India Wants Human Screening of Content from Google, Facebook

[beer]

Some of the biggest technology firms in existence are reportedly squaring off against India’s telecommunications minister over the filtering of user-generated content. According to several individuals that have been present at meetings, Minister Kapit Sibal is demanding that the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo proactively screen user content for disparaging or defamatory statements.

At a meeting last month, the government apparently demanded that these companies use humans to screen the content, not an automated system. The logistics and privacy implications should be clear to anyone with an even passing familiarity with the sites in question. Executives from the aforementioned companies are expected to tell the minister’s office at an upcoming meeting that his demands are not workable due to the volume of content.

Facebook claims about 25 million Indian users, and Google has upwards of 100 million. The situation is reminiscent of RIM’s issues with the Indian government. The BlackBerry maker was threatened with expulsion from the nation if it did not provide better access to user data.

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Human screening? really? I bet 3/4 of the 25 million facebook comments are about why someone is bored or what someone else just had for lunch. And this is just facebook. I am guess this is a fail attempt to boost jobs.

[shought]

Funny.

I want more ice-cream for everyone! Also a Ferrari and a human windshield (not sure how that would work out, but make it happen).

[Nemesis]

i think id rather have an aston martin :) but seriously, this is crazy. i wonder how many thousands of employees there would have to be, not to mention privacy related issues. its just not plausible.

[Rajesh]

I am guess this is a fail attempt to boost jobs.

Nopes. It is just an ill-advised attempt to censor, Coupled with ignorance and idiocy. For Political Mileage.. Everyone knows that these bug**rs would go to any extent for political milage for muslim votebanks. Actually this issue is being raised after some comments / remarks on the party leader. By saying "Need to remove contents that hurt public sentiments", Guess who will define what hurts public sentiment and what won't... Already they control a lot of media.. Now they want the internet to follow suit... God save my country!!!

[myidisbb]

so how the heck is this suppose to work? first off the undercaste will nto be allowed to do thhis job so you alrady dont have many people over there to do it. so everytime someone in india clicks on a facebook account to view someone behiind a screen who is awake at the time has to view all the photos and other crap first. then it will load on the users computer? iindian government and tech doesnt go together very well. just like their fame attempt of a what was it 20 million cheap laptops that didnt go anywhere either. isnt it time for india to go to war with pakistan again instead of these stupid ideas?

[Rajesh]

so how the heck is this suppose to work? first off the undercaste will nto be allowed to do thhis job so you alrady dont have many people over there to do it. so everytime someone in india clicks on a facebook account to view someone behiind a screen who is awake at the time has to view all the photos and other crap first. then it will load on the users computer? iindian government and tech doesnt go together very well. just like their fame attempt of a what was it 20 million cheap laptops that didnt go anywhere either. isnt it time for india to go to war with pakistan again instead of these stupid ideas?

It is an understatement to say that indian govt & tech doesn't go together very well. Whatever tech progress we had, is "in spite of" the government. Not "because of". Anyhow, just have to leave it to our (people's) fate. "We get what we deserve. Nothing More, Nothing Less". karma.. Afterall we elected these jokers to rule us. (Not that the alternative is attractive either..)