech soon.

Prateek Waghre:

Thank you, Fang me. Happy to be here again.

Ben Whitelaw:

Brilliant. And, and, For listeners who are, tuning in today, we're back next week, Mike and I together. if you liked today's episode and, enjoy the podcast on a regular basis, don't forget to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Really helps us, be discovered and don't forget to leave us a, a literary themed review, in whatever platform you use. Looking forward to speaking to you, to you soon. Take care. Bye.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Ctrl-Alt-Speech. Subscribe now to get our weekly episodes as soon as they're released. If your company or organization is interested in sponsoring the podcast, contact us by visiting ctrlaltspeech.Com. That's C T R L Alt Speech. com. This podcast is produced with financial support from the Future of Online Trust and Safety Fund, a fiscally sponsored multi donor fund at Global Impact that supports charitable activities to build a more robust, capable, and inclusive trust and safety ecosystem.

People on this episode

Contributor

Ben Whitelaw

Host
Contributor

Mike Masnick

Host