BJP (ruling party) commands over a huge IT Cell and a larger fan base which activates at very slightest triggers. Few years back a popular Muslim actor (Aamir Khan) made a mild comment on increasing radicalism in Indian society and incidents of lynching against Muslims. Within days everything related to him was scorched, the app he models for got millions of 1* rating on Android.
A more recent incident is about an actress showing solidarity with students against violence in JNU, a left leaning university. The next movie ratings were grounded.
Bias of Indian media houses makes Fox feel like champion of truth and journalism.
In a nutshell, nothing to do with Disney, it must be pragmatic decision by Indian subsidiary to play safe.
This "IT Cell" is pretty active on Twitter. It is vicious and relentless.
I suspect it is present on HN platform too. I have posted two submissions (one from NYTimes and another from The Guardian) on issues that highlight the Modi government's continued descent into what writers are calling fascist policies. Both my submissions didn't survive being flagged within minutes. I am not sure if a concentrated group of users can achieve this objective on HN?
In my experience, there are many Modi apologists on HN. In a recent thread about people being prosecuted for using VPNs, they were out in full force justifying the effective house arrest of several million people and the suspension of basic human rights like Habeas Corpus.
And sure enough, they achieved their goal on that thread too - it was flagged and removed from the front page within hours. We shouldn't allow anything that tarnishes the reputation of our Dear Leader.
You don't even have to go find the original thread. The Modi apologists are on this thread too. See if you can spot the person justifying murdering Muslims for the crime of eating beef.
I flagged this post after reading comments at the bottom and in my experience, the reason why you see less political posts from india on the front page is mostly due to the demography of the site and guidelines. Indian posts always have little activity with or without political element and for few political threads that do get some activity, lot of uninformed opinions posted within a few minutes. People just aren't interested outside of HN too, I don't think the IT cell mob will come in private political forums/guilds.
I might also point out indian news sites are horrible with tracking, adverts and UI/UX. A blog post from someone on hn about mac revealed that an average HNer spent very little time on the site compared to other places. So that might skew things further outside of international sites.
Secondly, I can see who you might be referring to as modi apologist, I also see similar attack from the opposite spectrum. Either doesn't seem healthy and should be kept somewhere else.
1.34 billion people are a lot. That's 3x the size of US. We have greater inequality and varying standard of living resulting in highly different or counterproductive expectations from the system.
A farmer getting by barely with not much need for hyper internet connectivity may not see the implications of laws that deteriorate freedom/privacy online. They are in different hierarchy of human needs than someone living in urban area with a lot of solved problems and some artificially created as a consequences.
One want more roads, the other want more greenery.
One want availability and affordability, the other want quality.
There are highly controversial laws passed such as the act to give less qualified people the same authority of a doctor so they can treat patients and there were some consequences to it of course but it happened because someone wanted it or at least thought it was a good idea than nothing. I have met a couples like that and know personally.
Becoming condescending, calling everything propaganda or blindness because you don't agree with it or think it's fine is a good way to cause hurdles in leading to a compromise.
What you see online isn't representative of most things. People won't mention about a product/service they don't face any problem with, they mention about things they face problem with or have had a horrible experience most of the time. It's easy to say nothing than a thank you. We ought to do it more but we don't. The specific indian culture I have lived in doesn't encourage that and sometimes even discourage thanking people because it's their job or things should be like that encouraging people to share views in negative light more.
This isn't specific to india either but we have a tad bit more pressure to live within segregated communities directly or indirectly. Marrying into the same caste, income bracket or status quo. Interacting with people from the same checks only.
I would recommend working for upping the quality of life for everyone and things will stablize on their own but in the meantime, calling people modi apologist will give you a knee jerk reaction from otherwise people who may listen.
There are those for and against Modi in this thread. It's easy to spot both sides. An easy way to spot one of the sides is their use of words like "Modi apologists", etc.
Considering Modi is arguably the most popular politician of a country with 1.3 billion people, why are people shocked when that support translates to support online?
Or are only Modi detractors supposed to voice their opinions? Shouldn't Modi supporters have their say too?
After reading HN for years I'm basically an expert on housing policy in the Bay Area. I may not know much about anything else but goddamn, I can talk for an hour and ten minutes without a break about the complexities of this one issue.
Some am I, too some extend. And I live in France and mostly skip these articles.
In my case it is rather that weird interest in esoteric things about which I read without a reason to be interested (though SF indeed changed a lot between my visit 20 years ago and last year)
I disagree. In truth, the flag functionality on HN is broken, and allows a small number of users to censor otherwise good posts. It happens a lot, and has little to no oversight.
>Both my submissions didn't survive being flagged within minutes. I am not sure if a concentrated group of users can achieve this objective on HN?
My subjective impression is that flagging feature on HN is routinely abused by flagging-rings conspiring to suppress submissions and comments on certain topics.
I'm super happy that the ability to flag exists, but it would be nice if something could be done to stop its abuse.
Disney's Indian subsidiary might not stream it on Hotstar but their International counterparts aren't geo-censoring it on YouTube (at least not yet): https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qVIXUhZ2AWs
It'd be interesting to keep an eye on the video's viewership count [0]-- at 4,606,963; at the time of writing.
The fastest way to get depressed is to read the news. I can't name a single decent leader of a major country/party/region today. Everywhere we look, there are politicians stroking differences. We desperately need good leaders and thoughtful/responsible voters.
She seems better than others but I am also not German, so I don't know. When Trudeau and Macron came along, they seemed better - until they too turned out to be disappointments. It is very disappointing and depressing that out of 7+ billion people, we can't produce a few dozen sensible leaders. The business world doesn't seem better either, even in the tech industry which was supposed to attract better people.
Then again, how is one supposed to take on a billionaire who casually throws half a billion (!!!!) dollars of his own money just at the beginning of a primary race?
Well in the last few years, we have seen an uproar of the right wing party „AfD“. Some attribute that to Merkel‘s Party moving away from the conservative side of things.
After Fukushima, Merkel pushed for immediately closing out all nuclear power plants, which some say also say is in conflict with our plans of becoming carbon neutral. Massive financial support for solar and wind energy has been stopped as well, which devasted at least the local solar industry.
We had waves of right wing terrorism, her party is pushing something like a „black 0“ (no new debt) instead of investing in infrastructure, schools and the like. Even pushing that on other European countries like Greece or Spain, which definitely would need to invest.
There are just slow or no plans for meeting climate goals or modernize the automotive sector.
Personally I think it has become very quiet around the chancellor, the inertia is almost unbearable sometimes. The government is supposed to stimulate progress and move our Society forward. But as I see it, we are moving very slowly with a captain who doesn’t like to rethink their course.
This is a bit shortsighted. Just because a country is in debt doesn't mean the best way forward is to pay off the debt as fast as possible. Once you're out of debt you'll still need to have an economy and well educated people to run the place. Imagine if the US took an even more extreme example and refused to pay police officers before the national debt. Good luck for recovering from actual anarchy.
You can't reverse past bad policy, you can only move forward from where you're standing.
Indeed, and that's exactly the model much of the world uses for adult education. Except that better early-years schooling has at least as large and probably much bigger effect on the future productivity and health of society.
IT Cell or "Information Technology" cell is an Indian English term for an internet brigade. India's ruling party BJP has a ton of such internet trolls employed.
Star Asia (parent of Star India) was owned by Fox, which was how Disney ended up with it. Any similarities to Fox in the US are likely not coincidental.
You can see a difference between "Muslims on Twitter" and the ruling party of the state, right?
But that's neither here nor there. However Muslims might react to a theoretical comment on cattle theft has no bearing on what a government actually has done in response to an actual comment. That their reaction could have been worse does not make BJP's actions any better.
so.. if a non-ruling party instigates people, it's OK, but if a ruling party does it, then you have a problem ?
This entire anti-CAA protests are organized and funded and instigated by Opposition parties to create a Muslim vote bank, because they're upset that the ruling party consolidated the Hindu vote bank.
> entire anti-CAA protests are organized and funded and instigated
Or maybe the people who are afraid that they (or their friends/family) might lose their citizenship want to fight for it? Just seems like a simpler explanation.
And before you try explaining that CAA is harmless, no intelligent person falls for that. We know that it's the combination of NRC and CAA that makes it lethal.
> so.. if a non-ruling party instigates people, it's OK, but if a ruling party does it, then you have a problem?
No. They’re both a problem. It’s worse when the ruling party does it, because they have more power.
> This entire anti-CAA protests are organized and funded and instigated by Opposition parties to create a Muslim vote bank, because they're upset that the ruling party consolidated the Hindu vote bank.
A more recent incident is about an actress showing solidarity with students against violence in JNU, a left leaning university. The next movie ratings were grounded.
Bias of Indian media houses makes Fox feel like champion of truth and journalism.
In a nutshell, nothing to do with Disney, it must be pragmatic decision by Indian subsidiary to play safe.