aditya chauhan @ChasingImpetus

In 2007, Karan Thapar asked Modi about the Gujarat riots. Modi removed his microphone and walked out three minutes in. Twelve years later he sat down with Akshay Kumar for an interview whose first question was whether he ate mangoes. The mango interview was the format that replaced the press conference. The architecture has worked exactly as designed for a domestic audience. Its visible failure point is always foreign. The Wall Street Journal in 2023. The French magazine in 2024. The Norwegian wire this week. Each foreign question lands because it sits outside the machinery the architecture has spent twelve years building to manage the domestic one. New piece.

Dan Qayyum @DanQayyum

2 weeks ago

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@neervj Wow! Tell some more deets

@pHequals7 On a parallel theme, seems like mainstream sci-fi is rarely optimistic

What led to diet coke's hockey stick takeoff 📈

@vikpat sick

@SushantTimmapur @cortisoul_ @MatiksHQ Hubbali the og

A24 never disappoints. Beef Season 2 might just be the best television show in history

@ShubhamTotu @c_engines sick video. what's the music track that's used?

Piece of Art 🍜

Consultants when asked about specifics of any strategy recommendation

Trey Ferguson @PastorTrey05

2 months ago

This one is gonna be hilarious to me until the day they call my time of death

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@sugandhanisa Playlist looks banger! 👀

Finally starting a Substack for my movie/life columns, personal essays and (occasional) reviews with this opening piece on the meaning of modern film criticism. Feel free to support, share, subscribe: reelreptile.substack.com/p/no-time-to-l…

Update: we finished the meeting with @SecretaryMEITY wherein they just treated this meeting today treating as a compliance exercise with no intent to explain or answer questions we have raised. I told Mr. Krishnan that the governments intent behind the IT Rules consultation is evident in the impact they are having - of mass censorship. This is an infrastructure for mass censorship. I raised the following issues, which were not addressed by Mr. Krishnan: 1. No transparency or accountability in takedown/blocking actions. Ministry not responsive to RTI requests. The current rules also do not have provisions for transparency. 2. MEITY needs to explain why around 31 instances of blocking and takedowns that I have emailed them about, and about 70 odd questions that I have sent them need to be addressed. Link in the next tweet.👇 3. The changes to the IT Rules mirror the withdrawn Broadcast Bill, with same intent, different form 4. Inter Departmental Committee mirrors the Fact Check unit, reviving what the Bombay High Court struck down. 5. Pre-legislative consultation policy mandates 30 days. This consultation was only 15 days 6. Previous rules had a 10-day implementation timeline, which is insufficient for implementation 7. All takedown orders are now like emergency orders, with 3 hour takedowns. There is no application of mind on whether content is actually illegal or harmful. Everything is taken down as emergency. 8. No accountability mechanism for citizens whose accounts or posts are removed 9. Regulatory changes are outpacing judicial review. 10. This is part of a cumulative censorship framework built since the 2021 IT Rules 11. The current Rules need to be withdrawn, and the infrastructure for censorship needs to be dismantled. 12. There should be no surprise additions to these rules -- in the last consultation, they added a whole new takedown provision which had not been consulted upon. I also pointed out that my comments at this meeting, and my emails should be available under RTI, because there needs to be transparency, even if the Ministry is avoiding this.

@rohildev would love to try it

I want to clarify something about this article @apar1984 and I wrote: An infrastructure for mass censorship is already in place, in India, and the new rules expand it. We're seeing mass censorship of accounts and posts on X, Instagram and Facebook, because of this infrastructure. This infrastructure: 1. Operates with speed: - blocking of posts has to be executed in 3 hours (govt is considering 1 hour), which means there's no scope for challenging them. This is the shortest takedown timeline in the world. Every order is an emergency order. - When platforms get 100 at a time, which happens, they act first, think never, and censor always. Impact: If someone was censored and can't understand why, this is why. No one has time to think. 2. Scale...Scope has expanded uncontested: - The reasons for which speech and posts can be taken down keeps expanding. New rules expand government powers to tweets like this one. - News websites and platforms are covered under IT Rules (illegally) - Streaming platforms are covered under the IT Rules (illegally) Impact: more types of speech is already being censored...satire, journalism, or political criticism 3. Operates without challenge, in two ways: - When you get 160 takedown orders a day (as X disclosed to a court) how many will you challenge? - Platforms don't want to react because they can lose market access in India. They're faced with unrelenting pressure from regulators, and basically choosing which hill to die on. Us being censored is not their problem. - Rules are changing frequently: 7 amendments to IT Rules since Feb 2021. By the time courts nullify one rule (and they don't always do this), new rules come up. How often will people go to court? 4. Ordering takedowns has been decentralised: - The (illegal) Sahyog portal, which is used for takedowns, is a hotline from government bodies to platforms. Thirty-three states, seven central agencies, and seventy-two companies are onboarded. 5. There is no transparency hence no accountability: - Users receive no notice. censorship orders are not provided on request. - blocking orders and the meetings of the committee that reviews them are protected by secrecy. - RTI's are not responded to. - Consultation responses are not public. 6. Government is seeking personal data of social media users using Sections 70B, 69 and 75 of the IT Act. This will lead to self censorship. 7. Lawmaking process has collapsed: - The new IT Rules consultations have a 15 day deadline. - Implementation timeline for the last one was 10 days. - Rules are being made where there used to be laws government by Parliament. The new rules mirror provisions from the Broadcast Bill which was withdrawn in 2024. Parliament is being bypassed. As we wrote: when the IT Secretary reportedly says that platforms should have started preparing to implement based on consultation drafts, it appears that outcomes are predetermined. Consultations appear to be a farce. MEITY, DoT and MIB are not accountable to anyone but the government for rules that are not in line with laws, and go against a key free speech verdict we got in 2015. That's why this is an infrastructure for censorship. It is in place, it is operational, and it is expanding. This is not just about the new rules. This is why we're sounding the alarm about: people need to know what is going on, and the Supreme Court needs to take this up. They are the court of last resort, meant to preserve constitutionality. P.s: Please keep a copy of this tweet, in case it gets censored. Or just tweet it and tag us... how many will they censor?

@neervj crazy

@ABiggerSpalash Surprising to see both had similar volume of search interest once. I wonder if search traffic is the right metric though? There's a lot more content/ugc on Sopranos. When I had watched the wire, i had found it hard to find much commentary/takes on it back then.

@kshitijanand24 beautiful

Only in America