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Earlier this year, the Indian government asked Twitter and YouTube to take down a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both complied. Two weeks ago, Twitter also complied with a request from the Indian government to block 122 accounts supposedly critical of India's actions in Punjab.
I don't run an international social media company but I imagine there are no obvious choices to make when a government makes a demand and threatens to jail your employees if you don't comply or has police raid your offices. You could close up your offices and not have any employees anywhere in the country, but then you risk having the government retaliate by just blocking access completely, as several countries have already.
Google also dealt with this dilemma in China. In exchange for access to a potential market with 1.3 billion people at the time, Google agreed in 2006 to offer a version of its services that hewed to the CCP's severe censorship requirements. They gave up in 2010 after they found out that several Chinese activists had their Gmail accounts hacked (presumably by the CCP). From a purely financial perspective, it probably would've been in Google's best interests to dutifully continue complying with CCP's censorship regime and just look the other way. That they didn't is commendable from a principled perspective, but it's also not obvious to me whether China's population would have been better off with a hobbled obedient Google versus nothing at all.
Despite the hostility in India, (old) Twitter wasn't a total doormat and did pushback against censorship efforts by suing the Indian government over its takedown law. This lawsuit was something that Musk specifically complained about while he and Twitter were lawfighting about the sale, as stated in the counterclaim he filed:
Musk was clearly worried that (old) Twitter was rocking the boat too much in India. Even as a free speech maximalist, I don't see an obvious choice here. There's an obvious tension between standing on principle while also not jeopardizing your wallet at the same time. One has to give, and there's nothing inherently embarrassing about that given the stakes at play.
Fast forward back to the present, in the context of India's recent takedown demands, I wouldn't have an objection if Musk came out with a statement that said "Although we disagree with the demands of the Indian government, we are exploring our legal options but have no choice but to comply in order to avoid jeopardizing access to 1.4 billion people." That's regrettable from a free speech perspective, but what else can you do? But as far as I can tell, Twitter has kept quiet and refused to say anything about its role in facilitating government censorship.
In contrast to the delicate diplomatic game Musk has to play in India, Musk faced no such concerns when speaking about the US government's efforts to take down information it didn't like. Matt Taibbi covered exactly this topic in Twitter Files No. 6, describing how the FBI made several removal requests to Twitter, not all of which were complied with.
Since Musk was the source for the Twitter Files documents, it's reasonable that as the owner of the company he would have a sharp financial interest to be extremely selective about what gets disclosed to journalists. Similarly, since Taibbi was one of the journalists handpicked by Musk to receive such a scoop, Taibbi might have an aversion from criticizing the actions of Musk-owned Twitter too strongly. So when the news about India's removal requests came out two weeks ago, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan sarcastically tweeted "I'm sure Taibbi is all over this.", referencing the conflict of interest at play. Taibbi responded "Why don’t you invite me on your show to talk about it? Since you’re so absolutely sure of what I’ll say." and Hasan complied.
In terms of how this specific question played out, you can see for yourself at this timestamp. Hasan asks if Taibbi is willing to criticize Musk for complying with the Indian government censorship requests and Taibbi declines, claiming he doesn't know enough about the story to have an opinion. It bears repeating that the whole reason he asked to be invited on Hasan's show was to talk about India's censorship! Not knowing enough to have an opinion is fine, but this apparent gap in Taibbi's knowledge seems rather suspicious. Given his reporting, he clearly has an interest in reporting on the relationship between Twitter and censorious government requests, but apparently his curiosity stops at this particular line?
Taibbi's was clearly not happy with the interview but his follow-up statements kept avoiding the central reason he asked to be interviewed, the censorship by India's government. He pivoted instead to talking about the numerous mistakes MSNBC has made over the years which, sure, ok, but a dodge is still a dodge.
Consider a parallel scenario, involving TikTok employees. It's the easiest own maneuver, but watch how the CEO of TikTok transmogrifies into a human pretzel in front of Congress when asked about Uyghur persecution in China. The same thing happened to TikTok's Head of Public Policy last December, where he kept trying to backflip out of his skin. The evasion in answering the Uyghur question is reasonably interpreted as strong evidence that TikTok executives are afraid of being fired for acknowledging something so verboten by the Chinese state. A clear demonstration of how much control the CCP has over the platform.
So with that in mind, I think the best conclusion one can draw from the evidence above is that Taibbi feels constrained from criticizing Musk because Musk is too valuable a source. That on its own does not negate or render false the Twitter reporting he has already done, but it seems obvious that he's not playing with a free hand. Journalism is especially reliant on credibility and trust because so much of it happens behind curtains. For whatever cannot be corroborated by outside sources, we have to trust that a journalist is engaging in enough due diligence in vetting sources and investigating claims. Taibbi is seriously jeopardizing his credibility here, and I can't see how the pay-off is worth it.
[P.S. While writing this, Taibbi announced that he will leave Twitter after the platform started blocking links to Substack. That fact that he is willing to speak up against Musk/Twitter slightly mitigates my overall criticism of Taibbi's integrity.]
Personally I don't think it would be that bad, and if only considering purely selfish reasons I'd even welcome it. People generally underestimate just how much of the bottom-tier dross of the internet originate in India and Southeast Asia, like a global Eternal September, and having that blocked would substantially improve the net in general (for westerners, naturally; not so much for the Indians themselves!).
The reason for this is simple: India is huge, rich enough for most people to be online, not rich enough to not need to bother with small amounts of money, and they speak English decently enough. More importantly, there is a pervasive cultural trait where "looting the commons" is seen as basically acceptable; and by not doing it you're seen more as a schmuck than virtuous. This causes people to rapidly consume every bit of easily-exploitable goodness in a community, externalities be damned.
As an example, I am a software developer with a bit of open-source contributions. Each year, DigitalOcean has an event they call Hacktoberfest, where if you submit code to any open source project they send you a T-shirt. Perhaps predictably this causes a massive flood of inane garbage from Indian users wanting their shirt, forcing everybody else to spend all month dealing with spam.
Who do you think is making those click-farm spam sites that rehost e.g. StackOverflow content that has made Google so bad in recent years? Indians, grinding out a few bucks of ad revenue at a time. A lot of the trash on YouTube/Facebook is from there too, like those awful videos for kids. For the same reason, they're also responsible for the bulk of the scam calls plaguing the rest of the English-speaking world. It's no coincidence that the second-worst country for that, Nigeria, shares relevant traits (large population, middling poverty, English proficiency). Brazil would possibly be number two, but "luckily" their non-elite population don't speak much English at all.
A straightforward objection to "block it all" would be that some genuinely good users would be caught in the middle. Sure, but the quality of a community does not hinge much on the absolute amount of good users, but the average. We would hardly be on themotte if that wasn't the case! Having India ban you presents an excellent opportunity to improve your service without being accused of e.g. racism, and you get free-speech goodwill to boot.
(Even more tangentially I am awaiting the moment when some internet hustler guru discovers how you can exploit some modest opportunity for deploying LLMs and spamming people, unleashing a flood of garbage on some unlucky website. I imagine it will be something like a zillion LLaMA-powered Indians commenting on every post with a text containing random Amazon affiliate links fluidly shoehorned into it, or a hundred add-filled spam sites for every legitimate one when you search for anything. By then we'll have to actually do something.)
I am reminded of when 4chan ip banned the entire nation of Turkey over karaboga spam.
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True, as a user I would likely benefit. As an owner, I might have other incentives though. I don't know how accurate these numbers are but roughly Twitter gets 53% of its revenue from the US and 16% from Japan. The specifics from India are not listed but as the 3rd largest market it's bound to be a significant amount.
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Wouldn’t VPN solve that issue?
Too costly (time and money) for spammers but not for the competent ones.
4chan not only blocks VPNs, but also Tor too.
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Not if you were determined to fuck them over. You can use a VPN but you can't escape from the speed of light. If you REALLY wanted to exclude a population you could use time based "triangulation" to determine where the client is located at. Then block access.
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Yes, any sort of gatekeeping hurdle would improve it, though even mild inconveniences will significantly limit interaction from good users too. I wouldn't check e.g. this website very frequently if I had to spin up a VPN every time, for example.
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I've recently found myself coming to the conclusion that though I prize my own values very highly, I do not value them nearly as high for other/foreign cultures - it feels like it would negate what makes them different and useful to my own.
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Or Taibbi didn’t really care about the point and wanted to use the platform to discuss what Taibbi cared about in the US context?
The MSNBC guy was a dickhead in the first instance “hey Taibbi why don’t you write about this non American issue you probably don’t really know anything about; oh you won’t because you are bought and paid for.” The implication of course was disregard everything Taibbi said.
So I don’t really think Taibbi has bad form to basically go on the show with zero intention about talking about MSNBC’s intentional red herring argument.
OP:
@zeke5123
Yeah, as I read through this last night and watched the Hassan interview, my impression was that Taibbi was not really referring to the Modi/India issue in that Tweet, but was (petulantly) responding to what had become a habit of Hassan snarking at Taibbi on various issues while denigrating the Twitter Files. That camel-back-breaking Hassan Tweet could have been about anything and Taibbi would've replied the same way. Still, it didn't look good for Taibbi that he was so inattentive to that particular detail, and it added to the overall poor impression he made (which has little to no relation to the merits of the debate on either side, IMO).
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Damn those pesky kids and their first amendment. Free speech is somewhat uniquely American thing (which as european I am quite envious about).
Musk has two options - comply or scorched earth. Any critic of not choosing the later will ring hollow. Twitter is not essential service in india. If he quits there won't be riots or wide scale economic disruption - so he has no leverage. I am all for the underdog, but the underdog must at least choose battles it can theoretically win if the stars align. The only way the stars can align is if US government imposes sanctions on India about it's treatment of US company. That is unbelievably long shot.
No, he can simply withdraw from India and leave that money on the table. This is what Google eventually did in China, and was better for it.
This is terribly sad for India - not because it needs Twitter, but because it needs free speech. But the Indians are going to have to learn that the hard way (and they will only do it very slowly, I'd say two centuries minimum).
That is scorched earth for a company.
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I think this issue is just revealing what people care a lot about and what they don't care about.
Old Twitter was inclined against Modi, since he's been accused of authoritarianism and isn't especially liberal.
Old Twitter was inclined towards the US establishment, suppressing the Hunter Biden story amongst other things.
Elon has an axe to grind against the US establishment over wokism, all the bureaucracy he has to deal with, the media that's been attacking him for some time. The US is near to him, it's what he cares about more.
But he couldn't care less about India, why would he? Has he even been to India? I don't think so. Why would he stick out his neck for Indian opposition parties, who can do little to help him? Even principled libertarians choose to focus their firepower on what's dear and near to them. Taibbi is similar IMO.
But he does care about India, at least not pissing off its government. As I said above, he faces a dilemma with no obvious solution given the serious amount of revenue involved.
What dilemma does he face? He's walked back on his own free speech absolutist promises with American users, see Alex Jones, Ye and the leftist journalists he'd temporarily suspended. He cares about India insofar as it is an important revenue source. He's a businessman, doesn't care about Indian politics, has an axe to grind with American progressives and doesn't want to be blocked off from such a huge market. The Indian government has made it plenty clear multiple times that they don't take kindly to foreign criticisms over internal affairs, be it those farm bills/protests that led to the 2021 debacle with twitter or the BBC doc or the Canadian commentary on the recent crackdowns on separatists in Punjab. A line that Elon is more than willing to toe and doesn't believe he needs to answer for.
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I don't think it's much of a defense of Matt Taibbi's credibility at all that he's willing to critique Musk for doing something that would limit the reach of his main income stream.
But the basic complaint doesn’t really ding Taibbi’s credibility (ie unless you denounce Musk over X — which you have limited knowledge about — we will assume you are in his pocket and therefore can disregard everything you published). It was a blatantly disingenuous attack and should be seen as such.
Do you believe the same thing about the Uyghur question posed to TikTok executives?
I don’t know. I haven’t followed the TikTok drama at all.
But the reason MSNBC guy said anything was an attempt to discredit reporting on a wholly ancillary point. Taibbi’s “failure” to engage with the disingenuous attack says nothing about his credibility. Indeed, even if Taibbi is hypocritical here, it doesn’t change the reporting (which once again shows why MSNBC guy was so disingenuous — it was an attempt to poison the well).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but I can't tell what the foundation for your assertion is. You're just labeling the question to be a disingenuous attack (how?) that says nothing about his credibility (why?). Looking at my conclusion below, can you be specific about which part of it you take issue with?
Your conclusion is exactly the problem. The whole point of the question by MSNBC guy was to talk about a specific issue that isn’t central to the American debate that probably involves material detailed knowledge that Taibbi doesn’t have.
If Taibbi doesn’t respond, the mainstream media is able to make this absurd claim that Taibbi isn’t willing to criticize Musk and because of that unwillingness Taibbi’s story is bullshit.
This is of course pure ad hominem. Let’s assume ad arguendo that Taibbi feels gratitude towards Musk and therefore doesn’t want to criticize Musk (as opposed to Taibbi simply being unaware of the particulars). Taibbi failure to criticize Musk doesn’t change the merits of the story (which by and large no one has been able to refute outside of some nitpicking that has turned out to be itself not exactly correct).
But focusing on this sideshow is a way that MSNBC guy has gotten people to buy this dumb idea that Taibbi isn’t being honest and instead is pushing Musk’s narrative (why Musk has a supposed narrative is left unstated and how that narrative fails to corroborate with reality is left unstated).
That is, MSNBC is using arguments as soldiers. He doesn’t really care what Taibbi thinks about some obscure Indian-Twitter issue. He cares about casting aspersions on the Twitter Files by any means necessary. He tried to using this Indian issue as the means.
Me:
You:
I never claimed that Taibbi's story is bullshit or that his unwillingness to criticize Musk changes the merits of the story, I said the opposite. You said my conclusion is exactly the problem but I'm not seeing where we actually disagree here. Most of your post is about what MSNBC, Hasan Mehdi, and the mainstream media believe but I'm none of those people and unless I actually endorsed their opinions/arguments as my own, they're not my responsibility.
I'll try again. Here's my conclusion again, but with each clause numbered. Can you please just reply with which number you take issue with?
You throw a causal couple liner disclaimer out there and then go on and on about how yes it does affect the credibility of Taibbi and his story. It is the equivalent of “just asking questions.”
And yes, my major beef is with the MSNBC guys but you are in effect either falling for it or signal boosting it.
Let me say this unambiguously since you don’t address.
Your post is largely built on a disingenuous MSNBC reporter coupled with darkly hinting at “credibility” problems without really doing the work to show why failure to criticize Musk makes Taibbi’s reporting less credible outside of asserting that he isn’t playing with a free hand because he doesn’t want to criticize Musk over a bullshit Indian story (when in fact one of his compatriots did criticize Musk over a different story. What you left out is that Taibbi under oath (which was backed up by Michael S. also) stated that they received a massive trove of info that would’ve been hard to pre-select, there was zero limitations on what they could write, and whenever they asked for more info they got it. Moreover, Taibbi provided receipts. Do you think he made them up? Do you think Musk made them up? To date, people with knowledge have only challenged the context (unsuccessfully in my opinion).
So hear we have the very unique situation where a reporter was willing to state his methods
under oath, subjects haven’t claimed “he is lying (though one has claimed he misunderstood the facts),” there has been independent validation, it is consistent with what certain state AGs have also found, but your are casting aspersions because a bullshit MSNBC attempt at a gotcha related to an Indian Twitter squabble? Really? Really?
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I agree, but I'm willing to give partial credit.
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