Bonus: India vs. Twitter, with Pranav Dixit of BuzzFeed News

In India, the Narendra Modi government is threatening to put Twitter officials in jail unless they block approximately 250 accounts of people they don’t like. They include activists, political commentators, a movie star, and an investigative news magazine. That’s why we’re doing a bonus, emergency podcast on this quick developing situation, and what it means for the future of speech on the internet, and social media more broadly. Joining us to discuss is Pranav Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed News based in India who has been covering this closely and brings us the perspective from the ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, Pranav.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Hey, Alex. Hi.

• 1:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Appreciate you doing this with me. I know you're already in your weekend, but I think it'll be a great conversation. So I'll just read this and we get into it.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 1:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. The Big Technology Podcast is sponsored by MediaOcean. Looking for a job in big tech? You might want to take a look at MediaOcean. They were just named by Ad Age as the number one place to work in advertising technology. Go to mediaocean.com/bigtech to learn about the company and check out their careers hub. MediaOcean is building the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising. If that sounds cool, or if you want to find out what those buzzwords mean, hit up mediaocean.com/bigtech and browse their job listings. And a big thanks to MediaOcean for supporting the Big Technology Podcast. Thank you, MediaOcean.

• 2:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Well, look, there are moments in time where it's important for us to stop, reflect, and consider what something in the news pretends. And over the past week, we've been presented with just one of those moments. In India, the Narendra Modi government is threatening to put Twitter officials in jail unless they block approximately 250 accounts of people they don't like. They include activists, political commentators, a movie star, and an investigative news magazine. And that's why we're doing a bonus emergency podcast here on this quick-developing situation and what it means for the future of speech on the internet and social media more broadly. Joining us

• 2:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  to discuss all the way from India is Pranav Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed News and a former colleague of mine and a friend of mine who's been covering this closely and can bring us some perspective from the ground. Welcome to the show, Pranav.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Hey, Alex. Thanks for having me.

• 3:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  My pleasure. It's nice to be back on the line with you. We had some good times at BuzzFeed News, and I'm thrilled to get a chance to talk again about what's going on in your world.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was it was fun. It was it was really fun, and I enjoyed working with you. And here you are, building your own media empire, I guess.

• 3:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  I call it a media small business, but I'll take empire. I appreciate that.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  One step at a time, right.

• 3:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Massive exaggeration, but we'll go with it. So there's a fascinating thing happening in India right now, where the government is threatening to put some Twitter employees in jail or prison based off of the fact that they're allowing the critics to remain on the platform. So I really think that it's important for us to like have a moment to discuss what's going on and then what it might mean in terms of the way that countries interact with social media companies moving forward and whether there's going to be global implications, because it seems like a pretty big story for me. And I think the best place to start is to talk a little bit about the government that's in power in India now before we get to the critics. So can you just tell us who Modi is and how he rose to power?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Sure. So Narendra Modi, who is India's Prime Minister, he belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party, also shortened to the BJP. He's really a polarizing, divisive sort of a figure. His ideology and the ideology of the party that he belongs to is right-wing Hindu nationalism. And he has a big support base. He was voted to power, you know, they won the elections fair and square. So he has a lot of people who love him, but he has a lot of people who also really hate him. Because they think that he's destroying India's secular fabric. India has always been this multicultural, diverse society

• 4:56Speaker 01

  where hundreds of religions coexist and there's all kinds of people who live happily together. And the criticism against Modi and his party is that they want to make India a nation for Hindus first and then everybody else is secondary. And in the process, sort of destroy India's secular nature.

• 5:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they're also doing a lot of deregulation. They're trying to bring open markets in addition to that. I guess those go sometimes hand in hand where the nationalist governments like to preach free markets. What do you think about that?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what's happening right now is the government is essentially trying to deregulate the agricultural sector.

• 5:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Along with many other sectors, I imagine.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Along with many other sectors, that's correct. But agriculture is sort of the primary occupation that a lot of Indians are engaged in. It's one of the big backbones of India's economy. So the government has been wanting to deregulate agriculture for a long time. And essentially open it up to private companies to get into the space, which hasn't been the case so far. The government says that this would be good for the farmers. It would double their incomes is the claim. But the farmers think otherwise and they think that they're just going to be squeezed out. And the private companies are just going to get rich and they're going to get poorer. And

• 6:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they get paid a minimum amount right now because it's there's government middlemen, government sanctioned middlemen that will make sure that they get paid a minimum amount. So if you go full free market, then there's no guarantee that you'll be able to make that money.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. That's, that's, that's correct.

• 6:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we know that they're protesting now, but before we move into that, I just want to to take a moment to sit on the deregulation topic. Modi, from what I understand, wants the next Satya Nadella or next Sundar Pichai to run a company in India or build a company in India versus come to the United States and do it here. So how does deregulation from his perspective help that?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it ties into this wave of nationalism that has, you know, risen since, since the Modi government has been in power, which is India first, build things in India, let, let, let's use Indian products. Why do we have people going from India to the US and building companies there? The CEOs of Microsoft and Google are Indian. Why can't they do it here? So that's always been sort of the thinking around this situation since this government has been in power. You see more and more, there's an emphasis on this movement called Make in India, which is aimed at like increasing manufacturing in the country. The, the current slogan is something called Atmanir Barbat, which essentially means a self-reliant

• 7:53Speaker 01

  India. They want Indian entrepreneurs to build apps here, to build like internet services here. Like I said, it ties into this wave of nationalism and putting India first.

• 8:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And I guess if you deregulate everything, you could have more freer markets, leading entrepreneurs to be able to cut through some of the red tape and actually start to make giant companies, which is an interesting strategy. It might work, but it's messy in the middle. But long story short, let's get to the news of the day, which is that Modi's trying to deregulate this farming industry that does pay a minimum to the farmers. They don't like it. And so tell us a little bit about the protest that India is seeing with the farmers. From my understanding, it's not thousands or tens of thousands, but millions of farmers or more than a million that have come and protested this new law and demanded

• 8:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  that it's been repealed. So what's it like on the ground?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  That's right. So it's millions and millions of farmers all across the country who for the last couple of months have essentially been camped outside New Delhi's borders, New Delhi's India's capital. They have, you know, received global support. Most farmers in the country are Sikhs. That's the religion they belong to. Sikhs are also like a big part of the Indian global diaspora. They are spread out all over the world, in the US, in Canada, in Canada especially. So the protests have been getting a lot of global support as well. And the farmers have been camped out. They've been just sitting there in Delhi's biting cold for the last couple of months. Winter in Delhi is like really freezing.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  They've been trying to get the government to engage with them and, and, and, and talk with them. And some of those talks have happened, but the government wants a compromise. And the farmers are like, nope, just repeal the laws. We, we are not going to settle for a compromise.

• 9:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And now let's get to the role of social media here. Let's talk first about the organization of the protests. So what we've seen with social media, and we talked a little bit about this on a previous episode with Zainab Tufakji, is that people can use social media to just rally up vast amounts of people with little central organization and get them to come out en masse around causes, especially emotional causes. Has social media or WhatsApp been used as a rallying tool for all these farmers? I mean, it's tough to get a million people in one place and for a protest. So how important has social media been in terms of rallying the farmers in this protest?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  It's played a crucial role. Social media, like the rest of the world, is huge in India. And the most popular social media platforms in India are the big American social media platforms. It's WhatsApp, which is, you know, and it's, it's, it's an instant messenger that, that Facebook owns. It's, it's Twitter, it's, it's Facebook, it's, it's Instagram. It's the same thing that, that the rest of the world uses. Obviously, when there are really intense protests, there's dissent, there's people who want to make their voices heard, there's people who want to criticize the government. Also, a lot of the rallying and organizing around around these farmers protests has been happening on on Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, Facebook.

• 11:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I think what's interesting is the Modi government has used these platforms. Now, of course, protests are being organized against them, but they've used these platforms extremely adeptly and with great vigor. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yes, so Modi is essentially known as India's first social media prime minister, right? His rise to power sort of coincided with the rise of social media in India. The last few years have been, there's been an explosion of of of cheap smartphones, cheap data pricing, and as a result, like millions and millions of Indians have suddenly come online. And I think the Modi government has been really, really smart in recognizing that and has really used social media platforms to spread their messaging in an effective way. They've become, social media platforms have become very, very smart to spread government propaganda, essentially.

• 12:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what does what does it look like in terms of these feeds and WhatsApp messages and forwards and then tweets? Is it that Modi uses Twitter kind of like Donald Trump or is it something different than that?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  No, so it's really fascinating, right? Like when when Twitter banned Trump, for instance, everybody was like, so is he going to ban Modi next? Trump was a special case in the sense like no other politician really used Twitter or or Facebook, like quite in the same way that Trump did. If you look at Modi's Twitter, it's it's actually, it's actually really sober and nice and there's nothing, there's no incitement to violence or anything like that. It's it's just him saying, speaking his mind about what's happening in the country, getting out, messaging around like the government's policies. It's it's all, it's all, it's all fine. So you won't find the prime minister actually saying anything, but then.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  You have hundreds and thousands of hardcore Modi supporters. And some believe that the BJP has an organized IT cell to actually enable his supporters to troll anybody who disagrees with the government or Modi on social media. If you tweet something that is against Modi, you will have hundreds and hundreds of these hardcore supporters descend on your mentions and you won't be able to use Twitter for like a week.

• 13:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Have you experienced that?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  I have, I have experienced that and I don't really tweet political things anymore, which increasingly is getting harder and harder to do because now politics is so mixed up with with social media and technology and and my job is to cover that.

• 14:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then how about the agencies? Like, is that the, do they get their government agencies, government ministers? Do they get their message out through social media?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yes, so when Twitter was sort of new in India, they actually did this proactive outreach program where Twitter India officials went to a lot of politicians, a lot of the ministries, and convinced them to join the platform. And Twitter was very successful in getting that done because most of India's ministries and politicians and anybody in India's political space is is is on Twitter now. Most of them have verified accounts and they engage with the platform really closely, like they're on there all the time.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  It's the first place where they say anything, take potshots at each other, get out like their their messaging or if they have a big announcement, Twitter's Twitter's like the first place where that happens. It's been, it's been interesting to watch that.

• 15:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's go back now to the farmers. They're camped out and then on Republic Day, January 26, they storm the Red Fort. So can you tell us what happened there?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Right, so January twenty sixth is Republic Day in India and

• 15:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what tell tell us what Republic Day is?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  It's the day we celebrate to mark the day our constitution came into effect in nineteen fifty. It's a big day, yeah, there's like a huge, there's like a huge parade in New Delhi, which, you know, Modi attends. I mean, the prime minister attends and there's there's usually like a big foreign chief guest. This year it was supposed to be Boris Johnson, who didn't show up because of the UK coronavirus strain. But it's a big day, there's a lot of security in the capital. And what happened on Jan twenty sixth was a lot of the farmers who had been camped outside Delhi's borders, which had been barricaded by the police to prevent them from entering the city,

• 16:03Speaker 01

  breached these police barricades, stormed the city, stormed the Red Fort, which is this big historic monument in in the city. Not only did all hell break loose in real life, it it it broke loose on social media. There were there were these incendiary hashtags, one of which was along the lines of like Modi's planning a farm or genocide, which is obviously not

• 16:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that people who supported the the farmers wrote that?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly. Social media got like really dirty on that day because for hours and hours, one of the hashtags was shoot, just a single word shoot, and it was essentially Modi supporters asking police to shoot the farmers.

• 16:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because they had stormed the Red Fort. Tell us what the Red Fort is.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  The Red Fort is, it's a historic Mughal era fort in in the city, essentially. Delhi used to be ruled by the Mughals and it's a pretty big monument in in in the city. And and and seeing that stormed by like hundreds of farmers was was was was quite a sight.

• 17:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  We couldn't relate with anything like that here in the US.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I'm sure, I'm sure, yeah.

• 17:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  We both had our situations in the same month, which is interesting.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 17:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so they storm it and people are tweeting the hashtag shoot.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yes, mostly Modi supporters are tweeting the hashtag #shoot, which immediately starts trending and stays up there in the trending topics for hours and hours till, you know, journalists start asking Twitter what's going on. We reached out to them, I'm sure like a lot of other journalists did. And eventually Twitter took down the trend, but it did stay up there for a while.

• 17:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's interesting because a platform that had been so central to what the Modi government was, not only its politics, but its governing, given that all these agencies use it, is now being turned against it. So how do they respond?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Do you mean the government?

• 18:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  The government.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so January 31st, a few days after, you know, the 26 Jan Red Fort storming happened, India's IT Ministry sent a legal notice to Twitter and essentially ordered them to withhold more than 250 accounts on the platform. And withholding is like a very specific term that Twitter uses. When Twitter gets a legal order from any country, it withholds the accounts in those countries, which means that people in that country where the order came from can't see those accounts on Twitter. And you'll get like a little label which says, this account has been withheld in India because of a legal order we received.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  But those accounts are still visible outside that country. So Twitter got a legal order to withhold more than 250 accounts. Most of those accounts, you know, belong to critics of the Modi government. Certainly there were accounts that were tweeting with the hashtag, which was about Modi planning to, you know, kill farmers. So some of those accounts, you know, were problematic in that sense, but most of the accounts belong to like critics of the government. And notably, one of the accounts belonged to The Caravan, which is this big investigative magazine in the country, which frequently does anti-establishment stories.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  And that was seen as a crackdown on free speech and a crackdown on dissent.

• 19:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pretty unbelievable. So the government is just like... Twitter, take down these two hundred and fifty accounts we don't like legally. Law by law, it must take them down.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  But by by law and and Twitter was, you know, forced to comply and did take down the accounts. And can you imagine something like that in the US like where Twitter receives like a note like a legal order from the government? And like suddenly like the Atlantic's Twitter account disappears like that would be that would be crazy, right?

• 20:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, I couldn't I I have broadened my imagination of what's possible in this country. Uh, but that even that would that would rise to the just astonishing abuse of power by the government.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  If it, yeah. How how many countries can do this?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  How many countries can like do that?

• 20:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can force Twitter to withhold accounts? Or it's not just India, right? Others do, and it just has to do it.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I'm sure other countries have their own sort of mechanisms to for social media platforms to take down content. And they they'll all have different ways that they do that. But I'm sure all countries have some equivalent of this. The way it's done in India, which I can talk about, is is something called section sixty nine A of the I T Act, which is this act that rules like all electronic communications in in in in in the country. And it's it's controversial for a few reasons, right? It's controversial because it's really broad. Pretty much the government can use the act to ask social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook or Google

• 21:11Speaker 01

  to take down any content that the government feels is like a threat to national security or a threat to like the integrity of India. And depending on who's in power, like you can interpret that to be anything, right? It can it can have legit reasons to do that, but like it can also mean like.

• 21:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Broad enough to be applied to anyone.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yes, broad enough to be applied to silence people who doesn't who the government doesn't want hurt, right? So Twitter was served this. Order under section sixty nine A. The other, the other reason why section sixty nine A is so controversial is that not only can the government just arbitrarily ask anybody to take down content, but also the company that receives these orders under sixty nine A is not allowed to publish them or reveal them. So nobody on the outside actually knows what the order actually says, which just introduces this whole, you know, it, it makes it very opaque. There's no transparency here.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So, you know, Twitter actually, when, when, when it can, Twitter actually uploads the take down notices that it receives from governments across the world into Lumen, which is a Harvard University database. But in this case, it can't because, because that would be violating section sixty nine A.

• 22:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And, and look, I think that what you're telling me right now is surprising, but my jaw isn't on the floor yet.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 22:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  But my jaw does hit the floor when I learn that India threatens to put Twitter officials in jail if they don't comply. So what happened there?

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the penalty for violating section sixty nine A legally. If you violate section sixty nine A, the clause says that you could be fined and sent to prison up to seven years.

• 23:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  For seven years?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a long time.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  That's a really long time.

• 23:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so, so the government does threaten Twitter officials with jail or prison?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yes. A day, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you how it came to this. So Twitter did withhold the accounts, but six hours later it, it, it put them back up. And what we now know is that Twitter's lawyers had an emergency meeting with officials from India's IT ministry and argued that they were not going to withhold the accounts because they constituted free speech and they were newsworthy. And Twitter, Twitter put the accounts back up. This really, you know, pissed off the government. A day later, the government sends a notice to Twitter, asks them to re-block the accounts

• 24:02Speaker 01

  and threatens them, and this is the notice where, you know, they're actually threatened with jail and fine.

• 24:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  So they say it explicitly?

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yes, they add the very end of the order. This is the last paragraph, not the order, but the notice that they sent Twitter asking it to re-block. It says, please, I'm paraphrasing, but like, please note that under whatever clause, there are legal penalties associated with violating section 69A. And if you actually look up the clause, it says violation violators are subject to, you know, fines and up to seven years in prison.

• 24:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Twitter, yeah, that's a threat and Twitter has, they remain unblocked.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  They, oh, wait, so Twitter eventually agreed to re-block a bunch of accounts. Again, they won't say how many, they won't say which ones. But they, they put out a caveat. They said that, look, we are going to re-block some of these accounts, but we are not going to block accounts belonging to journalists, belonging to activists and belong to politicians. So they didn't comply with the government's order entirely, right? They sort of compromised a little bit.

• 25:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so they stood defiantly. Okay, after the break, I want to talk a little bit about what might happen to Twitter and its employees now, what this portends for the rest of the world's social media. And we'll see where we go from there. So stick with us. We'll be right back here on the Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate.

• 26:01Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 26:32Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 27:17Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 27:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for part two on the Big Technology Podcast with Pranav Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed based in India, also a friend of mine and a former colleague. Before the break, we were talking a little bit about Twitter deciding to stand up to the government of India and say, "Look, there's a law that can lead to jail time if we don't withhold the accounts that you don't like. We'll withhold some of them, but not all of them. Journalists, stay." What's going to happen to Twitter now, Pranav? This is like pretty unbelievable that they took a stand and said, "Fine, like, you know, you have your laws, but we're going to stick by our guns in some cases."

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely fascinating to watch this unfold because I think this is pretty much the first time that a big Silicon Valley tech company has not only defied India's ruling government, but done so in a very public way, right? They put up, this could all have been sort of... Under the radar, under the radar and you know, nobody needed to have known about this, but Twitter actually put out a blog post. And not only did they put out a blog post, the blog post says something like, we don't think what India's government is asking us to do is consistent, is consistent with India's own laws. I mean, Twitter is really saying that, hey, look, the government is arm twisting us, right?

• 28:54Speaker 01

  At this point, we don't know how this is going to play out. Honestly, India's government are locked into this huge staring contest with each other and we don't know who's going to blink first. It's, it's, it's quite fascinating to see where this goes from here.

• 29:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I, I wonder if you think other world governments, I mean, I, I guess I'm sure that they, I'm sure they are, but are other world governments looking on here and taking notes? And sort of what are the implications if Twitter, you know, does, you know, stands its ground and doesn't block anyone? And what are the implications if it eventually caves? And what are the implications if its employees end up going to jail for this?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think other governments are watching this very closely. I think they're taking note what India, you know, which is one of the largest internet markets in the world. I think we have six or 700 million Indians online at this point. How India chooses to proceed with this could set a global precedent for what other countries could, could, could choose to do to regulate big tech in their own, within their own borders, right? I think for India, I honestly think, and this is my personal opinion, that Twitter called the government's bluff.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  I don't think the government was prepared for Twitter to, you know, defy it so publicly. And as a result. They're kind of scrambling and I don't think they know what to do. Not to say that Twitter knows what to do. Twitter has in fact released multiple statements saying that they are concerned about the safety of their employees in the country at this point, because you know, the government is like, hey, jail time. But I think if India does do something, if India does choose to take action against Twitter, whether it's a fine, whether it's actually jail time. I I don't think it remains Twitter versus the Indian government anymore, right? At at that point, it it becomes like a big diplomatic uh struggle and it it becomes about

• 30:58Speaker 01

  the United States versus India at that point. And does India want that? We as a country have had a pretty good relationship with the US so far. I don't think India wants to get into a battle with the US government over Twitter.

• 31:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and what do you think about the fact that like, again, this has been something the Modi government has used for its rise, but is also now dealing with some of the backlash that is sparked by social media?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  I guess it's inevitable, right? You you ride a platform to power. It's inevitable that your critics are going to use the same platforms to to hit back.

• 31:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I I imagine like that, you know, with the world governments looking on throughout the globe, they all have folks that are kind of annoying to them on social media. I mean, social media is a great way to broadcast a dissident's voice against official channels. So I imagine governments around the world are trying to be like, well, what happens here and can we do the same thing? What do you think about that?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I I'm I'm I'm pretty sure they're all watching and and taking notes. I think if I think if Twitter does cave, it would be bad for like the future of free speech in this part of the world, certainly in general. But it would be bad for, you know, if if if Twitter caves, I think more governments that maybe so far hadn't been thinking of getting social media platforms to to cave could sort of pursue this thread like more aggressively, right? Because it would be like, hey, look, they caved in India. You know, we can, we can make them do that here. I think it would be, I think it would be a bad precedent for free speech on the internet around the world in general.

• 32:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  One thing we haven't spoken about is the Twitter ban of Trump. And I wonder if that's emboldened the Modi government to be more aggressive in this situation. Because I've always thought that it's not going to end with the ban with Trump and that we're going to see something else happen at some point. And so, you know, for this to come so soon after, do you think they're taking cues from what happened here in the US and deciding, okay, well, now it's our turn to ban and here's who we want out?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I think they did get rattled looking at what Twitter did with Trump. It was like, look, these guys banned our own president. What's stopping them from doing the same thing to us? So I think some of what's happening is the government trying to show Twitter and social media platforms in general about like, they're trying to show them who's boss. Look, we can send you to jail. Look, we could like, take really strong action against you if it comes to that. So I think some of this is just like a show of power because, because, because it's true that, you know, they are rattled that Trump got banned.

• 33:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's a fascinating second order effect that, I mean, I imagine we should have anticipated. But also maybe a reason why Twitter was so hesitant to ban Trump over the years is that other governments would get a signal and then just be like, aha, okay. This is not just a neutral platform. It's actually a political actor and we need to find a way to put our power over it, you know, before the other way, before, yeah, before it happens the other way around.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  You know, one of the really fascinating things about just Twitter's response to the Indian government in general, and this is something that sort of didn't get talked about that much, but Twitter's blog post where they say that we're not going to ban journalists and activists, it also says right at the very end that this is about free speech and we are exploring legal options, not only for Twitter, but also the accounts that have been impacted. Twitter is actually willing to go to court to fight for these accounts that it has been asked to block, to be brought back to the platform. I thought that was, I thought that was, that was quite something, right? Like, I don't, I don't know if Twitter's done anything like that in any other country before.

• 34:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think it's probably also an onus on Twitter, right? Now that they've banned Trump, they have to show that it was a unique case like you.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  You brought up versus the new standard.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Pranav, what's coup?

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Koo, to put it very simply, is essentially like an Indian parlor. It's a Twitter clone that is currently super popular with supporters of the Modi government and a bunch of Modi government ministries. It's a lot of those kinds of people that are flocking to it and posting there.

• 35:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so can it be an alternative to Twitter? And to put a finer point on it, why wouldn't the Modi government just block Twitter? And direct everybody to Koo? They, you know, I imagine, I don't know who owns it. Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit, but it seems like they might have more influence there than they would with Twitter.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a Koo, which is spelled like K O O, not like C O U P.

• 35:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Two different Koo's.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Two different Koo's.

• 35:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we're familiar with the first, first version. So tell us about the second.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a, it's a homegrown app. It's, it's been built in India by these two Indian entrepreneurs from India startup ecosystem. Earlier this year, I should say last year, we're in 2021 now, but it won the Indian government's app innovation challenge, which is something that the government, you know, started to encourage just more people in India to build like Indian apps. Koo's been around for a year, believe it or not, but I don't think most people had heard about it until last week. Modi actually endorsed the app as something that an Indian entrepreneurs had built. And that's when I guess it sort of took off.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  And, and now with what's happening with Twitter, the right wing ecosystem, the Modi supporter ecosystem is like, let's move to Koo, let's move to Koo. They're not quitting Twitter, but, but, but they're actively using Koo.

• 36:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  This sounds familiar.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  It, it does, right?

• 37:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does. I mean, it's what happened here after the Trump ban.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's early days for Koo. Like we, we'll see, we'll see if it's actually snowballs into something like parlor.

• 37:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Man, Pranav, even their logo is even a little chick bird. They're not very subtle about the copy.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  No, they're not. A retweet on coup is a recoup.

• 37:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so that makes sense. Do you have an account?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  I have an account. I do have an account. Nobody's gonna know what it's called, but I'm there.

• 37:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  You got a burner? Okay.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so let's go to the block because like one of the things that I have thought about is are we gonna end up in a splinter net? Like especially after the Trump ban, is it gonna cause countries to say, you know what? We don't want to trust American firms. We would rather do it on our own. Seems like Modi's into the whole coup idea. So is there a reality where they could just block Twitter and say? We don't want to have our political discourse in the hands of a company that's headquartered in another country. I mean, they already did block TikTok. So what do you think about the possibility on the ban?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of people have been asking, right? India banned TikTok, so what's stopping them from banning Twitter? And my thought on that is like, you know, India is not China. We're still like a large democracy. It's a democratically elected government. And, you know, despite the fact that it's starting to show more and more authoritarian tendencies in recent times, right? I think the government still likes to maintain a veneer of democracy. We really care about global validation. We really care about being open as a country. We really care about being a free market in some ways.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I don't see India getting into like a China-like situation where we ban everything that's not Indian and just sort of grow Indian equivalence. I mean, the government is certainly trying to encourage Indian equivalence. I don't think we want to do that at the cost of shutting everybody else out.

• 39:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  I see. So this whole idea of like us very quickly spiraling into a splinter net seems less likely than some might think.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I think there could be a parallel ecosystem of Indian apps and services. I don't think that comes at the cost of like banning everybody else.

• 39:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I think that's good. What do you do? What type of value judgment do you put on that? Is it good that we'll have this global internet?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm sort of, I'm sort of like a global internet absolutist in some ways. I think I, I don't like the idea of splinters. I think the idea of the internet is that we can all be in the same space with no borders, no jurisdictions. I know, I understand it's, it's, it's more complicated than that. And there's all sorts of regulations and policies that different countries put into place, GDPR, et cetera, et cetera. But I do think what makes the internet work and why it's so fascinating is that, you know, you and I can be having this conversation from, you know, different, different parts of the world and it doesn't even matter.

• 40:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's pretty amazing. Like I'm in San Francisco, you're in India. It feels like we're in the same room.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I, I would hate to see the internet splintering off, but I'm also, I'm also very idealistic.

• 40:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay. That's great. Now, let's wrap up. You mentioned that the, the government is showing some authoritarian tendencies, but they are democratically elected. So can you elaborate a little bit on, on what that means? Just as we try to make sense of this global, of this, yeah, global situation and, you know, try to put, you know, a mental model around what's going on in India. So yeah, can you tell a little, tell us a little bit about like, what do you mean by authoritarian tendencies?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  What I mean by authoritarian tendencies is, you know, more and more we're seeing.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  The government go to great lengths to silence its critics. For instance, especially during these farce protests, we've seen journalists in the country thrown into jail for for merely reporting. We've seen comedians in the country, you know, who like to make fun and, you know, jokes at at at the government's expense, being thrown in jail for jokes in in some cases which which they haven't even made. We're seeing we're seeing a crackdown on on on on foreign press on, you know, we're seeing the government restrict like how much foreign investment can be done with foreign controlled media in the country. We had Huffington Post India just shut down because of that.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  So we we more and more, we're seeing this chilling effect where where anybody who who who wants to criticize the government or or push back against the government's policies gets gets silenced. And it's it's a reality that a lot of us are increasingly grappling with.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  It did this this this wasn't the situation like, you know, six years ago, not this this wasn't the country I grew up in, for instance, but but we're seeing it happening more and more, and it's concerning.

• 42:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and technology, I mean, look at this discussion. I mean, technology stories are increasingly political stories. Do you ever, I mean, so you have to touch on politics, otherwise you can't do your job. Do you ever get afraid in terms of what might happen to you?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to be, I I I often, often more and more these days, I I find myself having to do, having to be very careful about what I what I tweet and the way my stories are worded. You know, we've we've had a couple of stories like run by legal, just just to make sure that everything was fine. Yeah, it this, it's, I don't, I don't tweet, I don't overly tweet out like political opinions anymore, just because A, like, I'm not an expert, but and and and also I just like to focus on tech. But as you pointed out, increasingly, tech is just just so meshed up with politics that it's impossible to like not talk about the two things together.

• 43:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt. Well, look, it's brave of you for coming on the show. I appreciate it. And your reporting has been absolutely incredible and stand out. And, you know, I'm just sitting here, you know, and applauding. It's some great stuff and you've really helped illuminate the story here on the show and with your fantastic articles at BuzzFeed News.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  No, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I mean, I feel like a fake journalist sometimes because I'm not actually out there. I'm not actually out there covering the protests, right? I don't know. I'm not actually out there like on the front lines and talking to the farmers.

• 44:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  But that's the thing, though. Like, you are. You know, if this stuff is like happening on the internet. And so you're as real of a journalist as there is. I mean, the government just threatened Twitter employees with jail and you're in the position where you can analyze this stuff and let people know what that means. I mean, I think there's no more real journalism than that.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Right. Mostly it's just me sitting in my room glued to Twitter, right? And then watching what's happening outside.

• 44:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's sort of the story of life in 2020 and 2021, right? Where

• 44:36Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 44:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  So much, you know, there was this belief that the world and the internet, like real life and the internet were two separate things. But increasingly, and especially these past number of months, they're deeply, deeply intertwined. Where you can come on the show and talk a little bit about how you have the first social media prime minister and you have, yeah, you have these protests that are organizing and bringing a million people outside of Delhi and how these fights, of course, you know, there's stuff that happens in the streets, but it's so deeply interlinked with what's going on on social media. And, you know, that's what the kind of the idea of this show. That's why we're doing the bonus episode and it's what we're trying to get to, you know, week after week is the world is changing

• 45:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  and technology is a big part of that change and what does it all mean?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 45:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I appreciate you coming on to help us understand a really important topic. Before we go, I want to give people who've been listening an opportunity to find you online and read your work. Nothing more than that. Where can they, where can they connect with you and where can they find your stories?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Sure. You can find me on Twitter, which is where I hang out 24 by 7, at Pranav Dixit. It's just P R A N A V D I X I T. You can find my work on BuzzFeed News, just Google my name in BuzzFeed, you'll get it. And if you want to send me a tip, if you are a Twitter employee, or really, if you, if you work with any social media platform, just, just email me or DM me and ask for my signal.

• 46:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, terrific. Well, thank you so much, Pranav. It's been a pleasure to reconnect and I hope we can do this again sometime soon. And thanks to everybody out there for listening. Appreciate you tuning in to yet another bonus emergency podcast episode. We've been having to do them a bunch recently because the news bears checking in on and explaining in deeper dives like we're doing today. If you're new to the show, we drop a new one of these typically every Wednesday. We'll have a new one this upcoming Tuesday with three mayors on the state of tech in the United States. Mayor Francis Suarez from Miami, Mayor Steve Adler from Austin, Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway from Madison. That's coming up Tuesday to coincide with the launch of a new podcast.

• 46:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm co-hosting called Recode: Land of the Giants, which is a season about Google, more on that later. If you're a longtime subscriber and give us a rating and email me [email protected], you will be eligible to get a free signed copy of my book, Always Day One. But the ratings help a lot, help with discoverability and the Red Circle team, who I must thank for hosting and selling these ads, tell me, selling ads on this podcast, tell me that those ratings are important. So please help make Red Circle happy, if nothing else. They're a great bunch over there. And I think that will do it for us, this bonus episode. So thanks again for tuning in. No fancy outro music. We had to get this on the internet as soon as possible.

• 47:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  I will see you again this upcoming Tuesday and thanks as always for listening.

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