Chapter Forty-eight: Updates on Free Speech, Birds, and Bots
In this week's TypeRight, we continue with some updates on some issues that were our focus in the past few weeks: the sedition law and free speech, and the Twitter sale.
In this week's TypeRight, we continue with some updates on some issues that were our focus in the past few weeks: the sedition law and free speech, and the Twitter sale.
In an Independent India, 13,000 people said something and were booked under the Sedition Law. What they said, why the government thought they were seditious, and why the Sedition law itself does not conform to the Constitution of India, and why this law must go. As the Supreme Court passes a historic judgement on India's century-old, draconian, colonial-remnant sedition law, this week's TypeRight looks into whether this could mean enough for dissent and democracy in the country.
This week, TypeRight looks into the WHO's report on actual COVID fatalities and the reporters who were helping fight the cover-ups; we also look into the Right Digitalisation project we were part of with IT For Change, BKS and IFF; and we also take a brief look into what's happening in Sri Lanka.
This week is International Workers' Day and we also look into the joint declaration on the future of the internet.
May 3 is World Press Freedom Day. This week's TypeRight looks just how free are our journalists, as we see them face arrests and rearrests on made-up charges, physical attacks and threats to life and as the #FreeAssange campaign tries to gain momentum again.
This week's TypeRight takes a look into what could happen when the world's richest people try and exert more control over spaces of information on the Internet.
Several new instances of hate-related violence lash across India, from Delhi to Rajasthan to Karnataka. How deep does this run, and will 'sanctions' from big-tech help keep things in control?
On the First of April, Steven Greenhouse, senior journalist at the New York Times, tweeted about an event from Staten Island, saying it was "by far the biggest, beating-the-odds David versus Goliath unionization win" he had seen in his twenty-five years of reporting labour. In this week's TypeRight, we look into the victory of an independent labour union in New York, in one of the world's largest and richest companies.
This week on TypeRight, we continue with the coverage of hatred that has been spreading across the country, and also look into the plight of the gig workers in the backdrop of a nationwide general strike.
As the United Nations adopts a resolution proclaiming the 15th of March as the 'International Day to combat Islamophobia,' two separate events in India from the past week, beyond the election results, threaten religious minorities. In this issue of TypeRight, we look at a rather unsettling court judgement, a movie that might be having a 'triumph of the will' moment, and also, the country's slide in indices of democracy, employment, and happiness, all because Hate is a product and commodity that is being sold at mass scale.
Europe is witnessing a war, the 'first of its kind' after the fall of the Reichstag in 1945 and the establishment of the United Nations. In India, the ruling party faces one of its toughest challenges yet in the recent round of state elections. And both have led to a barrage of disinformation and censorship.
Children and college-goers return to offline classes after the pandemic sees a downward surge, yet education remains excluded to the nation's minorities and marginalised as polarising politics takes freedom of religion, expression, and dressing head-on. Also, the world ponders intervening as another war hits Europe - and here too, Indian students are stuck - waiting to be evacuated from Ukraine to come home safe and sound. Read more in this chapter of TypeRight
On February 14th, the world celebrates a day marked for spreading love. All the longstanding political positions on the commercialised nature of Valentine’s Day aside, any celebration of the day in India has, for several years, been marred by several incidents of violence, hate, and even attempts at further communal polarisation. While it must be noted that there have been events and attempts to use the day to spread messages against violence on women:
Internet is not a safe place. It is toxic, full of hate, and social media consumes the consumers more than the latter can consume Internet. That makes celebrating "Safer Internet Day" important on February 8th. We spent the whole day connecting with our thousands of digital foot soldiers spread across 24 states of India located in rural geographies and had discussions about the importance of safe internet.
This February 5, Facebook turns eighteen. From its ambitious attempts to connecting the world to being knee-deep in controversies and ethical violations, how has the company and its founder gotten here?
On the 26th of the last month, in Barmer, Rajasthan, Amran Ram Godara, an RTI activist, was abducted and assaulted. "He suffered multiple injuries; his hand was fractured, nails were shot into his legs and he was forced to drink a bottle of urine," said the news report.
This week, we continue where we left off in the last chapter on the rising hate in the country. We covered how this was not an isolated phenomenon, and how 'alt-right' groups have been increasing their campaigns of hate. We also saw the reports on TekFog, an app that automated the spread of hatred and online violence.
The new year in India started with yet another online hate crime. An online app that surfaced on the platform GitHub did a mock auction of Muslim women activists, journalists, lawyers and student leaders.
Dear 2022, hope you get the best of humans, and not just data.
Controversial amendments propose large reaching changes to the country's ID project by linking them with the electoral rolls and birth/death certificates. This chapter of TypeRight looks into how this could be exclusionary and damaging to personal privacy and democracy at large.