Social media

Opposing parallel proceedings and debates “on social media by some petitioners who have called for an independent investigation into Pegasus’ alleged spy problem, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday that there must be some discipline and that they had to have some confidence in the system.

A bench led by Chief Justice NV Ramana, who said he would take an appeal Aug. 16 about whether to send a notice to the Center on Pegasus Line Inquiry Requests, said he was not against the debate but when the case is pending in the Supreme Court it should be deliberated here.

The tribunal, also composed of Justices Vineet Saran and Surya Kant, said it expects petitioners interested in the case to answer any questions the tribunal puts to them through a proper debate in front of them. the court and not outside.

You see, once you come to this tribunal, we expect a debate to take place here and we expect them to answer questions, the bench told applicants’ counsel, adding: They need to have some confidence in the system.

He observed that instead of having a parallel proceeding or a parallel debate, whatever the petitioners want to say, they can file an affidavit in court and the court would review every content of it.

CJI told lead counsel Kapil Sibal, representing veteran journalists N Ram and Sashi Kumar who filed one of the petitions, that there must be some discipline.

Sibal said, Absolutely, I completely agree with you. When the matter is in court, there should be no public statements of any kind. I completely agree with you.

At first, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Center, told the judiciary that he had received copies of the petitions, with the exception of one possibly filed by former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha.

It’s not a grievance, they can serve it. I may need instructions, Mehta said from the bench, adding that I am reviewing the case. I need instructions from the government. Subject to the convenience of your lordships, if I can have time until Friday. I need two business days to get instructions.

CJI said the case will go to a hearing on Aug. 16, as it has personal drawbacks on Friday.

Senior lawyer CU Singh, representing one of the petitioners, told the bench that an opinion would be issued on the petitions.

Monday, I’ll take a call. See you on Monday, said the bench.

Lawyer Manish Tewari, representing Yashwant Sinha, said they served the copy of their petition on the Center.

During the hearing, the judiciary referred to the arbitration process and said the courts had asked questions of both parties.

We’ve all asked you a few questions. We are waiting for material, information or something. You know the arbitration process from the way the courts will ask questions. Sometimes it can be embarrassing for you, sometimes it can encourage you. Either way, both sides have to face this music, the bench said.

Sibal said that on the last court date he appeared for Ram and that there had been a reference to Pegasus-related proceedings in a California court.

He said Ram had been trolled on social media.

See, that’s the problem when a line was taken out of context, the bench observed, adding that he had asked questions and that had been disproportionate.

The Supreme Court said that was not correct and that the debate should not go over the line for anyone.

You see, we follow a procedure and the system. They need to have faith in the system, the bench said.

Sibal said the problem involved in the case is serious and the government or others should be given an opportunity to explain the position.

The bench said it has always given the petitioners as well as the government an opportunity.

See, any of the petitioners or anyone interested in the matter who says something in the papers or the media or whatever, we would expect them to answer all questions, all questions. questions, to all things when we bring it to you through proper debate in the yard, not outside, he observed.

Meanwhile, activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, on behalf of the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) and the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information, wrote a letter to CJI requesting a live webcast of the hearing in the Pegasus case.

The Supreme Court heard a series of pleadings, including one filed by the Editors Guild of India, calling for an independent investigation into the alleged Pegasus spy case.

They are linked to reports of suspected espionage by government agencies of prominent citizens, politicians and scribes using Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO.

An international media consortium has reported that more than 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers are on the list of potential targets for surveillance using Pegasus spyware.

At the hearing into the case on Aug. 5, the highest court said the Pegasus-related espionage allegations were “of a serious nature” if the reports against them are correct.

He also asked the applicants whether they had made any efforts to lodge a criminal complaint in this regard.

The Supreme Court, which asked the applicants to serve the copies of the pleadings on the Center, also asked why the case suddenly arose now when it came to light in 2019.

Editors Guild of India called in its plea for a special investigative team to be set up to investigate the reported surveillance of journalists and others.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)

In my Friday post, I tried to philosophize on the topic of social media and said we would discuss why this is widely viewed as a national security issue.

Philosophically analyzing social media, I said that while social media presents an opportunity and space for freedom, it also signifies conflicts and tensions used to suppress freedoms, provoke the masses and bring countries down.

In this article, I intend to discuss what social media means in practice and what it means in our life.

MODERNITY, INDIVIDUAL, MASS SOCIETY

Modernity emphasizes the individual and the mind. The extremism of the mind of the individual invented the masses, sacrificing and destroying the individual in the process.

Modern society invented mass society through the media. Mass society in turn has turned humanity into weak herds.

In mass society, the individual is a tragic presence who destroys himself among the crowds.

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MEDIA PRODUCING VIOLENCE

Although social media is “social”, it is a medium that both divides the community and limits humanity to what is superficial, visible, tempting; to the image, to the perception.

The variety of tools used to generate and disseminate information is increasing, while humanity’s capacity for understanding weakens. What is important should not be to produce piles of insignificant, superficial and worthless information, but to produce meaningful and valuable information that enriches life and humanity, that deepens the ability to understand and provide advice. .

A medium that does not or cannot influence humanity, life, information, and therefore the truth, certainly cannot build a meaningful, valid and beautiful world. The individual has disappeared among the media and the masses in modern society. As the social media of post-modern society limits humanity to the superficial, the tempting and the absurd, the elimination of the community becomes inevitable.

Therefore, it can be called social media as a phenomenon, but it both desocializes the masses and condemns them to a conflicted and primitive state of mind.

Social media reduces the ability of societies to understand and apprehend solely through perception, imagery and temptation, leading them to possess a reactive and confrontational psychology.

Moreover, when the act of comprehension remains at a superficial level, the discursive intensity becomes strong, easily causing peaks of polarizations and conflicts in society.

When a person’s ability to grasp and understand certain things is at its lowest, tensions and the rate of conflict between different social factions soar.

Finally, when the ability to understand and apprehend atrophies, his freedom is also threatened.

SOCIAL MEDIA HAS BECOME A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE AROUND THE WORLD

Social media seems at first glance to widen people’s space of freedom. But it only appears that way. This is only a simulation and not an overview.

To get the big picture, you have to take a deep look: humans are, in fact, a “puppet” in the social media world.

There is a puppeteer who controls humans. They are pulling the strings, deciding how humans should act, almost a modern version of the Greek god Zeus. Those who do not like it storm Donald Trump “the puppet” or his servant, and eliminate him without mercy!

In the past, newspapers and then television stations established governments and brought them down. Now the storefronts of the old have become social media. What establishes and breaks governments is social media.

Social media led a coup that has been widely seen in the United States: America, the land of democracy and freedoms, both demonized Trump in the presidential election and suspended his media accounts social, while Joe Biden sat on his throne in the White House!

The latest example came from Tunisia: Following perceptions formed by social media, the government was easily hit by an asymmetric coup.

Taking advantage of forest fires, social networks are leading an incredible collection operation in Turkey. Think about it: 7.5 million Twitter accounts were activated in four days, and using hashtags like HelpTurkey and GlobalCall, 2.5 million tweets were posted in two hours, creating the image that Turkey is burning. , that she is devastated and needs help. The majority of these tweets were posted from bot accounts and 71% from a special seat!

Turkey faces a new kind of attack! Therefore, social media should be viewed as a national security issue. It is not a question of imposing certain prohibitions. Such a thing would be absurd. On the contrary, I am talking about the need to take technical and legal measures, and to draw up legal regulations.

Tehran, Iran

For Ali Hedieloo, who makes wooden furniture in the Iranian capital, Instagram is more than an excess of brilliant images. Like around 1 million other Iranians, this is how he finds customers, as the app has exploded into a massive e-commerce service in the sanctions-hit country.

But now the social media platform is under threat. Iran passed new government restrictions on Instagram and other apps last week, as diehard lawmakers agreed to discuss a bill that many say will undermine communication, destroy the means of livelihood and will open the door to banning major social media tools.

“Me and the people who work here risk losing our jobs if this bill goes into effect,” Hedieloo said from his dimly-lit workshop on the southern outskirts of Tehran, where he sandblasted wood and take photos. of offices decorated for advertising.

The bill has yet to be approved by the hard-line-dominated Iranian parliament, but it is already causing anxiety among young Iranians, avid social media users, online business owners and entrepreneurs. . Iran is a country with some 94 million Internet devices in use among its more than 80 million people. Almost 70% of the Iranian population uses smartphones.

More than 900,000 Iranians have signed a petition opposing the bill. The protest comes at a tense time for Iran, with Ebrahim Raisi, the former judicial leader and uncompromising protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, occupying the country’s highest civilian post this week. Journalists, civil society advocates and government critics have sounded the alarm about the possible increase in social repression once he takes office.

The bill, first proposed this spring by conservative lawmakers, requires major foreign tech giants like Facebook to register with the Iranian government and be subject to its surveillance and data ownership rules.

Companies that host unregistered social media apps in Iran would face sanctions, with authorities empowered to slow down access to companies’ services in order to force them to comply. Lawmakers have noted that crippling US sanctions against Iran make it impossible to register US tech companies in the country, thereby securing their ban.

The law would also criminalize the sale and distribution of virtual private networks and proxies – a key way for Iranians to access long-blocked social media platforms like Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube. It would also prevent government officials from managing accounts on banned social media platforms, which they now use to communicate with citizens and the press. Even the office of the Supreme Leader has a Twitter account with over 890,000 followers.

And finally, the bill removes control of the Internet from civilian government and places it under the control of the armed forces.

The aim of the bill, according to its authors, is to “protect users and their rights”. Government hardliners have long viewed social messaging and media services as part of a “soft war” waged by the West against the Islamic Republic. Over time, Iran has created what some have called the “halal” Internet – the version of the Internet locally controlled by the Islamic Republic to restrict what the public can see.

Supporters of the bill, such as die-hard lawmaker Ali Yazdikhah, hailed it as a step towards an independent Iranian Internet, where “people will start to prefer locally developed services” to foreign companies.

“There is no reason to worry, online businesses will stay and even we promise they will grow as well,” he said.

Internet advocates fear, however, that these measures could shift the country to an even more controlled model like China, whose “great firewall” blocks access to thousands of foreign websites and slows down others. .

Iranian Information Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, whom harsh justice summoned for prosecution earlier this year for his refusal to block Instagram, warned the bill would reduce access to information and would lead to the total ban on popular messaging apps. In a letter to Raisi last month, he urged the president-elect to reconsider the bill.

Facebook, owner of Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Social media is a hotly contested space in Iran, where the government exercises tight control over newspapers and remains the only entity allowed to broadcast on TV and radio. In recent years, anti-government protesters have used social media as a communication tool to mobilize and spread their message, prompting authorities to cripple internet services.

During the turmoil of fall 2019, for example, the government imposed a near-total internet blackout. Even scattered protests, such as the recent protests over water shortages in southwest Iran, have led to disruptions in mobile internet service.

But many ordinary Iranians, reeling from the harsh US sanctions that cut access to international banking systems and triggered skyrocketing inflation, remain more concerned about the potential financial fallout from the bill.

As the coronavirus ravages Iran, a growing number of people like Mr Hedieloo have turned to Instagram for a living – giving private lessons and selling homemade goods and art. Over 190,000 businesses have moved online in the past year.

While much about the fate of the bill remains uncertain, experts say it has already cooled commerce on Instagram, where once hopeful users now doubt they have a future on the app.

“Me and everyone who works in cyberspace is worried,” said Milad Nouri, software developer and technology analyst. “This includes a teenager playing online games, a YouTuber making money with his channel, an influencer, an Instagram-based online store.”

He added: “Everyone is kind of stressed out.”

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

Srinagar, August 2: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh has asked the government to inform it whether online news portals and social media agencies need to be registered and, if so, whether they have been granted legal permission.

Urging the government to respond to a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging the proliferation of news portals on social media, a division bench made up of Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Judge Sanjay Dhar also investigated whether an agency was examining the content of the information disseminated by these portals.

The PIL filed by the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Forum, a trust, through its secretary general, calls on the government not to allow online news networks and portals to operate without a proper license or authorization.

PIL is also calling for the appointment of a regulatory authority for the licensing of social media channels, networks and news portals.

PIL points out that the details requested by the petitioner under the Right to Information Act from the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Information Officer do not attest that no permission has been granted to anyone to manage online agencies and news channels.

“In the absence of authorization granted by the competent authority for the operation of an information portal, it suffices to infer that there is currently no appropriate legal and regulatory mechanism, so that a state confusion reigns on the subject as to the authenticity of any information transmitted by these channels and portals ”, pleads the PIL.

“Anyone with a suspended camera and holding a microphone impersonates a journalist, whether or not he or she is authorized and authorized to work as a journalist and has the required qualification,” alleges the PIL.

“The bogus journalists who run the Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter pages have become a new virus that has spread all over Kashmir. They continue to harass officials to create viral videos and sensational reporting and such measures also tend to tarnish the image of real journalists and media and hence these vagrants should be discouraged, ”the PIL reads. .

“True professional journalists from major newspapers, news channels and news agencies follow a strict code of ethics,” he says.

With regard to the supervision of cable operators, PIL declares that, under the law on cable networks, each district magistrate, in his respective jurisdiction, is competent and empowered to exercise effective control over cable operators. .

“By law, every cable operator is obligated to ensure that national / Doordarshan channels are broadcast to allow ordinary people to see the country’s official media. Most cable operators are guilty of having obscured the DD National channels in their areas of operation and the respective district magistrates are not aware of this serious negligence ”.

After hearing attorney Shafqat Nazir on behalf of the petitioner and Advocate General DC Raina on behalf of the government, the tribunal requested the J&K government response to PIL through its senior secretary in the Department of information, divisional commissioners of Kashmir and Jammu in addition to the director of information Jammu and Kashmir by September 1.

As it was predictable that when Pandora’s box of social media opened, a bubbling swarm of poisonous wasps would be released.

And how different from the ideal, we have been sold for years.

We were told that everyone would have a voice, which would lead to richer and more informed comments.

There would be objective competition to traditional media, often presented as being in the pockets of over-powerful advertisers and owners.

The voice of the people would have no investment in anything other than sharing fair and honest views.

Reality turned out to be a dog-eating dog world where, at least in the fashion and lifestyle realm where I’ve worked, the hundreds of bloggers, influencers, and podcasters often turn out to be. to be cannibals with fierce appetites, each new generation avidly devouring the previous one at the first opportunity.

The recent victims of this situation are two of the first social media success stories: French illustrator, photographer and blogger Garance Dore, and Leandra Medine Cohen, the New Yorker who founded popular fashion site Man Repeller.

I’m not taking any sides in these stacks – what fascinates me is how they illustrate that this supposedly brave new world is by no means purer or nicer than what came before it. In fact the opposite.

Dore, 46, who was a familiar and beloved figure on the fashion circuit, was called out in an article titled “What’s up with fashion sweetheart Garance Dore?” in a small online magazine called Ensemble.

The crime? His seemingly carefree Covid travel itinerary in New Zealand and LA, Scotland and Corsica, plus a recent hesitation post to his 707,000 followers on Instagram.

Next, Medine Cohen gave an interview to fashion designer Recho Omondi’s The Cutting Room Floor, a podcast with a relatively small but engaged audience.

Medine Cohen had to shut down her Man Repeller site last year amid swirling allegations of staff abuse, but in this interview it was the interrogator who found herself the subject of a storm over social networks for making allegedly anti-Semitic remarks, referring to the nose jobs and name. changes, such as the switch from Ralph Lauren to Ralph Lifshitz.

These examples have happened in the fashion world, but they are reflected everywhere on social media.

People who hope to develop a large following have found that aggression increases visitor numbers far more effectively than playing nicely with an audience eager to join an angry crowd that itches to stand out.

Social media can be a wonderful and powerful tool, but the increasingly common practice of so many attacking and harming each other is unnecessary, ugly, uninformed, and extremely destructive.

It takes time to build authority and trust and build a real, lasting business as traditional newspapers and magazines have done for many decades.

New media characters need to be careful about how they use their power. Otherwise, before they know it, they will be seen as the old guard and shot down by the new kids in the neighborhood, who will feel equally angry and wronged by something or the like.

Amber quarantine makes me see red

Suddenly we live in an amber world. How confusing, because of the three colors of traffic lights, amber is the one you never know what to do with. Stop? To go? Who knows? Amber quarantine restrictions, amber weather warnings and last week, most peculiar of all, the first amber extreme heat alerts. Amber is not extreme. That’s the point.

The smile that makes Queen my model

I didn’t expect that I would see the Queen as my role model, but since it’s now the predictable question in every quick interview, I had to find one. And who better?

Because while most recent 95-year-old widows would be forgiven for choosing to limit their activities and pamper themselves in a small world of loved ones, our Queen has never been so out with a big smile and a handshake. .

She was there at the Eden Project for the G7 summit, entertaining the Bidens at Buckingham Palace, laughing at the Windsor Horse Show, on the set of Coronation Street, driving her Range Rover in Sandringham – dressed in cheerful colors, never less than intelligent.

Yes, she has the privilege of money and position. But that doesn’t protect anyone from age and grief. If only we could hope to compete.

I didn’t expect that I would see the Queen as my role model, but since it’s now the predictable question in every quick interview, I had to find one.

Deluded Dom is so weirdly attractive

Dominic Cummings – megalomaniac, deceived disruptor, avenging colleague, rejected comrade. But also, in his etiolated manner, in a white shirt, with nothing to lose, strangely attractive.

After his crazy interview, I mentioned to someone that I found him strangely convincing. They correctly pointed out that it was only recently that I would have thought he was the devil incarnate for helping lead us to Brexit. I still do.

But then aren’t the devils often the most attractive?

Dominic Cummings – megalomaniac, deceived disruptor, avenging colleague, rejected comrade. Yet also, in his stale manner, in a white shirt, with nothing to lose, strangely attractive

It’s official … brown bread is really dead

Last week I went looking for a brown bread to serve with butter and shrimp. A box of simple, freshly baked wholemeal flour. Could I find one anywhere? No. Leaven? Oh yes.

Endless sourdough – seed, rye, gluten free, organic. The focaccia, of course. A mellow and malty French poilane, of course.

But a regular, easy-to-slice brown, a cut above a Hovis supermarket, is as endangered as the Checkered Skipper butterfly.

Education Minister needs an art lesson

The past 18 months have proven that you often don’t know what you’re missing out on until you get it back.

Going to Tate Modern to see the brilliant exhibition of Sophie Taeuber-Arp, one of the greatest abstract artists of the 1920s and 1930s, reminded me of how important it is to be able to spend time immersed in the work of another person, to forget the dreary things of the day and leave enriched with their talent and their ideas.

I recommend Education Secretary Gavin Williamson take a look – it might change his mind about pushing his planned 50 percent funding cuts to the arts in our sector from education.

We need future generations of artists as much as we need scientists.

I recommend that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson take a look at Tate Modern.

Now we are all starting to accept that the volatility of 2020 unfortunately did not end with a turnaround in the schedule. Nothing has demonstrated this more than the attack on the United States Capitol, and since then it seems like battles are raging in just about every corner – even Robinhood and Wall Street. Social media, often a battleground in itself, became the subject of a heated new debate when Twitter and Facebook suspended the accounts of Donald Trump and Apple, Google and Amazon Web Services, then refused to support and host sites, such as Parler, for their services. It gave new life to the big question – platform or publisher? The distinction is important because it has far-reaching global implications.

As the aforementioned social media companies seek to define themselves as mere platforms, moderating and removing content (and the people who post it), they are actively taking control of the content and content providers on their sites. Web and make editorial decisions, just like a newspaper or online news source. In other words, they act as editors.

In life, as it is the law, it is not only what you say that matters, it is also what you do. And at the end of the day, what social media companies are doing – even if it’s different from what they say – means that they are likely to be subject to regulations when until now they were largely left to themselves.

Regulation of this sector has been slow in coming, but it is clear that demands for increased regulation are accelerating from governments and corporations around the world. Initially, there will undoubtedly be a patchwork of different types of regulations with different activities covered and a variety of ideals applied. Overall, we predict that these will dictate how Big Tech should apply its editorial power fairly and consistently, and they will determine the safeguards of that power and what people can do when they feel it is. is used inappropriately. It should also address what happens when an individual or institution has been damaged or violated by content posted by these publishers.

Currently, for platforms based solely in the United States, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally grants website publishers immunity from liability arising from third-party content. While jurisdiction and enforcement have always provided them with protection there, the world is changing and getting smaller and smaller and big tech can’t hide there forever.

The focus of the UK’s online harm bill, which is currently due to be finalized and come into force later this year, will provide due diligence on social media platforms to protect users. Platforms will be required to assess what content might be harmful to users, even if it is not illegal, and to take steps to protect users from such harmful content. This will apply to businesses around the world where UK users access their content. The bill will include the power to impose significant fines and prevent businesses from providing access to the UK. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Bloc is considering pushing forward the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. These focus on content moderation and self-preference. The two proposed laws provide for substantial fines.

This is where the debate gets interesting. There is an editorial spectrum. On one side is the phone – essentially, just a platform. Anyone can say anything harmful to someone online, and a phone company could never be involved because they didn’t edit or control that content; they just passed the conversation on. The other end is a fully edited journal where every word of the journal is written by an employee of the company and completely under the editorial control of the company. ISPs are closer to phone operators, and claims by social media companies that they are just platforms have historically brought them closer to phone companies than newspapers across this spectrum. But when Big Tech makes important editorial decisions like removing the US president and Iranian leader from their offices and leaving the leaders of other countries active, it shows that they are actually much lower on the spectrum and much closer to the top. newspapers. The company needs clarity on how its editorial decisions are made, as well as consistent guidelines and opportunities to oppose such decisions.

So why would Big Tech choose to be a publisher and therefore become subject to publisher regulation? In short, to protect their reputation and because they have no choice if they want to maintain viable businesses that most of society wants to be a part of. Although they face regulation, it is still better than being completely shut down or becoming marginal platforms. And public opinion is changing and starting to demand that they take responsibility for their actions. It is undoubtedly better to have democratically elected governments regulating these publishers after debate, public consultation and input from the Big Tech themselves rather than letting a few billionaires decide what the rules are and how those rules are applied and when those rules are applied. must be changed.

As the ancient Chinese curse says: May you live in interesting times. Well, we certainly do with all the conflict and complexity that the internet, big tech, and social media bring. But whether you’re in tech, law, or a social media commentator of some sort, things certainly get interesting – and that will only continue when new leaders and new countries step in and out. that new legislation begins to be adopted and applied. We will monitor closely and be there to advise, advise and keep you informed every step of the way.