America is a capitalist Country. Americans promote free speech. In America, there is a rule of law. Free speech and press are the reason why America is the biggest economy in the world. This was the narrative pushed on Indians in the pre-Internet era while selling the American dream. India, on the other hand, was sold as a place of hyper conservatives working in unison to scuttle the voices of people. Indians travelled the long and arduous journey of guilt trip, only to realise that “Gangadhar hi Shaktiman hai”.
Analysing the way big tech is operating all across the world tells us that the companies operating in these geographies are dictatorial in their base instincts. Take for instance Twitter. It is the same company whose Boss had come to India to lecture us on a maligned, derogatory, castigating and misinformation led term called Brahmanical Patriarchy. 4 years down the line, the head of the think tank behind that idea is getting roasted by the US Congress.
Vijaya grilled in Congress
Former Twitter executives are in the American Congress now. Given the fact that currently Republicans are the majority in the House of Representatives, this day was always on the horizon. During their stint at Twitter, these same Twitter executives allegedly worked to compromise Republicans’ chances in electoral politics of the USA.
The measures include shadow-ban, censorship of selected tweets and finally banning the account. The policy was applicable to twitter accounts all across the world. The head of this censorship regime was a famous, or rather infamous lawyer called Vijaya Gadde.
In the house, she was asked about her criteria of banning multiple accounts and posts. One of them is the Hunter Biden laptop story and Twitter censoring the report published by the New York Post. In the midst of a fierce 2020 election campaign, the New York Post published a story implicating Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
The images in that article were allegedly from a hacked laptop of the son of the current US President. As soon as the New York Post story was shared on twitter, the account was banned. In an event which indicates that it was a clear attempt to protect the Biden family, the users who shared this story were also blocked, suspended and restricted.
Twitter reversed the decision regarding censoring the story. But it did not immediately reinstate New York Post’s account, presumably fearing that the tabloid could have more explosive stories under its sleeve. In her statement to the house, Vijaya showed regret for her act.
Vijaya said “Twitter informed the New York Post that it could immediately begin tweeting when it deleted the original tweets, which would have freed them to retweet the same content again. The New York Post chose not to delete its original tweets. So, Twitter made an exception after two weeks to retroactively apply the new policy to the Post’s tweets. In hindsight Twitter should have reinstated the post account immediately.”
🚨BREAKING: Former head of Twitter Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde testifies under oath on suppression of Hunter Biden laptop story pic.twitter.com/k2ixrMkDij
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 8, 2023
A calculated ploy
Everything is amendable in hindsight, which is why this argument does not hold any ground. But hindsight based crooked stories of redemption and forgiveness is the only thing that can save team Vijaya from the wrath of the public.
These people went on a hounding mission to suppress and censor genuine voices that they personally did not agree with. No matter whether it’s politicians, the common public, sports stars, conspiracy theorists or even Doctors, parameters were the same. The policy lacked nuance, a reflection of how censorship actually works.
Take for instance, how Twitter banned genuine medical experts during the Covid crisis. They had a fixed criterion. Ban anything not in consonance with whatever the health autocrats said. Apparently, it was done in the name of a smokescreen called “protecting individuals”.
Twitter went on to ban people having recognised medical expertise from universities like Harvard and Stanford. The list of banned accounts includes Jay Bhattacharya, a medical professor from Stanford and Dr Robert Malone, virologist and co-inventor of mRNA vaccines.
Non-expert scuttling the voice of experts
Before grilling Vijaya on it, Republican Nancy Mace ensured that the people get to know that the lawyer has no medical expertise. After establishing it, Nancy asked, “What makes you think you or anyone else at Twitter have the medical expertise to censor actual, accurate, CDC data?”
To this Vijaya went on to cite the defence of protecting individuals. Nancy cut short her defence and said, “You guys censored Harvard-educated doctors, Stanford-educated doctors, doctors that are educated in the best places in the world, and you silenced those voices.”
Todays @GOPoversight hearing puts @twitter execs in the hot seat. Twitter has basically been a subsidiary of the FBI and other government agencies who successfully censored voices they disagreed with. Just cause. pic.twitter.com/KtTMzFHf0w
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) February 8, 2023
In subsequent grilling by Mace, it was revealed that without having any expertise, Gadde went on to flag American government’s own data as misinformation too. That is the height of absurdity.
History of censorship
To be a bit kind to the social media platform, it was not always like that. The platform was started as just another company and soon metamorphosed into an information amplifier platform. Initially, people fed up with mainstream media used it to put forth their dissent regarding the government or any other authority on the platform. As the negative engagement pulled numbers, various nefarious elements jumped in. These include terrorist groups like Islamic State of Syria and Levant (ISIL).
Vijaya joined Twitter in 2011. Her initial censorship was focussed on banning ISIL related accounts as the threat of radicalisation was spreading all across the western world. Thousands of related accounts were banned and suspended. Over the next few years, the saga of bans continued.
Trump changed it
Problems became big for liberal lobby after Trump and his team extensively used Twitter to amplify his voice. Trump had literally rattled the social media platform with his tweets. There is a term called ‘Twitter Diplomacy’. Donald Trump is believed to be the mad scientist who was the progenitor of this. He and people believed to be on his end of the political spectrum broke the myth of the Internet being the voice of liberals.
As Trump got exclusive massive support, conservatives all across the world also started to join in. Naturally, the threat of marginalisation of liberals was there and when the threat has legitimacy of public opinion, censorship is the only option. And that is how Twitter’s censorship regime turned towards politics.
Bans after bans after bans followed. Prominent bans include Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paula White, Jared Taylor, Jason Kessler, Alex Jones’ account, @realalexjones, InfoWars’ account, @infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos’ account, @nero, Laura Loomer’s account, @LauraLoomer, Chuck Johnson’s account and @chuckcjohnson. Some of them were justified, while some were totally political in nature. But, hey, that is how censorship operates in the initial days.
Also read: Twitter’s escalating Costs: Soon you won’t be able to afford Twitter!
Modus operandi and Brahmanical Patriarchy
The head of censorship takes power in their own hand by telling people about a few bad guys. Once the population is convinced about the alleged intention of the censor chief, they use it to appropriate absolute power. Within no time, they start using this power to censor genuine voices concerned with established political, social, economic, environmental and even human health related issues.
The model is well applicable to Twitter under Vijaya as well. Its bias was well exposed when Jack Dorsey visited India. Understandably, Vijaya Gadde joined Twitter chief on his sojourn. There are two reasons behind it.
For one, she was senior in Dorsey’s team and had been involved with Twitter’s policies for 7 years. The second reason is that Vijaya is herself an Indian by origin. She was born in India to a Telugu family. Even if her family moved to America, it would be non-common-sensical to say that she was not aware of the socio-cultural reality of India. So, Jack picked for the trip.
It turned out to be the exact opposite of whatever Jack would have thought. In their bid to virtue-signal, Dorsey and Vijaya sat for a roundtable with journalists, activists, writers and Amrita Tripathi of Twitter India. The activists they interacted with about their experience on Twitter were Dalit Activists. While Dalits do not hold any enmity towards Brahmins, these Marxist infested activists certainly do. In addition to that, human male is also their enemy. They justify this male bashing by terming it patriarchy, a term whose definition is not in consonance with reality in India.
Just after the meeting, Dorsey and Vijaya were handed a placard with a hateful slogan written on it. The slogan was “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy.” These kinds of calls are rooted in genocidal instincts. That is the kind of propaganda Hitler had used to create anti-Jews sentiments before beating, burning, gassing, shooting and hanging them in the gallows of Nazi Germany.
Vijaya being educated from liberal arts was not a tech nerd like Jack and knew all of it. She still went on to not advise Jack against it. Resultantly, Jack was happy to get a picture clicked with the placard.
One of the participants had tweeted the photo with Dorsey. No surprises that infamous journalist Barkha Dutt was also in the photo. As soon as it went live, a twitter storm kicked off. Rajiv Malhotra, India born American author, took a strong objection to what he termed as “demonology of Brahmins”.
During Twitter CEO @jack's visit here, he & Twitter's Legal head @vijaya took part in a round table with some of us women journalists, activists, writers & @TwitterIndia's @amritat to discuss the Twitter experience in India. A very insightful, no-words-minced conversation 😊 pic.twitter.com/LqtJQEABgV
— Anna MM Vetticad (@annavetticad) November 18, 2018
SHOCKING! A "smash Brahmanical" poster on proud display during @Twitter CEO @jack visit to India. Is this demonology of Brahmins by foreign #BreakingIndiaForces acceptable? Is it hate speech?
— Rajiv Malhotra (@RajivMessage) November 19, 2018
And now you are going to understand why I criticised her use of hindsight earlier. Responding to Dr Malhotra, Vijaya wrote, “I’m very sorry for this. It’s not reflective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us – we should have been more thoughtful. Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We failed to do that here & we must do better to serve our customers in India.”
I'm very sorry for this. It's not relective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us – we should have been more thoughtful. Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We failed to do that here & we must do better to serve our customers in India
— Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya) November 19, 2018
The response by Vijaya is a clear attempt to protect her image by using hindsight as justification for Twitter’s irrationality. What she was actually doing was testing the waters. She seemingly agrees with such a stance, but can’t say so in public because of the non-violent nature of modern states. Pushing it in a subtle way was an attempt to check people’s response. Thankfully, people of India were waking and did not allow that hatred to gain legitimacy.
The issue was raised in a famous Joe Rogan Podcast too. Tim Pool, a centrist American, grilled Vijaya and Dorsey on Twitter’s liberal bias. Initially, Vijaya and Dorsey were doing wordplay by claiming that American accounts and voices they censored deserved it.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Tim Pool reminded both of them about their act in India. Pool treated Brahmins and American conservatives in the same vein. Stating out these facts, Pool said, “in that sense even in other countries you’re accused of the same things that you’re being accused of by American conservatives.”
Also read: Musk exposes global left cabal. It’s time for Twitter India files now
Travesty of Justice
In later years, Vijaya’s team got more and more authoritarian in their response. The number of Indian accounts they banned can’t even be counted. Once it had locked out the then IT Minister Ravishankar Prasad.
While Twitter’s policies do not cause much storm on ground level political reality in India, it does in a big way in the country of its birth. Vijaya deserves a big share of the blame. In the third decade of the 21st century, Gadde’s team developed the guts to ban even a sitting President of America, namely Donald Trump. Apparently, it had something to do with capitol hill riots. At the same time and after the takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban, the terrorist group was thriving on the platform. They do even today and are busy buying blue ticks. What a travesty of Justice!
Modern day dictators do not come in suit and boot and speak in a lousy tone to amplify their command. Instead, they use squeamish tones and the excuse of motherly treatment to justify their power grab techniques.
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