**** #YouTube, #Twitter, and others blocking new BBC documentary about India's Modi are WRONG ***
I have now seen the first hour (second hour not yet broadcast) of the BBC documentary "India: The Modi Question". In a classic example of the Streisand Effect in action, I did not even know about this important documentary until stories appeared about the government of India's largely successful efforts to censor access to this program, and even to Twitter tweets or comments linking to it.
This documentary should be seen widely, and the second half when broadcast seems likely to be equally if not more important.
I am not going to include any links here. They will tend to be ephemeral in any case since they are being pulled down so rapidly due to India's demands, but it doesn't take a great deal of searching to find working ones that keep popping up, and I urge you to do so. -L
@lauren Is YouTube pulling them down globally or blocking them for Indian users?
The former is SOP to make it possible to do what they do at international scale; the latter is extremely disquieting.
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@lauren
It isn't such a simple decision. Shutting down service for an entire huge active user base is harmful to those users. Some of whom rely on it to make a living and to learn critical skills. Censoring something specific in a non totalitarian semi open society like India will work as intended - drawing more attention to it.
@mtomczak
@gpshead @mtomczak Yes, I understand this, and have been speaking and writing about the associated issues for, well, decades. But my point it that this case -- which discusses what falls into the category of racial cleansing -- is worthy of the most serious actions on the parts of platforms to NOT agree to hiding this information. Whether one agrees with the documentary or not, attempts to hide such evidence are intolerable.
@lauren Don't get bogged down in semantics. It's all relative compared to shining examples like China, Russia, and Iran.
@mtomczak It's hard to be sure because so many are popping up and vanishing too quickly to analyze. Clearly there is blocking beyond India in many places, probably due to imprecise IP geo info and VPN concerns. In any case, NO, don't use the "must follow the laws in each country" excuse in this case. I've noted this reality many times myself explaining firm actions, BUT there is an important codicil -- you don't HAVE to agree to terms that are utterly unethical. You CAN restrict of cut off services instead, and let the governments involved suffer the wrath of users. In this case, the documentary is so important that I view it as deeply unethical to keep it from being widely seen, ESPECIALLY in India. And really, I don't think anybody should be commenting on this issue UNLESS they HAVE seen the documentary. Have you?