Big Technology Podcast - Bonus: India vs. Twitter, with Pranav Dixit of BuzzFeed News

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

In India, the Narendra Modi government is threatening to put Twitter officials in jail unless they block approximately 250 accounts of people they don’t like. They include activists, political commentators, a movie star, and an investigative news magazine. That’s why we’re doing a bonus, emergency podcast on this quick developing situation, and what it means for the future of speech on the internet, and social media more broadly.  Joining us to discuss is Pranav Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed News based in India who has been covering this closely and brings us the perspective from the ground.

Hey, Pranav. Hey, Alex. Hi. Appreciate you doing this with me. I know you're already in your weekend, but I think it'll be a great conversation. So I'll just read the side and we'll get into it. Sounds good. Great.

The Big Technology podcast is sponsored by MediaOcean. Looking for a job in Big Tech, you might want to take a look at MediaOcean. They were just named by Ad Age as the number one place to work in advertising technology. Go to MediaOcean.com slash Big Tech to learn about the company and check out their careers Hub. MediaOcean is building the mission critical platform for omnichannel advertising. If that sounds cool or if you want to find out what those buzzwords mean, hit up Mediaocean.com slash big tech and browse their job listings. And a big thanks to MediaOcean for supporting the big technology podcast. Thank you, MediaOcean.

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Well, look, there are moments in time where it's important for us to stop, reflect, and consider what something in the news pretends. And over the past week, we've been presented with just one of those moments. In India, the Narendra Modi government is threatening to put Twitter officials in jail, unless they block approximately 250 accounts of people they don't like. They include activists, political commentators, a movie star, and an investigative news magazine.

And that's why we're doing a bonus emergency podcast here on this quick developing situation and what it means for the future of speech on the internet and social media more broadly. Joining us to discuss all the way from India is Pranaf Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFee News, and a former colleague of mine and a friend of mine who's been covering this closely and can bring us, some perspective from the ground. Welcome to the show, Pranav. Hey, Alex. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. It's nice to be back on the line with you. We had some good times at BuzzFeed News. And I'm thrilled to get a chance to talk again about what's going on in your world.

Yeah, it was fun. It was really fun. And I enjoyed working with you. And here you are building your own media empire, I guess. I call it a media small business. But I'll take empire. I appreciate that. One step at a time, right. Massive exaggeration, but we'll go with it. So there's a fascinating thing happening in India right now where the government is threatening to put some Twitter employees in jail or prison based off of the fact that they're allowing their critics to remain on the platform.

So I really think that it's important for us to like have a moment to discuss what's going on and then what it might mean in terms of the way that countries interact with social media companies moving forward and whether there's going to be global implications because it's, it seems like a pretty big story for me. And I think the best place to start is to talk a little bit about the government that's in power in India now before we get to the critics. So can you just tell us who Modi is and how he rose to power? Sure.

So Narendra Modi, who is India's prime minister, he belongs to the Bharatia Janita Party, also shortened to the BJP. He's really a polarizing, divisive sort of a figure. his ideology and the ideology of the party that he belongs to is right-wing Hindu nationalism. And he has a big support base. He was voted to power, you know, they won the elections fair and square. So he has a lot of people who love him, but he has a lot of people who also really hate him because they think that he's destroying India's secular fabric.

India has always been this multicultural, diverse society where hundreds of religions coexist. and there's all kinds of people who live happily together. And the criticism against Modi and his party is that they want to make India a nation for Hindus first, and then everybody else is secondary and in the process sort of destroy India's secular nature. And they're also doing a lot of deregulation. They're trying to bring open markets in addition to that. I guess those go sometimes hand in hand where the nationalist governments like to preach free markets. What do you think about that?

Yeah. So what's happening right now is the government is essentially trying to de-regulate the agricultural sector. Along with many other sectors, I imagine. Along with many other sectors, that's correct. But agriculture is sort of the primary occupation that a lot of Indians are engaged in. It's one of the big backbones of India's economy. So the government has been wanting to deregulate agriculture for a long time and essentially open it up to private companies to get into this space, which hasn't been the case so far. The government says that this would be good for the farmers.

It would double their incomes is the claim. But the farmers think otherwise and they think that they're just going to be squeezed out. and the private companies are just going to get rich and they are going to get poorer. And they get paid a minimum amount right now because there's government middlemen, a government sanctioned middlemen that will make sure that they get paid a minimum amount. So if you go full free market, then there's no guarantee that you'll be able to make that money. Exactly. Exactly. That's correct. And we know that they're protesting now, but before we move into that,

I just want to take a moment to sit on the deregulation topic. Modi, from what I understand, wants the next Satya Nadella or next Sundar Pachai to run a company in India or build a company in India versus come to the United States and do it here. So how does deregulation from his perspective help that? Yeah, it ties into this wave of nationalism that has, you know, risen since the Modi government has been in power, which is India first, build things in India. Let's use Indian products. Why do we have people going from India to the U.S. and building companies there, the CEOs of Microsoft and Google are Indian? Why can't they do it here? So that's always been sort of the thinking around this situation since this government has been in power.

You see more and more there's an emphasis on this movement called Make in India, which is aimed at like increasing manufacturing in the country. The current slogan is something called Atmaner Barbarathe, which, essentially means a self-reliant India, they want Indian entrepreneurs to build apps here, to build like internet services here. Like I said, it ties into this wave of nationalism and putting India first. Right. And I guess if you deregulate everything, you could have more for your markets, leading entrepreneurs to be able to cut through some of the red tape and actually start to make giant companies, which is an interesting strategy. It might work, but it's messy in the middle. But long story short, let's get to the news of the day, which is that Modi's trying

to deregulate this farming industry that does pay a minimum to the farmers. They don't like it. And so tell us a little bit about the protest that India is seeing with the farmers. From my understanding, it's not thousands or tens of thousands, but millions of farmers or more than a million that have come and protested this new law and demanded that it's been repealed. So what's it like on the ground. That's right. So it's millions and millions of farmers all across the country who for the last couple of months have essentially been camped outside New Delhi's borders, New Delhi's India's capital. They have, you know, received global support. Most farmers in the country are Sikhs. That's the religion they belong to. Sikhs are also like a big part of the Indian global diaspora. They are spread out

all over the world, in the U.S., in Canada, in Canada especially. So the protests have been getting a lot of global support as well. And the farmers have been camped out. They've been just sitting there in Delhi's biting cold for the last couple of months. Winter in Delhi is like really freezing. They've been trying to get the government to engage with them and talk with them. And some of those talks have happened. But the government wants a compromise and the farmers are like, nope, just repeal the laws.

we are not going to settle for the compromise. And now let's get to the role of social media here. Let's talk first about the organization of the protest. So what we've seen with social media, and we talked a little bit about this on a previous episode with Zainab Tufcchi is that people can use social media to just rally up vast amounts of people with little central organization

and get them to come out en masse around causes, especially emotional causes. Has social media or WhatsApp been used as a, rallying tool for all these farmers? I mean, it's tough to get a million people in one place for a protest. So how important has social media been in terms of rallying the farmers in this protest? It's played a crucial role. Social media, like the rest of the world, is huge in India. And the most popular social media platforms in India are the big American social media platforms. It's WhatsApp, which is, you know, and it's an instant messenger that Facebook

bonds. It's Twitter. It's Facebook. It's Instagram. It's the same thing that the rest of the world uses. And obviously, when there are really intense protests, there's dissent, there's people who want to make their voices heard, there's people who want to criticize the government. So a lot of the rallying and organizing around these farmers protests has been happening on Twitter and WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook. And I think what's interesting is the Modi government has used these platforms. Now, of course, protests are being organized against them, but they've used these platforms extremely adeptly and with great vigor.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes. So Modi is essentially known as India's first social media prime minister, right? His rise to power sort of coincided with the rise of social media in India. the last few years have been, there's been an explosion of cheap smartphones, cheap data pricing, and as a result, like millions and millions of Indians have suddenly come online. And I think the Modi government has been really, really smart in recognizing that and has really used social media platforms to spread their messaging in an effective way.

They've become, social media platforms have become very, very smart. to spread government propaganda, essentially. And what does it look like in terms of these feeds and WhatsApp messages and forwards and then tweets? Is it that Modi uses Twitter kind of like Donald Trump, or is it something different than that? No, so it's really fascinating, right? Like when Twitter banned Trump, for instance, everybody was like, so is he going to ban Modi next? Trump was a special case in the sense like no other politician really used. Twitter or Facebook, like, quite in the same way that Trump did.

If you look at Modi's Twitter, it's actually, it's actually really sober and nice, and there's nothing, there's no incitement to violence or anything like that. It's, it's just him saying, speaking his mind about what's happening in the country, getting out, messaging around like the government's policies. It's all, it's all, it's all fine. So you won't find the prime minister actually saying anything, but then, you have hundreds and thousands of hardcore Modi supporters and some believe that the BJP has an organized IT cell to actually enable his supporters to troll anybody who disagrees with

the government or Modi on social media. If you tweet something that is against Modi, you will have hundreds and hundreds of these hardcore supporters descend on your mentions and you won't be able to use Twitter for like a week. Have you experienced that? I have. I have experienced that and I don't really tweet political things anymore, which increasingly is getting harder and harder to do because now politics is so mixed up with social media and technology and my job is to cover that. And then how about the agencies? Like is that, do they get their government agencies, government ministers, do they get their message out through social media? Yes. So when Twitter was

of new in India, they actually did this proactive outreach program where Twitter India officials went to a lot of politicians, a lot of the ministries, and convinced them to join the platform. And Twitter was very successful in getting that done because most of India's ministries and politicians in anybody in India's political space is on Twitter now. of them have verified accounts and they engage with the platform really closely like they're on there all the time it's the first place where they say anything take pot shots at each other get out like their their messaging or if they have a big announcement to it was put us like the first place where that happens it's been it's been interesting to watch that so let's go back now

to the farmers they're camped out and then on republic day January 26th they storm the Red Fort. So can you tell us what happened there? Right. So January 26th is Republic Day in India. And tell us what Republic Day is? It's the day we celebrate to mark the day our Constitution came into effect in 1950. It's a big day.

Yeah. There's like a huge parade in New Delhi, which, you know, Modi attends. I mean, the Prime Minister attends. There's usually like a big foreign chief guest. This year, it was supposed to be Boris Johnson who didn't show up because of the UK coronavirus strain. But it's a big day. There's a lot of security in the capital. And what happened on January 6th was a lot of the farmers who had been camped outside Delhi's borders,

which had been barricaded by the police to prevent them from entering the city, breached these police parodates, stormed the city, stormed the Red Fort, which is this big historic monument in the city. Not only did all help break loose in real life, it broke loose on social media. There were these incendiary hashtags, one of which was along the lines of like Moody's planning a farmer genocide, which is obviously... And that people who supported the farmers wrote that. Yes, yes, exactly. Social media got like really dirty on that day because for hours and hours, one of the hashtags was shoot, just a single word shoot.

and it was essentially Modi supporters asking police to shoot the farmers. Because they had stormed the Red Fort. Tell us what the Red Fort is. The Red Fort is, it's a historic Mughal-era fort in the city, essentially. Delhi used to be ruled by the Mughals. It's a pretty big monument in the city. And seeing that stormed by like hundreds of farmers was quite a sight. We couldn't relate with anything like that here in the U.S.

I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. We both had our situations in the same month, which is interesting. That's true. Okay, so they storm it and people are tweeting the hashtag shoot. Yes. Mostly Modi supporters are tweeting the hashtag shoot, which immediately starts trending and stays up there in the trending topics for hours and hours to, you know, journalists start asking Twitter what's going on.

We reached out to them, I'm sure, like a lot of other journalists did. And eventually it would have took down the trend, but it did stay out there for a while. It's interesting because a platform that had been so central to what the Modi government was, not only it's politics, but it's governing, given that all these agencies use it, is now being turned against it. So how do they respond? Do you mean the government? The government. Yeah. So January 31st, a few days after, you know, the 26th, read votes to.

storming happened. India's IT ministry sent a legal notice to Twitter and essentially ordered them to withhold more than 250 accounts on the platform. And withholding is like a very specific term that Twitter uses. When Twitter gets a legal order from any country, it withholds the accounts in those countries, which means that people in that country where the order came from can't see those accounts on Twitter. And you'll get like a little label which says this account has been withheld in India because of a legal order we received. But those accounts are still visible outside that country. So Twitter got a legal order to withhold more than 250 accounts. Most of those accounts, you know, belong to critics of the Modi government. Certainly there were accounts

that were tweeting with the hashtag, which was about Modi planning to you know, kill farmers. So some of those accounts, you know, were problematic in that sense, but most of the accounts belong to the critics of the government. And notably, one of the accounts belonged to the caravan, which is this big investigative magazine in the country, which is, which frequently does anti-establishment stories. And that was seen as a crackdown on free speech and a crackdown on dissent. It's unbelievable. So the government is just like Twitter take down these 250 accounts we don't like legally.

By law, it must take them down. By law. And Twitter was, you know, forced to comply and did take down the accounts. And can you imagine something like that in the U.S., like where Twitter receives like a legal order from the government? And like suddenly like the Atlantic's Twitter account disappears? Like that would be crazy, right? Yeah. I mean, I have broadened my imagination of what's possible in this country, but that, even that would, that would rise to the, just astonishing abuse of power by the government.

Right. Yeah. How many countries can do this? How many countries can, like, do this? Can force Twitter to withhold accounts or, it's not just India, right? And it just has to do it. Yeah. I'm sure other countries have their own sort of mechanisms to force social media platforms to take down content.

and they'll all have different ways that they do that. But I'm sure all countries have some equivalent of this. The way it's done in India, which I can talk about, is something called Section 69A of the IT Act, which is this act that rules like all electronic communications in the country. And it's controversial for a few reasons, right? It's controversial because it's really broad. pretty much the government can use the act to ask social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook or Google

to take down any content that the government feels is like a threat to national security or a threat to like the integrity of India. And depending on who's in power, like you can interpret that to be anything, right? It can have legit reasons to do that. But like it can also mean like taking down. Broad enough to be applied to anyone. Yes, broad enough to be applied to silence people who the government doesn't want hurt, right? So Twitter will serve this order under Section 69A.

The other reason why Section 69A is so controversial is that not only can the government just arbitrarily ask anybody to take down content, but also the company that receives these orders under 69A is not allowed to publish them or reveal. them. So nobody on the outside actually knows what the order actually says, which just introduces this whole, you know, it makes it very opaque. There's no transparency here. So, you know, Twitter actually, when it can, Twitter actually uploads the takedown notices that it receives from governments across the world into Lumen, which is a Harvard University database. But in this case, it can't because that would be violating Section 69A. Yeah. And look, I think that what you're telling me right now is surprising, but my jaw isn't on

the floor yet. But my jaw does hit the floor when I learn that India threatens to put Twitter officials in jail if they don't comply. So what happened there? Yeah, that's the penalty for violating section 69A, legally, if you violate section 69A, the clause says that you could be fined and sent to prison up to seven years. For seven years? Yes. It's a long time. That's a really long time. And so, so the government does threaten Twitter officials with jail or prison. Yes. I'll tell you how it came to this. So Twitter did withhold the accounts. But six hours later, it put them back up. And what we now know is that Twitter's lawyers had an emergency meeting

with officials from India's IT ministry and argued that they were not going to withhold the accounts because they constituted free speech and they were newsworthy. And Twitter put the accounts back up. This really pissed off the government. A day later, the government sends a notice to Twitter, asks them to re-block the accounts, and threatens them, and this is the notice where, you know, they're actually threatened with jail and fine. So they say it explicitly. Yes, they, at the very end of the order, this is the last paragraph, not the order, but the notice that they sent Twitter asking it to re-block.

It says, please, I'm paraphrasing, but like, please note that under what? clause, there are legal penalties associated with violating Section 69A. And if you actually look up the clause, it says violators are subject to, you know, fine and up to seven years in prison. So that's a threat. Yeah, that's a threat. And Twitter has, they remain unblocked. They, okay, so Twitter eventually agreed to re-block a bunch of accounts. Again, they won't say how many, they won't say which ones. But they put out a caveat. They said that, look, we are going to re-block some of these accounts, but we are not going to block accounts belonging to journalists, belonging to activists, and belong to politicians. So they didn't comply with

the government's order entirely, right? They sort of compromised a little bit. Yeah, so they stood defiantly. Okay, after the break, I want to talk a little bit about what might happen at Twitter and its employees now, what this portends for the rest of the world's social media. And we'll see where we go from there. So stick with us. We'll be right back here on the big technology podcast. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than two million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle

Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less, and explain why you should care about them. So, search for the Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here for part two on the big technology podcast with Pront of Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed based in India, also a friend of mine, and a former colleague. Before the break, we were talking a little bit about Twitter deciding to stand up to the government of India and say, look, there's a law that can lead to jail time if we don't withhold the accounts that you don't like. We'll withhold some of them, but not all of them. Journalists stay. What's going to happen to Twitter now, Pranav? This is like pretty

unbelievable that they took a stand and said, fine. Like, you know, you have your laws, but we're going to stick by our guns in some cases. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating to watch this unfold because I think this is pretty much the first time that a big Silicon Valley tech companies has defied, has not only defied India's ruling government, but done so in a very public way, right? They put up, this could all have been sort of under the radar and, you know, nobody needed to have known about this, but Twitter actually put out a blog post. And not only did they put out a blog post. The blog post says something like,

we don't think what India's government is asking us to do is consistent with India's own laws. I mean, Twitter is really saying that, hey, look, the government is arm-twisting us, right, at this point. We don't know how this is going to play out. Honestly, India's government are locked into this huge staring contest with each other, and we don't know who's going to blink first.

It's quite fascinating to see where this goes from here. I wonder if you think other world governments, I mean, I guess I'm sure they, I'm sure they are, but are other world governments looking on here and taking notes and sort of what are the implications if Twitter, you know, does, you know, stands its ground and doesn't block anyone? And what are the implications if it eventually caves? And what are the implications if its employees end up going to jail for this? Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think other governments are watching this. very closely. I think they're taking note what India, you know, which is one of the largest internet markets in the world. I think we have six or seven hundred million Indians online at this

point. How India chooses to proceed with this could set a global precedent for what other countries could could choose to do to regulate big tech in their own, within their own borders, right? I think for India, like, I honestly think, and this is my person. opinion that Twitter called the government's bluff. I don't think the government was prepared for Twitter to, you know, defy it so publicly. And as a result, they're kind of scrambling and I don't think they know what to do, not to say that Twitter knows what to do. Twitter's in fact released multiple statements saying that they are concerned about the safety of their employees in the country at this point because, you know, the government is like,

hey, jail time. But I think if India does do something, if India does choose to take action against Twitter, whether it's a fine, whether it's actually jail time, I don't think it remains Twitter versus the Indian government anymore, right? At that point, it becomes like a big diplomatic struggle, and it becomes about the United States versus India at that point.

And does India want that? We as a country have had a pretty good, relationship with the U.S. so far. I don't think India wants to get into a battle with the U.S. government over Twitter. Right. And what do you think about the fact that, like, again, this has been something the Modi government has used for its rise, but is also now dealing with some of the backlash that are sparked by social media? I guess it's inevitable, right? You write a platform to power. It's inevitable that your critics are going to use the same platforms to hit back.

So I imagine like that, you know, with the world governments looking on throughout the globe, they all have folks that are kind of annoying to them on social media. I mean, social media is a great way to broadcast a dissident's voice against official channels. So I imagine governments around the world are trying to be like, well, what happens here and can we do the same thing? What do you think about that? Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure they're all watching and then taking notes. I think if Twitter does cave, it would be bad for like the future of free speech in this part of the world, certainly in general. But it would be bad for, you know, if Twitter caves, I think more governments that maybe so far hadn't been thinking of getting social media platforms to cave could sort of pursue this thread like more aggressively, right? Because it would be like, hey, look, they caved in India.

You know, we can make them do that here. I think it would be, I think it would be a bad precedent for free speech on the internet around the world, generally. One thing we haven't spoken about is the Twitter ban of Trump. And I wonder if that's emboldened the Modi government to be more aggressive in this situation. Because I've always thought that it's not going to end with the ban with Trump and that we're going to see something else happen at some point. And so, you know, for this to come so soon after, do you think they're taking? queues from what happened here in the U.S. and deciding, okay, well, now it's our turn to ban, and here's who we want out.

I think they did get rattled looking at what Twitter did with Trump. It was like, look, these guys banned their own president. What's stopping them from doing the same thing to us? So I think some of what's happening is the government trying to show Twitter and social media platforms in general about, like, they're trying to show them whose boss. look, we can send you to jail, look, we could like take really strong action against you if it comes to that. So I think some of this is just like a show of power. Because it's true that, you know, they are rattled that Trump got mad. Yeah, it's a fascinating second order effect that

I mean, I imagine we should have anticipated, but also maybe a reason why Twitter was so hesitant to ban Trump over the years is that other governments would get a signal and then just be like, aha, okay, this is not just a neutral platform. It's actually a political actor and we need to find a way to put our power over it, you know, before the other way, before it happens the other way around. You know, one of the really fascinating things about just Twitter's response to the Indian government in general, and this is something that sort of didn't get talked about that much, but Twitter's blog post where they say that we're not going to ban journalists and activists, it also says right at the very end that this is about free speech.

And we are exploring legal options, not only for Twitter, but also the accounts that have been impacted. Twitter's actually willing to go to court to fight for these accounts that it has been asked to block to be brought back to the platform. I thought that was, I thought that was quite something, right? Like, I don't know if Twitter's done anything like that in any other country before. And I think it's probably also an onus on Twitter, right? Now that they've banned Trump, they have to show that it was a unique. case like you brought up versus the new standard. Yeah.

So, Pradov, what's coup? Coo, to put it very simply, is essentially like an Indian parlor. It's a Twitter clone that is currently super popular with supporters of the Modi government and a bunch of Modi government ministries. It's a lot of those kinds of people that are flocking to it and posting there. And so can it be an alternative to Twitter? And to put a finer point on it, why wouldn't the Modi government just block Twitter and direct everybody to coup? They, you know, I imagine, I don't know who owns it.

Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit, but it seems like they might have more influence there than they would with Twitter. Yeah, it's a coup, which is spelled like K-O-O and not like C-O-U-P. Two different coups. Yeah, we're familiar with the first version. So tell us about the second. Yeah, it's a homegrown app. It's been built in India by these two Indian entrepreneurs from India's startup ecosystem. Earlier this year, I should say last year, we're in 2021 now.

But it won the Indian government's app innovation challenge, which is something that the government started to encourage just more people in India to build like Indian apps. Cool's been around for a year, believe it or not, but I don't think most people had heard about it until last week. Modi actually endorsed the app as something that an Indian entrepreneurs had built. And that's when I guess it sort of took off. And now with what's happening with Twitter, the right-wing ecosystem, the Modi-supporter ecosystem is like, let's move to Koo. Let's move to Koo. They're not quitting Twitter, but they're actively using Koo.

This sounds familiar. It does, right? It does. I mean, it's what happened here after the Trump ban. Yeah, I think it's early days for coup. Like, we'll see if it's actually snowballs into something like parlor. Man, Prana, even their logo is even a little chick bird. They're not very subtle about the copy.

No, they're not. A retweet on coup is a recoup. Okay. So that makes sense. Do you have an account? I have an account. I do have an account. Nobody's going to know what it's called, but I'm there. You got a burner. Okay.

Yes. And so let's go to the block. Because one of the things that I have thought about is, are we going to end up in a splinternet? Like, especially after the Trump ban, is it going to cause countries to say, you know what? We don't want to trust American firms. We would rather do it on our own. It seems like Modi's into the whole coup idea. So is there a reality where they could just block.

Twitter and say, we don't want to have our political discourse in the hands of a company that's headquartered in another country. I mean, they already did block TikTok. So what do you think about the possibility on the ban? Yeah, a lot of people have been asking, right? India banned TikTok. So what's stopping them from banning Twitter? And my thought on that is like, you know, India is not China. We're still like a large democracy. It's a democracy. It's a democracy. elected government. And, you know, despite the fact that it's starting to show more and more authoritarian tendencies in recent times, right? I think the government still likes to maintain a veneer of democracy. We really care about global validation. We really care about being

open as a country. We really care about being a free market in some ways. I don't see India getting into like a China-like situation where we ban everything that's not Indian. and just sort of grow Indian equivalence. I mean, the government is certainly trying to encourage Indian equivalence. I don't think we want to do that at the cost of shutting everybody else out. I see. So this whole idea of, like, very quickly spiraling into a splinternet seems less likely than some might think. I think there could be a parallel ecosystem of Indian apps and services.

I don't think that could. comes at the cost of, like, banning everybody else. Okay. I think that's good. What do you, do you, what type of value judgment do you put on that? Is it good that we'll have this global internet? I mean, I'm sort of, I'm sort of like a global internet absolutist in some ways. I think I don't like the idea of spintanets.

I think the idea of the internet is that we can all be in the same space with no borders, no jurisdictions. I know I understand it's more complicated than that. And there's all sorts of regulations and policies that different countries put into place, GDPR, etc, etc. But I do think what makes the internet work and why it's so fascinating is that, you know, you and I can be having this conversation from, you know, different parts of the world. And it doesn't even matter. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Like, I'm in San Francisco. You're in India. It feels like we're in the same room. Exactly. So I would hate to see the internet splintering off, but I'm also, I'm also very idealistic.

Yeah, okay, that's great. Now, let's wrap up. You mentioned that the government is showing some authoritarian tendencies, but they are democratically elected. So can you elaborate a little bit on what that means, just as we try to make sense of this global situation and, you know, try to. put, you know, a mental model around what's going on in India. So, yeah, can you tell a little, tell us a little bit about, like, what do you mean by authoritarian tendencies? What I mean by authoritarian tendencies is, you know, more and more we're seeing the government go to great length to silence its critics, for instance, especially during these Fabo's protests. We've

seen journalists in the country thrown into jail for, for merely reporting. We've seen comedians in the country, you know, who like to make fun and, you know, jokes at the government's expense, being thrown in jail for jokes in some cases which they haven't even made. We're seeing, we're seeing a crackdown on, on, on, on, you know, we're seeing the government restrict, like, how much foreign investment can be done with foreign control media in the country. We had Huffington Post-India just shut down because of that. So more and more, we're seeing this chilling effect where anybody who wants to criticize the government or push back against the government's policies gets silenced.

And it's a reality that a lot of us are increasingly grappling with. This wasn't the situation like, you know, six years ago. This was in the country I grew up in, for instance. instance, but we're seeing it happening more and more, and it's concerning. Yeah, and technology, I mean, look at this discussion. I mean, technology stories are increasingly political stories. Do you ever, I mean, so you have to touch on politics, otherwise you can't do your job. Do you ever get afraid in terms of what might happen to you?

Yeah, I have to be, I often, often more and more these days, I find myself having to do, having to be very careful about what I, what I, what I, tweet and the way my stories are worded, you know, we've, we've had a couple of stories like run by legal, just to make sure that everything was fine. Yeah, it, this, it's, I don't, I don't treat, I don't overtly tweet out like political opinions anymore. Just because, A, like, I'm not an expert, but, and, and, and also I'd just like to focus on tech. But as you pointed out, increasingly tech is just so meshed up with politics that it's impossible to like not talk about the two things together.

No doubt. Well, look, it's brave of you for coming on the show. I appreciate it. And your reporting has been absolutely incredible and stand out. And, you know, I'm just sitting here, you know, and applauding. It's some great stuff and you've really helped illuminate the story here on the show and with your fantastic articles at BuzzFeed News. No, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I mean, I feel like a fake journalist sometimes because I'm not actually out there. I'm not actually out there covering the protest, right? I'm not actually out there like on the front lines and talking to the farmers.

But that's the thing though. Like you are. You know, if this stuff is like happening on the internet. And so you're as real of a journalist as there is. I mean, the government just threatened Twitter employees with jail. And you're in the position where you're in the position where you're. can analyze this stuff and let people know what that means. I mean, I think there's no more real journalism than that. Right. Mostly it's just me sitting in my room glued to Twitter, right, and then watching what's happening outside. That's sort of the story of life in 2020 and 2021, right? That's true. So much, you know, there was this belief that the world and the internet, like real life and the internet were two separate things. But increasingly, and especially these past number of months. They're deeply, deeply intertwined where you can come on the show and talk a little bit

about how you have the first social media prime minister and you have, yeah, you have these protests that are organizing and bringing a million people outside of Delhi and how these fights, of course, you know, there's stuff that happens in the streets, but it's so deeply interlinked with what's going on on social media. And, you know, that's what the kind of the idea of this show. That's why we're doing the bonus episode and that's what we're trying to. to get to, you know, week after week is the world is changing and technology is a big part of that change. And what does it all mean? Absolutely. So I appreciate you coming on to help us understand

a really important topic. Before we go, I want to give people who've been listening an opportunity to find you online and read your work, nothing more than that. Where can they connect with you and where can they find your stories? Sure. You can find me on Twitter, which is where I hang out 24 by 7 at Pranav Dixit. It's just PRA, NAB, D-I-X-T. You can find my work on BuzzFeed news.

Just Google my name in BuzzFeed. You'll get it. And if you want to send me a tip if you are a Twitter employee, or really, if you work with any social media platform, just email me or DM me and ask for my signal. Okay, terrific. Well, thank you so much, Pranav. It's been a pleasure to reconnect, and I hope we can do this again sometime soon. And thanks to everybody out there for listening. I appreciate you tuning in to yet another bonus emergency podcast episode. We've been having to do them a bunch recently because the news bears checking in on and explaining in deeper dives like we're doing today. If you're new to the show, we drop a new one of these typically every Wednesday. We'll have a new one this upcoming Tuesday with three mayors. on the state of tech in the United States. Mayor Francis Suarez from Miami,

Mayor Steve Adler from Austin, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway from Madison. That's coming up Tuesday to coincide with the launch of a new podcast. I'm co-hosting called Recode, Land of the Giants, which is a season about Google, more on that later. If you're a longtime subscriber and give us a rating and email me Big Technology Podcast at gmail.com, you will be eligible to get a free sign copy of my book,

always day one. But the ratings help a lot, help with discoverability, and the Red Circle team, who I must thank for hosting and selling these ads, selling ads on this podcast, tell me that those ratings are important. So please help make Red Circle happy, if nothing else. They're a great bunch over there. And I think that will do it for us, this bonus episode. So thanks again for tuning in.

No fancy outro music. We had to get this on the internet as soon as possible. I will see you again this upcoming Tuesday. And thanks, as always. for listening.