Centre for Internet and Society

Now, Twitter too caught up in Cambridge Analytica controversy

Admin — 2018-05-02T02:49:25Z

Twitter does not share a break-up of users by region, the platform has less than 100 million users in India.

The article by Prasun Sonwalkar and Vidhi Choudhury was published in the Hindustan Times on April 30, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Social media company Twitter Inc sold data to the University of Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan who harvested millions of Facebook users’ information without their knowledge, it has emerged, although the company has clarified that no private data was accessed.

It isn’t clear whether any of the data pertained to Indian users.

Twitter does not share a break-up of users by region, the platform has less than 100 million users in India.

Kogan, who created tools that allowed political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to psychologically profile and target voters, bought the data from the microblogging website in 2015, well before the recent scandal, involving use of the data of Facebook users, came to light.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Kogan bought data on tweets, user names, photos, profiles and locations over a five-month period between December 2014 and April 2015 through his company Global Science Research (GSR). Twitter said it had banned GSR and Cambridge Analytica from buying data or running advertisements on the website and that no private data had been accessed, while Kogan insisted the data had only been used to create "brand reports" and "survey extender tools" and that he had not violated Twitter's policies.

The daily reported that Twitter charges companies and organisations for large data sets that are particularly useful for gleaning public opinion or receptiveness to certain topics and ideas, although Twitter bans companies from using the data to derive sensitive political information or matching it with personal information obtained elsewhere.

A Twitter spokesman confirmed the ban and said: "Twitter has also made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytica. This decision is based on our determination that Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices. "Cambridge Analytica may remain an organic user on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules."

The company said it does not allow "inferring or deriving sensitive information like race or political affiliation, or attempts to match a user's Twitter information with other personal identifiers" and that it had staff in place to police this "rigorously".

Sunil Abraham, founder for think tank Centre for Internet and Society said: “Even though Twitter claims it has contracts in place and staff for contractual enforcement, I cannot understand how they will prevent those buying their data from inferring race and political affiliation. Especially in jurisdictions like ours without comprehensive data protection law.”

A Cambridge Analytica spokesman said the company used Twitter for political advertising but insisted that it had never "undertaken a project with GSR focusing on Twitter data and Cambridge Analytica has never received Twitter data from GSR”.

Delhi-based lawyer Apar Gupta said, “Since we do not have a data protection law at present we are more or less dependent on the proactive disclosures by Twitter. Facebook is not a gold standard of upholding user rights and it is hoped that we soon have a regulator that can enforce such disclosures and place penalties.”

On 5 April, Facebook said user data of more than 560,000 Indians may have been harvested by British researcher Cambridge Analytica, at the centre of a recent storm over data breaches and potential privacy violations on the social media network.

“Twitter or Facebook are not alone in harvesting and storing user data. This is a widespread industry practice that relies on profiling. Such breaches and malpractices will continue to occur till we have a set of defined norms and enforceable penalties to protect user rights,” Gupta further added.

Only 335 users in India installed the thisisyourdigitallife app developed by academic Kogan and his company Global Science Research that may have been possibly at the centre of the data breaches, according to Facebook. The 335 people make up just 0.1% of the app’s total worldwide installs. Users agreed to take a personality test and have their data collected by the app, which then went on to also access information about the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a much larger data pool.

Twitter Inc’s spokesperson said in an e-mail that an internal review conducted by it showed GSR had not accessed any private data.

“Unlike many other services, Twitter is public by its nature. People come to Twitter to speak publicly, and public Tweets are viewable and searchable by anyone. In 2015, Global Science Research (GSR) did have one-time API access to a random sample of public Tweets from a five-month period from December 2014 to April 2015,” the company statement added.

This is basically information that users chose to make public.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-april-30-2018-prasun-sonwalkar-vidhi-choudhury-now-twitter-too-caught-up-in-cambridge-analytica-controversy

Allow admins to add users to online group chats only after permission: SFLC.in

Admin — 2018-06-26T02:03:19Z

SFLC.in -- a donor supported legal services organisation -- has written an open letter to messaging service providers like WhatsApp, Facebook and others, urging them to modify their platforms to ensure that users are not added to group chats without their permission.

The article was published in the Times of India on June 1, 2018.

In its letter, Software Freedom Law Centre, India (SFLC.in) said any user with administrator rights can currently add another person to the group without the latter's permission.

In the absence of a mechanism to prevent themselves from being added to groups that they would not like to participate in, users have no option but to manually exit the groups.

"This is a troubling state of affairs because users may be forcefully exposed to a range of subjectively undesirable content that they would never have signed up for otherwise, which can be particularly damaging, especially in situations where malicious actors attempt to intimidate, disparage, harass or harm individuals in any way," the letter said.

The letter has also been co-signed by Digital Empowerment Foundation, Centre for Internet and Society and a few others.

Emails sent to Facebook, Tencent and others seeking their comments did not elicit any response.

SFLC.in argued that the current format is an issue for many, including those belonging to minority and vulnerable groups.

"While blocking malicious actors can usually help mitigate the damage to an extent, on online messaging services like yours, they are able to easily circumvent blocks by creating groups and adding their targets to these groups," it said.

The problem is only made worse when personal information like phone numbers, user IDs and photographs are shared with a large number of users, which could open the doors to even greater abuse, it added.

SFLC.in argued that there are no adequate safeguards to prevent infringement of user rights and therefore, these platforms should take immediate steps to address this issue.

"...implement measures to make it so that being added to group conversations without permission is no longer a possibility. Not only will this greatly help in limiting abusive uses of your services, but it will also make users less wary of using the services, making the Internet a safer space for us all," it added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-june-1-2018-allow-admins-to-add-users-to-online-group-chats-only-after-permission-sflc-in

Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi

Sarah McKeever — 2015-07-16T08:22:13Z

This post by Sarah McKeever is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Sarah is a PhD candidate at the India Institute, King’s College London, and her work focuses on the impact of social media on contemporary political movements. In this essay, she explores the increasingly hierarchical system of activism on the Internet, based on Western corporate desire for data, and how it is shaping who is seen and heard on the Internet in India.

Background

I will preface this post by stating that as an American, my personal experience of the Internet has been shaped by nearly 18 years as an active user. My experience with digital interfaces, websites, and social media has been formed through my experiences during the Internet revolution in the United States. Academic and personal training have shaped what I determine to be trustworthy, useful, and credible when searching for information. This post is based on field research I am conducting in New Delhi from January through June 2015.

With these preconceptions and standards in mind, I began to research organisations that I felt were credible enough to approach for interviews in January 2015. My current research project investigates the impact that social media has had on the issues of corruption and violence against women in New Delhi, following the social movements on these issues in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 respectively. I started at an organisational level in order to research the impact that social media and the movements themselves had on organisations working on these issues. Areas of interest include any changes in issue engagement and discourse around gender violence and corruption. I focused exclusively on organisations that have an office in New Delhi and engage in activism in an urban context. Many of these organisations also have a presence in other states and include rural as well as urban projects. I conducted semi-structured interviews in order to engage with the changes wrought by the digital on a qualitative rather than quantitative basis.

Activism and Digital Hierarchy: A Divided Internet?

While conducting initial research, I began to investigate two separate but related areas of inquiry. The first was relatively straightforward: what type of differences were there between groups which actively engaging with the affordances of the Internet and Web 2.0? In my research I examined online awareness groups and campaigns as well as more traditional advocacy and awareness groups that were struggling to translate their work onto the Internet and on social media.

While engaging with the first question, I quickly discovered that the divide between how organisations leveraged the affordances of the Internet - and social media in particular - was stark. Earl and Kimport (2011) write that organisations that directly translate previous advocacy on the ground onto the Internet fail to fully leverage the affordances of the Internet. Organisations that effectively utilise the strengths of the Internet - including flash tactics, crowd-sourcing, and networked leadership - have in fact transformed the world of activism. They have created a new type of “digital activism” through the use of an increasingly digital networked society (Castells 2010, Rainie and Wellman 2012). While this is a simplification of the overall argument – and I personally would argue that in actuality organisations work on a range of digital capabilities and the idea of a spectrum rather than a binary division would be more appropriate at this point – it was clear that both sides were struggling to reach some sort of equilibrium between each other’s capabilities when I conducted interviews with them.

The second inquiry stemmed from my engagement with the first: how was the “active” use of the Internet and social media by an organization translating into an interpretation of their effectiveness? In other words, was an “active” social media presence and a slick website contributing to an impression that they were somehow more impactful than the organisations which lacked these features and is this phenomenon creating a new hierarchy of activism in Delhi?

Many of the organisations that I spoke with who used the Internet and social media “well,” attracted foreign attention and funding. It is clear there is a monetary incentive for organisations to be present and easily accessible via search engines and social media platforms. And while social media has become a huge selling point in India - including in last year’s Parliamentary elections - much of the funding and attention appears to come from outside of India in these particular cases. While social media has become a popular tool for outreach in New Delhi, the emphasis placed on it is possibly being driven by forces outside of India in the activist sphere.

Organisations that had been involved in advocacy and grassroots activism before the Internet boom in India discussed the struggle to make effective use of the affordances of the Internet. My participants unilaterally expressed a desire to engage with the digital audience in India – an audience of approximately 310 million users according to Internet Live Stats (2015) – but were often ill equipped to do so. Stated difficulties included a lack of a dedicated communications and media strategist, lack of experience with social media and web design, and difficulty translating nuanced discussion onto social media sites which are not necessarily designed to facilitate complex and controversial discussions. Some participants directly stated that an online presence, whether it was effective or not, had become essential to obtaining foreign funding and attention, as a digital presence represents a tangible deliverable when applying for foreign grants.

It is clear from any cursory examination of social media sites that the mediums demand an increasing amount of content from its users. Simply put, the more you post, the more you are seen and heard above the increasing noise and chaos of social media. And if being seen and heard represents success, the message itself can get lost in translation. Click bait, sponsored posts, and buzzy headlines attract far more attention and gain more traction than any post attempting to create nuance and demand deeper engagement, at least in the cases I have personally observed and in my experience with activist groups.

The growing popularity of social awareness campaigns and organisations designed for the online world were quite obviously far more successful in utilising social media and web pages to draw attention to a specific issue. These campaigns especially were extremely popular with Delhi youth in particular and effectively used visual displays - such as crowd-sourced images and provocative posters - to highlight issues of gender violence and corruption. Occasionally some participants were outwardly dismissive of older advocacy groups, which they felt were out of step with the times and content to stay in their comfort zones.

In spite of the success of many online campaigns on the issues I researched, few were able to translate the momentum generated by the campaign into a broader discussion and deeper engagement on their chosen issue. While some participants stated this was not necessarily what they desired to do - some chose to remain purely as an awareness campaign without moving into advocacy - other participants stated a desire to do more and engage with the complex cultural, societal, and political constructs surrounding gender and corruption in India. When they attempted to engage in this more nuanced conversation, they often lost momentum on social media and occasionally stopped their campaign efforts altogether.

The rift was clear, and the struggle to merge worlds and effectively translate a variety of skill sets into effective advocacy was fairly well delineated. What troubled me was the implicit assumption that was being made around “effective” and “good” use of the Internet and social media. Why did a glossy website and an “active” social media presence appear to translate into organisational effectiveness? What was driving that assumption? It was an assumption I occasionally found myself making when researching organisations and even in some of my earliest interviews. Why did daily Facebook posts, likes, multiple Tweets, and followers translate into an interpretation of success and impact?

As Western, and in the case of Facebook and Twitter, American publically traded companies, there is a clear business prerogative in encouraging ever-increasing usage of their sites. More posts and tweet equals more data, which can then be analyzed or sold to a variety of different entities that want to utilise this data to create wealth. Facebook and Twitter also happen to be sites that can be used to generate conversation around key issues and act as an easy way to aggregate thousands, if not millions, of users behind a cause. The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Delhi Rape case mobilisations are only some of the hundreds of cases where social media sites have played a key role in mobilizing political, social, and cultural change.

However there is a corporate prerogative at work that is often ignored in these narratives. It is in a social media companies’ best interest to encourage frequent usage, as this is how free services generate revenue. Those who post the most win the race to be seen and heard. Those who do not - or do not have the funds to pay for sponsored posts or tweets - get lost in the shuffle, viewed as out of step and struggling to adapt to modern urban India, regardless of the quality work they may be doing offline. The “good” user is the most active user, regardless of what the content actually is. It can easily be termed as a binary between quantity versus quality, but this diminishes the extremely effective and thoughtful work of some digital media campaigns, which demands a different type of quality to actually become an impactful movement. It is therefore a more complex phenomenon than blindly generating massive amounts of content, but this is certainly a critical piece to digital success.

My conclusion, and one which was discussed and inspired by an early participant, was that it was the social media platforms – including key sites like Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent YouTube - were partially generating and multiplying the aura of effectiveness around organisations and groups which had heavily emphasized social media as a core part of their outreach strategy. This is not to deny the very real success that several of these campaigns have had in generating conversation and change around critical issues in India. It instead questions why our notion of success and effectiveness has been altered so quickly, especially in an urban and digital context.

Based on my fieldwork, I encountered a digital hierarchy in three different aspects in activist groups. These divisions emerge at the level of search engines and ranking, web page aesthetics, and finally social media usage and statistical data. I will briefly examine these levels in the following sections.

Level I: Search Engines and Page Rankings

The first was generated at the level of the search engine. Higher ranked and frequently visited websites appear higher on any search engine page, based on the search algorithm. In the first searches I conducted, several organisations with well-developed and easily navigable websites always appeared high on the search page, and were the first organisations I made contact with. As I began to dig deeper into partner organisations and get recommendations from my participants, I discovered new organisations that had never appeared in any search I had conducted, in spite of their clear links to the issues I was researching. These organisations have less of an audience and less of a digital voice from the very beginning. This is not even engaging with the issue of language on the Internet, as all of my searches were in English and not in Hindi or any other language spoken in India and were focussed initially only on organisations with an office in Delhi.

A second issue at the level of the search engine was that the organisations that appeared highest on the list had links to larger partner organisations in Europe and the United States, and occasionally had head offices in New York or London. The larger global presence may have had an impact on page ranking, as they were more likely to be searched for and recognised globally. The dominance of English on the Internet may also play a role, limiting the potential set of results, though again I made this decision consciously. Language choice has had a demonstrable impact on what a person sees on the Internet and what appears using the same search term. The burden of visibility influencing potential digital impact is clear, and practically forces some organisations to invest in a digital presence without a clear digital strategy. This can prove extremely detrimental – especially if the web page proves difficult to navigate and use, which I discuss in the following section - and move investment away from advocacy and programmes on the ground. Visibility is also a key concern for groups that exist purely as a digital campaign, as their potential success is based almost solely on how easy they are to find. Failure leads to diminished searches and lower rankings outside of the first results page from a search engine, which few people click beyond, thus dramatically limiting the impact an organisational webpage can have from the very beginning.

Level II: Webpage Aesthetics

The second area consisted of the content and ease of use of the website. As a researcher, I was compelled to look into every recommended organisation that engaged with the issues I was researching. That being said the organisations with more developed websites caught my attention and implicitly created the impression that it was a more desirable contact. This is quite obviously not the case in reality, and often the organisations that had less advanced websites and appeared technologically less capable proved to be highly credible sources doing commendable work. However the difficulty of navigating some of the websites, which included issues such as broken hyperlinks, difficult interfaces, and offered very little information on the activities of the organisations would prove deeply unappealing to an observer with less motivation than myself. Going against my own training and experience and trusting the power of the network of recommendations on the ground proved to be just as useful as fairly random web searches. In terms of first impressions, it is difficult to move beyond these issues of navigation for an outside observer which expects a quality organisation to have a quality website.

Again, organisations with head offices based in the United States or Europe often were easily navigable and had high quality webpage design, representing a clear trend and highlighting the emphasis placed on the digital aboard. It was also very clearly which organisations had started on the Internet, based purely on design and functionality, though there was a certain bias as the Internet campaigners I spoke too had all had had great success as an online campaign. Finding failed campaigns would have added a key counterpoint to my work, but the difficulty of doing so proved insurmountable for this particular project. Design and navigability are key indicators of skill and investment in digital presence from an outsider’s perspective. It is less than representative of the story on the ground and the success of an organisation, especially if it is not a purely digital entity.

Level III: Social Media Use and Statistics

The third and final level I encountered was determined by social media use. For every organization or participant I met I did cursory research on the various social media platforms they used, how many likes or followers they had near the day of my interview, and roughly how often the organization posted and tweeted. About 90% of my participant organisations had a least a Facebook page and a Twitter account. The number of followers varied widely, from about 200 to nearly 200,000 on Facebook and Twitter. Daily posts and variety of content was a key component to the success of the more widely followed groups online. It was immediately clear that groups that posted sporadically and without immediately stimulating content did not generate or gain nearly as much digital attention.

Many organisations discussed the struggle to move beyond a closed and familiar network, to reach out to the audience they know is there. But without a clear strategy, and even more importantly without a dedicated communications position, their digital engagement often mirrored their offline audience; a closed network of individuals already dedicated to change in the area the organisation was working in. They often failed to meet the incessant demands of the medium for easy content and had difficulties expanding their reach or message beyond their previously established networks of influence.

Those organisations which were able to attract digital attention on social media, while feeling it was an important tool for outreach – especially for youth in Delhi – and places where conversations on key issues could take place, also discussed the importance of social media statistics as a measurable deliverable. Donors, especially foreign funders, placed an emphasis on growth on social media sites as an indicator of success and growing influence. Whether social media growth can actually be an indicator of influence is still up for debate, but it is indicative of the notion that success means quantity, rather than quality, similar to the Western corporate prerogative of growth. That this is the new measure and standard of success for an activist organization is a troubling trend, and one unlikely to change in the near future.

Conclusion

I have argued that corporate strategies and imperatives are creating this new class system of activism in India. I labelled it a “Western” corporate strategy, based on the American origins of the main players Facebook and Twitter, which are the predominate mediums my participants engaged with and have some of the largest audiences in India. Facebook had 108 million users of May 2014 Twitter has around 19 million users (Statista 2015) in India, though these are estimates and in all likelihood there has been an increase in users. The new hierarchy masks the reality that impact and results cannot be measured by likes and retweets. While there is indeed power in these particular sites, the difficulty in documenting what influence actually translates into in the offline world is a well-documented debate. I do not doubt that the Internet and social media, in urban and increasingly in rural India, have great affordances. But these advances do not have to come at the expense of equally important organisations whose ability to translate these messages digitally is more limited than others, especially when this hierarchy is partially generated by corporate sensibilities whose sole aim is profit generation.

While this hierarchy has been explored as an issue of second-level digital divide- where the issue is not lack of access but lack of training and knowledge of the digital world – I do not believe this is the only issue at stake. The increasing power of large companies to determine the way we interact and the rules of effective communication and transmission are deeply troubling, and leaves little room for alternatives. Collaboration can be an effective way of mitigating some of the differences, but this option is not always available to every group.

While these are questions that require further examination, it is clear that there is a divide between organisation’s digital strategies and whether they are able to leverage the affordances of the Internet and social media applications. I have argued that the operational aspects of social media sites increase this divide in particular, as they demand increasing amounts of data to generate profit. A strong digital presence is increasingly linked to an idea of effectiveness and impact, without investigating offline realities. This in turn can lead to a new hierarchy of activism, which limits the voices of some and magnifies the digital voices of others who are clearly better at manipulating the advantages of the Internet. I do not wish to say that offline activism is more effective than online activism and that we should not engage with digital mediums to promote. I only seek to question how this increasingly digital reality is creating a hierarchal system that is not reflective of offline reality, question what knowledge might be left behind in the process, and critically examine the underlying structures and platforms underlying the growing field of digital activism in India.

References

Castells, M. (2010) Networks of Outrage and Networks of Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, Cambridge, MA: Polity Press

Earl, J. and Kimport, K. (2011) Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Internet Live Stats (2015) www.internetlivestats.com Accessed 23 May 2015

Rainie, L. and Wellman, B. (2012) Networked: The New Social Operating System, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Statista (2015) www.statista.com Accessed 25 May 2015

The post is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and copyright is retained by the author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_effective-activism

TIkTok: It’s time for Biden to make a decision on his digital policy with China

aman — 2021-01-22T06:11:43Z

As the United State's new president comes into office he is faced with creating a cohesive digital relations policy that corrects some of the damage done by his predecessor. This article is the first part of a series analysing his policies and challenges.

While on the campaign trail, now US president elect Joe Biden, made it clear to voters that he viewed Tik Tok as “a matter of genuine concern.” The statement came amidst a growing environment of hostility within the American government against the application. At the helm of the hostility was (now former) president Donald Trump’s passing of an executive order banning Tik Tok in the country and his attempts at forcing its parent company ByteDance to restructure the app under American ownership. Now, as the presidency passes hands, it is worth examining how the government got here and just how concerned the Biden administration should be with Tik Tok and how their strategy with the app could set the tone for digital relations with China going forward

The Road so far: The ban and forced sale of TikTok

America’s motivation to ban and sell the application can be explained by two contrasting factors: the cybersecurity risks that TikTok poses, and the country’s currently ongoing trade war with China. On the security side TikTok has faced immense scrutiny from governments around the world as to the amount of data that the application collects from its users as well as the potential links between Bytedance and the Chinese government. Furthermore there is a belief that due to the Chinese legislation that compels companies to assist the state on matters of national intelligence, there is little TikTok could do should the Chinese state decide to use it as an instrument of data collection. On the side of trade, the TikTok ban represents one of the more landmark blows dealt by the Trump government in its trade war with China. The US, since the start of his presidency has levied exclusive tariffs on specific Chinese commodities totalling to more than $550 billion. China has in response levied its own tariffs on certain American goods, with a total value of those estimated at $185 billion. Beyond these tariffs, the move to ban TikTok extends the trade war by creating clear hurdles for Chinese corporations to exist within the US market and firmly extended Trump’s protectionist trade policies into the digital sphere.

As such, on 6th August 2020, Trump released an executive order banning TikTok (as well as Chinese messaging and social media app Wechat). The ban has, however, since been indefinitely suspended as part of ongoing litigation on the matter at the federal level.

Shortly after the ban, came the attempts at forcing through the sale. While the deal has generally been referred to as ‘the TikTok sale’, it is not actually an outright purchase of the social media platform by an American company (Microsoft attempted such a purchase but was rejected by Byte Dance). Rather, the deal would see the establishment of a new US based subsidiary called TikTok global that would be partly owned (20%) by Oracle and Walmart, with Oracle becoming a trusted technology provider in order to ensure that US user’s data remains within the state. The agreement stipulates that the board of this new entity would have 4 out of 5 of the seats populated by US citizens, and that the company would go public as well. The current agreement would still see Bytedance retain ownership of the algorithms used by TikTok, which is in line with restrictions from the Chinese government preventing the sale of the algorithm to a foriegn owner without a state granted license.

How should the Biden administration handle this situation?

Dealing with the TikTok question must be one of the Biden administration’s top most priorities. The most obvious question they face is whether or not to reverse the ban and to continue to push through the sale between Bytedance and Oracle.

The case for enforcing the ban until the sale to American owners seems one that is straightforward enough. The cybersecurity concerns surrounding Bytedance’s proximity to the Chinese state and the influence of Chinese legislation are reasonable concerns. And any data gained from the application in the hands of a hostile state could be potentially harmful. This threat could be potentially reduced based on the role played by Oracle as a trusted technology partner. However with details of what exactly constitutes the functions of a ‘trusted technology partner’ it is impossible to say this with any great certainty. Simultaneously, there is a slight sense of irony in a Chinese based digital company protesting against another country’s protectionist stance to the internet.

Nonetheless these benefits are in many ways greatly over exaggerated, and in many ways allowing TikTok to return without requiring a sale could prove more beneficial in the long term. Not only would the app’s return be welcomed by its immense audience (estimated 100 million US users), it would also be a clear demonstration of America’s commitment to a less fragmented internet and more open digital economy. Furthermore, revoking the ban would also allow for the opportunity to reassess and reformulate the US’s economic and political strategy with regards to Chinese technology.

On the economic side, a retraction of the ban could signal the beginning of the end of the US-China trade war. Chinese investors are sure to see the shift from a radical republican president to a centrist democrat one as the perfect opportunity to increase foreign investment, which had been steadily declining recently. Such investment could prove significantly more substantial to the United States in a post covid-19 world as opposed to even in 2019. It is not unimaginable that Biden would look to maximise this opportunity to boost the economy.

On the political side, the government has to evaluate the success of sanctions levied against Chinese technology and whether that approach of blanket banning will translate effectively to the digital sphere. Not only has the US’s sanctions against certain chinese technologies proved unsuccessful, tools such as VPNs that can negate a ban make this strategy even less effective in the digital space.

The largest hurdle to revoking the ban would be the genuine cybersecurity concerns with a Chinese corporation having access American citizens’ data. However, dealing with these concerns through a simple ban of the application would only solve this one instance of excessive surveillance and data collection by a foreign app. Rather any solution must look to fix the issue at its root - that being the need for a more cohesive, detailed and overarching national data protection and cybersecurity policy. Such a policy could place clear limitations on data collection, stipulate data localisation policies for sensitive information and outline numerous other means of reducing the threat involved with allowing applications from states such as China to operate in the US.

Ultimately, Biden will be confronted with the reality of this situation the moment he enters office. The decision he makes on TikTok would set the tone for his term and for his government’s relationship with China. Whatever he decides to do, he needs to do it as soon as possible. The clock is ticking.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/tiktok-it2019s-time-for-biden-to-make-a-decision-on-his-digital-policy-with-china

J&K social media ban: Use of 132-year-old Act can’t stand judicial scrutiny, say experts

praskrishna — 2017-05-04T02:12:23Z

Jammu and Kashmir's social media ban: Legal experts are not convinced this is a viable order

The article by Shruti Dhapola was published in the Indian Express on April 28, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

For residents of Jammu and Kashmir, there’s a blanket ban on social media for the next one month. This means no access to Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Skype WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other social networks.

As The Indian Express reported, this ‘social media ban’ was ordered by the state government after Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti chaired a meeting of the Unified Command Headquarters in Srinagar. The total list includes 22 social media websites, and the order, a copy of which is available with The Indian Express, says this is being done “in the interest of maintenance of public order.”

The order to block the sites was issued by RK Goyal, Principal Secretary in the Home department, and cites Section 5 of Indian Telegraph Act, which “confers powers upon the Central government or the state government to take possession of license telegraphs and order stoppage of transmission or interception or detention of messages”.

The order reasons that social media sites are “being used by anti-national and anti-social elements by transmitting inflammatory messages in various forms”. It directs all ISPs to block these websites in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

But questions are already being raised over its legality.

“This is an illegal order because the Telegraph Act and Rules, which the order cites, doesn’t give the government the power to block websites. The Telegraph Act is a colonial-era legislation first passed in 1885 in the aftermath of the Mutiny, making telegraphs a monopoly of the colonial British government, and restricting Indians’ access to communications technologies. In 1996, in the PUCL case, the Supreme Court laid down that powers to intercept or block transmission of messages cannot be exercised without procedural safeguards in place. In 2007, procedural safeguards were made for interception, but not for blocking of telegraphic communications,” points out Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society.

Pavan Duggal, senior lawyer specialising in cyberlaw, concurs. “Legally, the order is not viable. This is because the IT Act applies for blocking, under Section 69 (A). Also Section 81 of the IT Act also make it clear that this is a special law, which will prevail over any other older law. The IT ACT deals with everything related to the internet.”

The IT ACT notes in Section 1, that “It shall extend to the whole of India and, save as otherwise provided in this Act, it applies also to any offence or contravention there under committed outside India by any person.”

But even blocking under the IT Act isn’t something that can be ordered over night, and the powers for this rest with the central government.

“There’s a provision (69A) in the Information Technology Act which provides for blocking of specific web pages for national security reasons, but only by the Central government. The J&K government, thus can only request the Central government to block. The central government has in the past denied requests by state governments as they were unlawful requests,” Prakash said.

However, blocking of URLs or in fact complete internet shutdowns is not new in India. “This is an example of Internet manipulation by the governments world over. The first casualty of any disturbance is now the Internet and the government, even the democratic ones living under rule of law have decided that is a-okay to prevent people from communicating in the name of law and order,” said Mishi Choudhary, President and Legal Director at SFLC.in

SFLC.in has also been keeping a track of internet shutdowns in India. It has a dedicated website Internetshutdowns.in which crowd-sources information on these bans, and India has already seen seven shut internet shutdowns in first three months of 2017. For instance, in the state of Nagaland internet and mobile services were down for nearly a month from January 30 to February 20.

The issue of url blocking and internet shutdowns inevitably gets linked to one of freedom of speech. While reasonable restrictions can be imposed under Article 19 (2) of the Constitution, experts are not convinced the current order makes enough of a case to justify such a blanket ban.

“The citizens of J&K are Indian citizens and can challenge the order as violative of Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution, violative of right to free speech and expression,” says Choudhary.

“Any kind of blocking must conform to the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, and any blocking must be legally “reasonable” for it to be acceptable as a legitimate restriction under Art.19(2). This blanket ban of 22 arbitrarily chosen service — why block QQ or WeChat, but not LinkedIn — and that too for a month, cannot be called reasonable under any circumstances,” argues Prakash.

Prakash adds that the order also raises other international concerns for India. “It also violates India’s international legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), whose Article 19 protects the freedom of thought, opinion and expression. Only those restrictions that are provided by law, have a legitimate aim, are necessary with less restrictive option being available, and are proportionate to the harm being address are allowed. For instance, targeting of hate speech that is calling for genocide is reasonable. But such blanket bans of communications platforms are not,” he argues.

So can the citizens challenge such an order, which puts a blanket ban on social networks? The answer is yes, as in this case this order “is legally untenable,” explains Duggal.

On the practice of blocking, he points that in today’s world it can only be seen an antiquated practice. “To give an analogy it is like fixing a leaking roof with a band-aid. It will only increase traffic to the blocked websites, and there are indirect ways to reach these sites via proxies and other tools as well,” he adds.

The orders can always be reviewed by the courts. “While the IT Act allows for blocking, it should be remembered the process is always open to judicial review. Courts have final authority, and they can examine whether the principles of law were applied when passing such a blocking order,” explains Duggal.

The affected social media websites or ISPs don’t yet have a response to this order. When we reached out, Facebook said it did not have an official comment on the ban. Mobile internet service providers Vodafone and Airtel also refused to comment.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-april-28-2017-shruti-dhapola-j-k-social-media-ban

Is India the next frontier for Facebook?

praskrishna — 2014-11-05T00:43:00Z

Pushing to bring hundreds of millions of Indians into the online world, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday called for expanding his pet project to provide free mobile Internet for developing countries into India.

The article by Rama Lakshmi was published in Washington Post on October 9, 2014. Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.

Zuckerberg, 30, the billionaire founder of the Facebook empire, arrives in India at a time when Facebook is losing its luster among American teens, but India’s vast market has yet to be fully tapped. A democratic country with a growing economy like India’s, with 1.2 billion people, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 35, is a market the company cannot afford to ignore.

India has the third-largest population of Internet users in the world at 205 million now, ranking after the United States and China. Yet the majority of its rural poor don’t have Internet access, and less than a tenth of its people, about 100 million, are on Facebook.

“Connectivity can’t be restricted to just the rich and powerful,” Zuckerberg said at a conference on connectivity in New Delhi. Rather, he said, it’s a basic “human right.”

Zuckerberg hopes to use his Internet.org connectivity initiative, which he started with a handful of other tech companies in 2013, to expand Indians’ online footprint and promote Facebook. He said the program will set aside $1 million to help develop local language apps for farmers, women and students in developing countries, including India.

In the past year, Zuckerberg said, Internet.org helped nearly 3 million people around the world gain access to the Internet and Facebook by working with cellphone operators in Indonesia, the Philippines, Paraguay, Tanzania and Zambia. In those countries, cellphone users signed up for data plans that included free but limited access to health and job information, Wikipedia, Google — and, of course, Facebook.

About 4.4 billion people in the world have no access to the Internet, and “the offline population is . . . disproportionately rural, low income, elderly, illiterate, and female,” said a report by McKinsey and Facebook. Countries such as Egypt, India and Indonesia face the greatest challenges with respect to incentives and infrastructure, the report said.

“It took 10 years for India to touch 100 million Internet users, but it grew to 200 million in just the last two years,” said Subho Roy, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India. There are 930 million cellphone users in India today. “Cellphones have acted as the primary driver pushing Internet usage in the last two years,” Roy said.

Researchers note that new users’ first experience on the Internet is often on Facebook.

The free basic services that Facebook has promoted in different countries help cellphone users “to experience the Internet, use some things, to understand why it would be valuable for them and get exposure to other services that they might over time want to pay for,” Zuckerberg said.

But many critics say that commerce is driving Zuckerberg’s push for connectivity rather than philanthropy. They say many new users may not pay for wider Web access and that can create entrenched monopolies for companies like Facebook and Google.

“You are allowing people to roam the walled garden of Internet for free. But if they don’t pay to use unlimited Web access, you are also creating monopolies and blocking competition in the Internet space,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore. “But in India, we are so hungry for Internet access that we cannot afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. Until India builds physical Internet infrastructure, this will help us in the short term to get connected.”

Zuckerberg said cellphone operators are free to choose which services they want to include in the package: “There is no rule that says that Facebook or any other company has to be included in this. All we are saying is that this is a model that works to get more people on the Internet.”

And Facebook’s India push is not all about chasing numbers, Zuckerberg said.

“The sheer numbers are obviously a very important part of it,” he said. “If you can do it in a country like India, you are improving hundreds of millions, or maybe a billion, people’s lives, whereas doing it in almost any other country, you wouldn’t be able to have that impact.”

India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, a user of social media, has set an ambitious target of building a broadband highway connecting 250,000 village councils across the country in the next three years. Zuckerberg said he will meet Modi on Friday to “see how Facebook can help” in India’s new connectivity drive.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-october-9-2014-rama-lakshmi-is-india-the-next-frontier-for-facebook

Social media may influence 160 LS seats in 2014

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T07:13:52Z

Social media is likely to influence politics and elections in 160 of India’s 543 Parliament constituencies, making Facebook and Twitter users the nation’s newest voting bloc, a new study suggests.

This article by Zia Haq was published in the Hindustan Times on April 12, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In these mostly urbanizing constituencies, social-media usage is now “sufficiently widespread” to influence the outcome of a general election slated for 2014, the study by IRIS Knowledge Foundation and supported by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), indicates.

On April 4, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi’s high-profile address to the Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading business forum, was trending topmost on Twitter in India that day, some posts by rivals mocking him.

A series of lectures by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, a presumptive PM, this week too garnered strong social-media attention, with his and Gandhi’s supporters competing online to run the other down.

A deeply polarizing figure still, Modi is often accused of watching over a carnage that killed nearly 2000 people in 2002, mostly Muslims. Yet, he has pulled off a stunning online strategy to showcase Gujarat as India’s Guandong, a south China province with top GDP rankings and investment.

Research shows that social media is more persuasive than television ads. Nearly 100 million Indians, or more than Germany’s population, use the Internet each day. Of this, 40 million have assured broadband, the ones most likely to have at least one social media account.

“Unlike Obama, who used social media directly for votes, Indian politicians have tended to use it more to mould public discourse,” says Sunil Abraham, the CEO of The Centre for Internet and Society.

That is likely to change in 2014. Not surprisingly, Modi became the third politician globally, a fter Obama and Australian PM Julia Gillard, to host a political conference on Google+ hangout.

Chief ministers in states are also leveraging social media. Bihar has unveiled a re-branded campaign called, “Bihar ka haq” or Bihar’s Rightful Cause, on Facebook.

Social-media-impacted constituencies, according to the study, are those where Facebook users are more than the victory margin of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election, or where such users account for over 10% of the voting population.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-zia-haq-april-12-2013-social-media-may-influence-160-lok-sabha-seats-in-2014

Vote: Will Social Media Impact the Election?

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T08:30:59Z

As India enters election mode, social media has become one of many platforms where possible prime ministerial candidates are being scrutinized.

The article by R. Jai Krishna was published in the Wall Street Journal on April 15, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

On top of the list are Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, who recently acquired the Twitter monikers #Pappu (“naïve”) and #Feku (“boastful”), respectively, following a string of public appearances observers saw as evidence they will be leading their respective parties in the upcoming national election.

A recent study found that social media could influence the electoral outcome in as many as 160 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.

(These are constituencies where 10% of the voting population uses Facebook, or where the number of Facebook users is higher than the winning candidate’s margin of victory at the last election.)

	“No contestant can afford to ignore social media in the next Lok Sabha elections,” argued the study, put together by IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a Mumbai-based research group, and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade body. Others are more skeptical. “The study assumes that users will behave homogenously, which isn’t true,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. While calling the study’s findings “ambitious,” Mr. Abraham said it was important to recognize the political power of Facebook, which could be used as a social platform but also to “plan a revolution.” But India’s Internet penetration is low: only 150 million people out a population of 1.2 billion go online, according to the IRIS-IAMAI study. The study estimates the number of social media users in the country is around 62 million, and that it may increase up to 80 million by time of national elections, which have to happen by May 2014.

“No contestant can afford to ignore social media in the next Lok Sabha elections,” argued the study, put together by IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a Mumbai-based research group, and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade body.

Others are more skeptical. “The study assumes that users will behave homogenously, which isn’t true,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

While calling the study’s findings “ambitious,” Mr. Abraham said it was important to recognize the political power of Facebook, which could be used as a social platform but also to “plan a revolution.”

But India’s Internet penetration is low: only 150 million people out a population of 1.2 billion go online, according to the IRIS-IAMAI study. The study estimates the number of social media users in the country is around 62 million, and that it may increase up to 80 million by time of national elections, which have to happen by May 2014.

Indian political parties have started wising up to the power of online campaigning. Ahead of state elections in Uttar Pradesh last year, for instance, parties including the winning Samajwadi Party, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party turned to social media ranging from Facebook to YouTube as well as to blogs and smartphone apps to promote their candidates and their agenda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wall-street-journal-april-15-2013-r-jai-krishna-vote-will-social-media-impact-the-election

Regulating Social Media: Unrealistic, Impossible, Necessary?

praskrishna — 2013-04-30T16:50:13Z

The Press Council of India Chairperson Justice Markandey Katju calls for regulating social media, saying it will prevent offensive material coming into the public domain. But is it really necessary to regulate the social media? If yes, is it possible to do it?

This was published by NDTV on April 11, 2013.

NDTV aired a discussion by Ashwin S Kumar, Co-editor, Columnist, The Unreal Times; Kunal Majumder, Assitant Editor, Tehelka.com and Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society on April 11, 2013 in response to Justice Katju's comments on bringing 'social media' under the Press Council of India.

Pranesh Prakash laid out four brief points:

'Social media' allows coffee house discussion and toilet wall scrawls to seem like print publications, but it's a mistake to treat it the same way we do print publications. The UK is now planning on using prosecutorial flexibility to refrain from prosecuting simple offensive speech on social media.
The same laws should apply online as they do offline (but how the apply, can differ), and that is currently the case. Most content-related offences in the IPC, etc., are offences online as well as offline.
Editors and journalists exist for most print publications and broadcast programmes, while that isn't true for most 'social media'. So guidelines applicable to the press mostly won't be applicable online.
Electronic publications (like Medianama, The Daily Dish, Huffington Post) which consider themselves engaged in a journalistic venture present a special problem that we do need to have a public conversation about.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ndtv-video-april-11-2013-the-social-network-regulating-social-media-unrealistic-impossible-necessary

Facebook’s Fight to Be Free

praskrishna — 2016-01-31T09:11:52Z

In India, Mark Zuckerberg can’t give Internet access away.

The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Shrivastava was published in Bloomberg Businessweek on January 15, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Thanks mostly to its mobile-ad profits, Facebook has had a great couple of years. According to its most recent earnings report, in November, the company’s quarterly ad revenue rose 45 percent, to $4.3 billion, from the same period in 2014. It has more than 1.5 billion monthly users, just over half of all the people online anywhere. Keeping up its rate of user growth—more than 100 million people each year—will only get tougher.

A big part of the problem is that a lot of potential new eyeballs are in places where Internet access is patchy at best. Some of Facebook’s grander projects anticipated that issue: It has satellites and giant solar-powered planes that beam Wi-Fi down to areas that don’t have it. And then there’s Free Basics, the two-year-old project Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has called an online 911. In about three dozen countries so far, Free Basics—also known as Internet.org—includes a stripped-down version of Facebook and a handful of sites that provide news, weather, nearby health-care options, and other info. One or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans.

Facebook says Free Basics is meant to make the world more open and connected, not to boost the company’s growth. Either way, online access is an especially big deal in India, where there are 130 million people using Facebook, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t. (The social network remains blocked in China.) That may help explain why Zuckerberg spent part of the first few weeks of his paternity leave appealing personally to Indians to lobby for Free Basics. On Dec. 21 the Indian government suspended the program, offered in the country by carrier Reliance Communications, while it weighs public comments and arguments from Internet freedom advocates who say preferential treatment for Facebook’s services threatens to stifle competition.

“An emerging country like India needs to provide the consumer with incentives to get onto the Internet.” —Neha Dharia, an analyst at consulting firm Ovum

Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook has bought daily full-page ads in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-ed, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service. “If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services,” the CEO wrote in a column published in the Times of India, the nation’s largest daily paper, shortly before the new year. “Who could possibly be against this?”

Opponents, including some journalists and businesspeople, say Free Basics is dangerous because it fundamentally changes the online economy. If companies are allowed to buy preferential treatment from carriers, the Internet is no longer a level playing field, says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Indian mobile-payment company Paytm. A spokesman for Sharma confirmed that Zuckerberg called to discuss the matter but declined to comment further.

India’s Internet base will grow with or without Facebook’s help, says Nikhil Pahwa, a tech blogger and co-founder of the Save the Internet coalition, which opposes Free Basics. “We don’t see Free Basics as philanthropy. We see it as a land grab,” says Pahwa. When dealing with the famously protectionist Indian government, that’s a pretty good argument. An April attempt by India’s top mobile carrier to underwrite data costs for certain apps drew heavy criticism, and the carrier, Bharti Airtel, has put the program on hold.

None of that means Facebook can’t help get more Indians online, says Neha Dharia, an analyst at consulting firm Ovum. “An emerging country like India needs to provide the consumer with incentives to get onto the Internet,” she says. “What Facebook Free Basics is doing is a bit extreme, but what you do need is a bit of a middle path.”

Internet sampler packages such as Free Basics can also help carriers like Reliance, the fourth-largest in India, upgrade their often-struggling networks, Dharia says. That’s a symbiotic process, because customers may quickly grow frustrated with the bare-bones service and demand more. Free Basics doesn’t have Gmail, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, or Bollywood music streaming. (Video will account for 64 percent of India’s data traffic by March 2017, consulting firm Deloitte estimates.) It’s meant to be a steppingstone. Facebook says about 40 percent of Free Basics users start paying for data plans within a month.

But again, if Free Basics catches on in India, people may just keep paying for data to use more Facebook and forget about some of those other services, says Dharia. “Facebook is the Internet” to a lot of people in India, she says. Google, whose services are most conspicuously absent from the Free Basics roster, declined to comment.

India’s telecommunications regulator says Facebook’s advocates and opponents have until Jan. 14 to file public comments; it’s received about 2.4 million responses so far, most of them form letters supporting Free Basics. The government’s decision could also ripple beyond India, says Pranesh Prakash, a Free Basics opponent and the policy director at the nonprofit Centre for Internet & Society in Bengaluru. In the weeks since India suspended Free Basics, Egypt, which had done the same back in October, once again shut down the Facebook plan, though the government wouldn’t say why. The India fight “will be a reputational challenge for Facebook,” says Prakash. “It will set the tone for Free Basics debate in other countries.”

The bottom line: Facebook’s free data plan in India faces strong opposition from local businesses and Internet freedom advocates.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-businessweek-adi-narayan-bhuma-shrivastava

India, Egypt say no thanks to free Internet from Facebook

praskrishna — 2016-02-03T01:49:25Z

ALWAR, India — Connecting people to the Internet is not easy in this impoverished farming district of wheat and millet fields, where working camels can be glimpsed along roads that curve through the low-slung Aravalli Hills.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on January 28, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

So when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in about a year ago to visit a small computer lab and tout Internet for all, Osama Manzar, director of India’s Digital Empowerment Foundation, was thrilled.

But when Manzar tried Facebook’s limited free Internet service, he was bitterly disappointed. The app, called Free Basics, is a pared-down version of Facebook with other services such as weather reports and job listings.

“I feel betrayed — not only betrayed but upset and angry,” Manzar said. “He said we’re going to solve the problem with access and bandwidth. But Facebook is not the Internet.”

Zuckerberg launched his sweeping Internet.org initiative in 2013 as a way to provide 4 billion people in the developing world with Web access, which he says he sees as a basic human right.

But the initiative has hit a major snag in India, where in recent months Free Basics has been embroiled in controversy — with critics saying that the app, which provides limited access to the Web, does a disservice to the poor and violates the principles of “net neutrality,” which holds that equal access to the Internet should be unfettered to all.

Activist groups such as Save the Internet, professors from leading universities and tech titans such as Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, have spoken out against it. Another well-known Indian entrepreneur dubbed it “poor Internet for poor people.”

The debate escalated in recent weeks after India’s telecommunications regulator suspended Free Basics as it weighs whether such plans are fair, with new rules expected by the end of the month.

A week later, Free Basics was banned in Egypt with little explanation, prompting concern that the backlash could spread to other markets. More recently, Google pulled out of the app in Zambia after a trial period. An estimated 15 million people are using Free Basics in 37 countries, including 1 million in India.

[India’s Modi wants to woo Silicon Valley, but privacy fears grow at home]

“It’s a very important test case for what will be India’s network neutrality regime,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

India’s debate could affect the way other countries address the question of whether it is fair for Internet service providers to price websites differently. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s rules on net neutrality went into effect only in June.

Officials at Facebook launched an advertising blitz to counteract the negative publicity. “Who could possibly be against this?” Zuckerberg wondered in a Times of India editorial on Dec. 28.

“I think we’ve been a bit surprised by the strong reaction,” said Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org. “Fundamentally, the reason for the surprise is that the program is doing good. It’s bringing people online who are moving onto the broader Internet.”

India, a country of 1.2 billion, has the second-highest number of Internet users in the world, but an estimated 80 percent of the population does not have Internet access.

India’s tech-savvy prime minister, Narendra Modi, is trying to combat this with an ambitious “Digital India” plan to link 250,000 village centers with fiber-optic cable and extend mobile coverage. He has turned to the Indian tech community as well as Silicon Valley for help, securing an agreement with Google to provide free WiFi in railway stations.

India has 130 million Facebook users, second only to the United States, and is a key market as the social-media giant looks to expand beyond the developed world, where its growth has slowed.

“If Facebook manages to get another half a billion users in India, that’s a valuable set of eyeballs to sell to a political party or corporation,” Abraham said.

[Is India the next frontier for Facebook?]

Facebook has long said that its program is about altruism, not eyeballs.

But it does reap new customers. Those who buy a SIM card from Facebook’s local mobile partner, Reliance Communications, are then prompted to pay for additional data. About 40 percent who sign up for Free Basics buy a data plan to move to the wider Web after 30 days, Daniels said.

The service is still running despite the India suspension. A Reliance spokesman said it is in “testing mode” and is not being promoted.

“The thing people forget about Free Basics is that it’s intended to be a temporary transition for people to give them a taste of the Internet and sign up. It’s a marketing program for the carrier in some sense,” said David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect.” But he added: “The idea that it’s some kind of alternative Internet that’s a discriminatory gesture to the poor is the prevailing view among the Indian intelligentsia. It’s fundamentally misunderstood.”

Facebook has pledged to open up to new scrutiny the selection process for companies with new applications, Daniels said. That is a response to concerns by many in India’s tech community that Facebook’s process put India’s fledgling start-ups at a disadvantage.

The project’s proponents say that India’s needs are so great it cannot afford to suspend one program that could help.

Mahesh Uppal, a telecommunications consultant, notes that more than 10 percent of the country does not have mobile phone coverage and that India’s progress in extending fiber-optic cable to village centers is proceeding at a glacial pace. Modi had set a goal of linking all 250,000 by 2016, but only 27,000 have cable so far and it is ready for use in only 3,200, according to a government report.

In comparison, some 80 percent of China’s villages are linked by broadband.

[Inside the Indian temple that draws America’s tech titans]

In Alwar district in the northern state of Rajasthan, many remember when Zuckerberg came to visit but fewer know about Free Basics.

“I’ve heard it’s free and by Facebook and you don’t have to pay for it,” said Umer Farukh, 43, a folk musician. “But I don’t think Facebook should control it. The Internet should be for everybody.”

Farukh has only been computer literate for two years, but he’s already emailing and using YouTube to post videos and promote his band.

He’s become such a proponent that he has donated space for one of Manzar’s computer centers — part of a government initiative to build cyber-hubs in minority communities — and encouraged the female members of his family to take classes, which is rare in his conservative community.

Farukh says that challenges to connecting India go far beyond data plans and fiber-optic cable or the government broadband that often sputters out. Wages are low, and hours are long. Only about half of the women in his state are literate, and about a quarter of the young women in his neighborhood are kept at home and not educated.

“This place is very backward,” he said. “India as a society is lagging far behind in terms of Internet.”

In the small nearby community of Roja Ka Baas, ringed by fields of blooming mustard greens, residents are still awaiting the opening of their planned WiFi center. They are struggling along on cheap mobile phones with slow 2G spectrum until then, they said.

Sakir Khan, 14, said that once the Internet finally arrived in this village, the first thing he would do would be to sign up for Facebook.

Farheen Fatima and Subuhi Parvez contributed to this report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-january-28-2016-india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook

A Megacorp’s Basic Instinct

praskrishna — 2016-02-04T13:53:05Z

Bolstered by academia and civil society, TRAI stands its ground against FB’s Free Basics publicity blitz.

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in Outlook on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Hours before the January 31 deadline for telecom regulator TRAI to give its opinion on Facebook’s controversial and expensive Free Basics pitch—which seeks to give India’s poor “free” access to certain partner websites—the consensus seems to be building up against the social media giant. “If there is cannibalising of the internet through services like Free Basics, the internet will be split; it will parcel out and slice the internet. Its future is at stake,” says a senior government official on condition of anonymity.

In a climate where the tech-savvy Modi government is seen to be close to the online trinity of Facebook, Google and Twitter, TRAI’s defiant stance in favour of net neutrality stands out. There’s a lot at stake. India’s position becomes crucial as few countries in the world have clearly defined laws on net neutrality or have taken a stand on it. For Facebook, there’s a lot more at stake. India is its second-largest user base after the US (it is banned in China), so it is leaving no stone unturned. The massive Rs 300-crore electronic and print media campaign is an indication of that.

TRAI sources say they are ready for any adverse onslaught and they are under no pressure from the PMO. The view gaining ground in government is that FB is trying to create a walled garden where it controls what people see and surf and what they can access online. While this will be offered to consumers for free—the technical term is differential pricing—the websites part of Free Basics will have to pay for being on the platform. Outlook’s queries to FB remained unanswered at the time of going to press.

At an ‘open house’ meeting to discuss TRAI’s consultation paper on differential pricing last week, regulator Ram Sevak Sharma stood firm against the barrage of pro-Free Basics opinions that flowed from FB, telecom operators and some members of the public. TRAI’s message was clear: FB’s tactics of moulding public opinion by stealth will not be acceptable in India. In the past few weeks, there have been bitter exchanges between TRAI and FB over the latter’s responses to a consultation paper on differential pricing.

TRAI’s defiant stand draws from an unprecedented show of strength by civil society against Free Basics and FB’s intentions. Says former Aadhar man Nandan Nilekani, “Free Basics is certainly against net neutrality. How can a solution be neutral, if it disproportionately benefits a particular website or business on the internet? Today, 400 million Indians are online. They came online because of the inherent value the internet offers. How can a walled garden of 100-odd websites provide the same value?”

What does Free Basics mean for PM Modi’s Digital India campaign? Being a walled garden, thousands of start-ups without adequate budgets to pay for such dedicated service will be forced to stay out of it. Similar questions are being raised about government services that are increasingly coming online. The concern is that all government traffic will have to pass through FB servers. The senior government official quoted above agrees, “In such a scenario, the government will have to approach FB to make its websites accessible on the free service which is neither desirable nor safe.”

The other fear is what happens to public data if it goes through a service like Free Basics. There is fear that a lot of government and public data will be put through Free Basics once government services start coming online. If Free Basics is for the poor who are also beneficiaries of government services, FB too can access this data. Says Prabir Purkayastha, chairman, Knowledge Commons, “FB says public service will be available through Free Basics but can public service be given through a private initiative? Public data is valuable and can’t be handed over to a private company.”

Few again are convinced by FB’s claim that Free Basics aims to make the internet accessible to the poor, with the many services offered through it. “The claim that the poor will get access to the internet is false,” warns Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. “Free Basics gives access to less than 100 of the one billion plus websites on the world wide web. Those in the walled garden will be treated quite differently.”

What gives TRAI a shot in the arm is that, for the first time, academia has put its weight behind Free Basics opponents. In a signed statement, several IIT and IISc Bangalore professors have said that Free Basics won’t serve the purpose FB is proposing and is not good for the country. “The problem is the internet being provided (via Free Basics) is a shrunken and sanitised version of the real thing. Free Basics is not a good proposal for the long-term development of a healthy and democratic internet setup in India,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT Delhi professor and one of the signatories to the memo.

Of course, many of the experts Outlook spoke to say that the government, and not FB, should be responsible for providing free internet to the people. Says Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director, IT for Change, “The government is sitting on Rs 40,000 crore of USO funds. It can surely utilise that to provide a free basic data package to people in India. Basic government services and emergency services should essentially be free.” Nilekani is also in favour of the government providing free internet to people. “The internet is a powerful poverty alleviation tool.... Government can do a direct benefit transfer for data, a more market-neutral way of achieving the goal of getting everyone on the internet,” he told Outlook.

Legally, though, there may be issues in stopping FB from introducing its Free Basics platform in India. Says Singh, “Technically, the Indian government may not be able to stop FB from introducing Free Basics in India as it is just a platform. What the government has to do is to stop telcos from collaborating with it for free internet because Indian telcos, not FB, mediate access to the internet.”

The demand for the government and TRAI to come clean on net neutrality has reached fever pitch. Experts like Nilekani feel that net neutrality, which does not allow zero rating and differential pricing based on telcos looking at the contents of the subscriber’s data packets, should be enshrined in law through an act of Parliament, the way countries like the US have done. TRAI has also proposed two models where the internet is provided free initially and charged at a later stage and another where content providers and websites reimburse the cost of browsing directly to consumers. Both these proposals have not found favour with experts who say that these are unworkable and only the government should disburse free internet.

In any case, all this is a matter of detail—important, no doubt. The key question is, what happens to Free Basics if TRAI rules in favour of net neutrality and goes against FB? “This is going to be a long-drawn-out battle as FB will certainly challenge this in court,” says the government official. After spending Rs 300 crore on publicity, there is no way it will roll over and die.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct

India bans Facebook’s ‘free’ Internet for the poor

praskrishna — 2016-02-10T02:53:49Z

India’s telecom regulator said Monday that service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet services, a blow to Facebook’s global effort to provide low-cost Internet to developing countries.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs. The article was also mirrored by NDTV.

Facebook’s “Free Basics” program provides a pared-down version of Facebook and weather and job listings to some 15 million mobile-phone users in 37 countries around the world.

When it debuted in India in April, however, Free Basics immediately ran afoul of Internet activists who said it violated the principle of “net neutrality,” which holds that consumers should be able to access the entire Internet unfettered by price or speed.

On Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India agreed, prohibiting data service providers from offering or charging different prices for data — even if it’s free. The Free Basics program has run into trouble elsewhere in the world recently — with Egypt banning it and Google clarifying that it pulled out of the application during a testing phase in Zambia.

In a statement, Facebook said that while the company was “disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”

In an interview before the ruling, Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org — the umbrella organization of the global effort — said India’s negative reaction has been “unique versus other markets we’ve seen. We’ve been welcomed with open arms in many countries.”

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg launched the program to great fanfare in 2013, partnering with other international tech firms on a mission to connect the 4 billion people in the world without Internet access — which he says is a basic human right.

India has 300 million mobile Internet users but still has close to 1 billion people without proper Internet access. But it is second only to the United States in number of Facebook users, with 130 million, with vast expansion potential as Facebook works to increase its user base beyond the developed world.

Yet the Free Basics program was controversial from the start in India, where critics accused Facebook of creating a “walled garden” for poor users that allowed them access to only a portion of the web that Facebook controlled.

Dozens of well-known tech entrepreneurs, university professors and tech industry groups spoke out against it, saying that the curated app, with its handpicked weather, job and other listings, put India’s scrappy start-ups and software developers at a disadvantage.

On Monday, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and creator of India’s payment application PayTM, applauded the regulator’s move.

He had been among the program’s fiercest critics, dubbing Free Basics “poor Internet for poor people” and comparing Facebook’s actions to that of British colonialists and their East India Co.

“India, Do u buy into this baby internet?” Sharma tweeted in December. “The East India company came with similar ‘charity’ to Indians a few years back!”

“In a country like India that’s just taking off, it’s important that there is an equal playground for every app developer,” he said in an interview.

In December, India’s regulator put out a position paper on differential pricing and asked for public comment on whether such programs were fair.

In response, Facebook launched a public relations blitz, with television and newspaper advertisements, billboards and an opinion piece by Zuckerberg in the Times of India in which he argued against criticism that the social-media giant was providing the service simply to expand its user base.

Facebook also engineered a prompt to users that sent “robo” letters of support for Free Basics to India’s telecommunications regulator. The regulator, flooded with form letters, was not amused.

Facebook’s behavior may not have helped its cause, some analysts said.

“Facebook went overboard with its propaganda [and] convinced ‘the powers that be’ that it cannot be trusted with mature stewardship of our information society,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

Yet David Kirkpatrick, the author of “The Facebook Effect,” says that Zuckerberg is determined to see the program succeed.

“Facebook is relentless,” he said. “Zuckerberg has said from the beginning his goal is to make the world more open and connected. And that’s a phrase he continues to repeat 10 years later.”

The regulator had asked Facebook, and its local telecom partner, Reliance Communications, to suspend Free Basics’ operations during the public comment period. But the social-media giant and its partner appeared to flout the suspension order, with the program continuing to be operational on Reliance SIM cards.

A spokesman for Reliance earlier said that the applications was in “testing mode” and that it was not commercially promoting the product.

The regulatory body said Monday that anybody violating the order in the future will be subject to a fine of about $735 a day. It will return to review the policy in two years to see if it is effective.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-february-8-2016-india-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor

India Sets Strict New Net Neutrality Rules

praskrishna — 2016-02-11T01:53:19Z

In India, advocates of net neutrality have welcomed new rules by the telecom regulator that have blocked efforts by Facebook to offer free but limited access to the web in the country’s fast growing Internet market.

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on February 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

In a widely awaited ruling, the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday that “no service provider shall charge differential pricing on the basis of application, platforms or websites or sources." It will impose penalties of $735 a day if the regulations are broken.

Kiran Jonnalagadda, who was among a group of 10 that launched an impassioned campaign called Save the Internet, says they have won a “fabulous” victory against large corporations to ensure equal web access for millions.

“We were up against the most powerful companies in the world, we had no chance of fighting Airtel last year, we had no chance of fighting Facebook. I think the only reason it worked is that we were on the side of facts, the opposition was not,” says Jonnalagadda.

Debate on Airtel

The campaign on net neutrality snowballed into a nationwide public debate after an Indian telecom company, Airtel, launched a marketing platform last April on which it planned to offer customers access with no data charges to certain Internet services and sites.

In recent weeks, the focus turned to “Free Basics”, a service being offered by Facebook on mobile phones to a handful of sites in areas such as communication, healthcare, and education.

Saying it wanted to vastly expand Internet access in poor, rural areas, Facebook had launched a massive advertising campaign in support of the platform. Only about 300 million in the country of 1.2 billion people have access to the net, many just through mobile devices.

But campaigners slammed Free Basics as “poor Internet for poor people” and said it would create a “walled garden” in which Facebook would control the content it offered users. Leading Indian technology entrepreneurs and university professors also called on the government to guard against attempts by Internet giants to turn the country into a “digital colony.”

Many of them have applauded the regulator’s move to strengthen net neutrality.

Ban on differential pricing

However, some are raising questions about the the complete ban on differential pricing announced by the regulator. That includes the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society research group, which says India has put in place the most stringent net neutrality regulations across the world. Its executive director, Sunil Abraham, says TRAI cited the examples of the Netherlands and Chile, but the ban on differential pricing in those countries is not as absolute as the one notified in India.

“We think that if proper technological safeguards and other market safeguards are put in place, it would be possible to have both — to have rapid growth in Internet access and reduced harm that emerge[s] from network neutrality violations,” says Abraham.

Indeed, the last word may not have been said on net neutrality in India as big telecom operators are expected to mount legal challenges to the regulator’s ruling in the coming months.

Expressing disappointment with India’s ruling, the Cellular Operators Association of India has called the ban on differential pricing a “welfare reducing measure” that could block an avenue for “less advantaged citizens to move to increased economic growth and prosperity by harnessing the power of the Internet.”

In a statement, Facebook has said “we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”

But after having tasted victory, the volunteers at Save the Internet, who have grown from about 10 to 100 in the last year, have already set their sights on another aspect of net neutrality besides differential pricing.

“The campaign is not going to retire because this is not the end of it. There is also discrimination on the basis of speed, which the regulator has not taken up yet,” says Jonnalagadda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-february-9-2016-india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules

Now trending: Regional Indian language social media networks

praskrishna — 2016-02-15T01:44:56Z

How many languages did you speak today? Chances are there was a lot of English at work and at home, but at least a sprinkling of Hindi (or Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil or Kannada) when you were chatting, gossiping or joking with friends and family.

The article by Kanika Sharma was published in the Hindustan Times on February 14, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

You toggle so effortlessly that you probably don’t notice it, except when the option is no longer available — when arguing with a non-English-speaking cabbie while on vacation, for instance, or trying to write a heartfelt message to a faraway friend on Facebook.

And that’s the key reason for the host of regional Indian-language social media platforms that have been popping up over the past four years—Shabdanagari and Mooshak in Hindi, in 2015; ejibON for Bengali, in 2014; Prasangik for Assamese, in 2013; Muganool in Tamil, in 2012; with an early start made by Vismayanagari (Kannada; 2008).

“I set up Muganool.com out of love for the language and culture, and of course because it is so much easier to express oneself in one’s mother tongue,” says Sathish Kumar, 31, a software solutions company owner. “On Muganool, the feed is much better, you get relevant news and people’s views making them a delight to read. On Facebook, there’s just too much of timepass.”

Read: Facebook and WhatsApp top social networking apps in India, says report

Most of these platforms are modelled on Facebook. You can post updates, links and videos on a newsfeed, share and repost links, form groups and live chat.

Some are even named after their inspiration — Muganool, for instance, comes from the Tamil Mugam for Face and Nool for Book.

Many go a step further. Shabdanagari has discussion forums, Prasanagik has a crowd-sourced encyclopedia section and ejibON has a crowd-funding tab.

For users, the differentiator has been this sense of community.

“It’s too much of a crowd on Facebook,” says Umashankara BS , 39, a Bengaluru-based marketing professional and Vismayanagari user. “Here, I feel like I know who I’m talking to, and they know me. We share opinions about politics and literature, and once a month 15 of us meet at a Bengaluru café. That’s not something I would dream of doing via Facebook.”

Property consultant Siddharth Bora, 35, who left Assam for Delhi a decade ago, describes Prasangik as his home away from home.

Read: Logged in generation next requires digital de-addiction

“It takes me back more than an STD call can,” he says. “Prasangik feels intimate, almost private. While on Facebook it is considered rude to post content in the vernacular or go on about elements of your culture, here that is exactly what a lot of us do. From other homesick migrants to my mother in Assam, a 67-year-old retired lecturer.”

It seems strange to hear the word ‘intimacy’ when talking about interaction on social media, but it’s a concept that keeps coming up among users of the regional-language sites.

“Users take pains to give feedback and comment on post, unlike Facebook, where most content is lost in the crowd and clamour,” says Pankaj Trivedi, 53, a college staffer from Gujarat and a Shabdanagari user. “Also, since it is a language the users are confident in, conversations tend to sound more courteous. People are polite to one another. I know that there is a certain kind of audience that enjoys reading my posts and that makes me more comfortable posting on Shabdanagari.”

On ejibON (meaning ‘e-life’), a community has been formed across borders, with 10,000 users in India and Bangladesh bonding over their love of the language — and the idea of an undivided Bengal.

“Language can be such a great unifier,” says Bangladesh-based Maruf Sunny, 28, web developer and founder of ejibON. “The aim of this website is to build a sense of community across borders and religions to celebrate the Bengali community online.”

Thinking vs Feeling

These days, we think in one language and feel in another, says, Sunil Abraham, executive director of The Centre for Internet and Society. “Whether it is music, literature or even relationships — it feels truer and more ‘authentic’ in our mother tongue. So, despite a lot of English content and services online, we still yearn for our own languages in the online world. This is precisely why Wikipedia in regional languages has become so popular.”

For greater representation of Indian languages online, Gaur’s website actively encourages people to embrace and personalise their Hindi as they do their English.

“I want users to coin and combine words, use hashtags,” he says. “Eventually, I want more Indians to voice their opinions online so that the English-speaking elite are not counted as the voice of the nation. Today, whatever trends on Twitter is taken as the opinion of the majority. That’s just inaccurate.”

With thrice as many people offline in India as online, and most of them non-English-speakers, the potential of such websites is immense, Abraham points out. The stumbling block, of course, will be the resources — internet access and electricity.

Meanwhile, the money is already flowing in. Last month, Shabdanagari.com raised $200,000 (about Rs 1.35 crore) from Indian investors.

The way forward lies in governmental support, says Abraham.

“Indic language technologies are not sufficiently developed because of insufficient investment by the government,” he adds. “Existing work needs to be promoted and technology infrastructure developed to protect and promote India’s linguistic heritage.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindustan-times-kanika-sharma-february-14-2016-now-trending-regional-indian-language-social-media-networks