Slashdot Mirror
Indian Gov't Bans Bulk SMS, Investigating Social Media
saiful76 writes "Following mass exodus of people belonging to north-east states India from southern states of India, specially Bangalore, allegedly due to the threatening messages, the government has asked relevant agencies to scan all social media platforms to check for inflammatory and offensive content, following which, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DIT) has issued an advisory to all intermediaries in terms of provisions of IT Act and Rules to take action for disabling all such content on priority. Cellphone operators have been told to block all bulk SMSs and videos — so nobody can send a message to more than five people at a time."
What do we expect from their control freak government?
Well people from SOME cultures are VERY easily offended and take this perceived offence VERY seriously.
So its not just that this government is a 'control freak' its that the government is well aware at how hair-triggered large portions of their population can be at what to us in the West might seem incredibly minor things. Very simple words and phrases can cause widespread rioting with commensurate property damage, loss of life and livelihood. So in this sense the Indian government HAVE to be 'control freakish'.
IMO its just dumb of these cultures to be so fucking incredibly oversensitive and it really does them no good at all it just makes them look like complete dumbasses to the rest of the world. "What, so you killed someone because he called you a son of a bitch? Riiight thats just totally justified." while within that persons social context it WOULD be 'totally justified'. Doesn't make it right, it makes that persons social context FUCKED RIGHT UP.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The ban on bulk SMS is for 15 days at the most. This is not censorship, but an effort to avoid mass hysteria.
Those of you who know India will understand what I mean. Even before the era of mobile phones it was somhow easy to spread roumours and generate hysteria in India. For example read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_milk_miracle/ for one hysteria of 1995 regarding idols that drink milk, or 2006 where sea water turned sweet.
These efforts are to help crub the new hysteria. But I am doubtful about its effectiveness.
You already seem to have a grasp of the situation here in India.
People of northeast of India have a mongoloid features, which marks them as different from rest of Indians that have aryan features.
There is some ethenic violence going on in Assam, a state in notheast of India, between Bodo (ethenic Assames people with mongoloid features) and Muslims. So other Norhteastern people living in rest of India are therened by Muslims.
Most of these people are students and migran labours. Their parents got worried about their safety and called them back. Mass hysteria got generated when evey norhteastern person just started exodus from rest of India back to their hometown.
In your haste to submit your bigoted and hateful post, you forgot to check the demographics. India is overwhelmingly Hindu.
Required reading for internet skeptics
And you can't do the math.
No, I think I can handle basic arithmetic. What you want me to think, of course, is "Holy Shit! Millons of very scary Muslims! In INDIA!!!"
Let's not play pretend that the purpose of that first paragraph was something other than pure rhetoric. You can keep your klansman-style propaganda, we don't need it here.
As for the supposed threat of Islamic terrorism, I'm not even a little bit concerned. See, here in the US the big threat isn't Muslims -- it's hateful bigots. You'll find that here, virtually every act of terrorism in the last decade was committed by a Christian. Typically white and, more often than not, by someone who shares your hateful beliefs about Muslims.
Enjoy living in fear in your imaginary hate-filled world. I recommend that you avoid reality -- you'll find that the monsters there look a bit too much like you for comfort...
Required reading for internet skeptics