Tech-Tonic: Who Scrubs Your Feeds?

This article was first published in Deccan Herald.Given how 2020 has been so far, if I were to ask you your favourite month of the year, you would rightfully hang up on me and then call me names, not in that order. However, since football was back last month, I would say September was when I was happiest. It’s great to look forward to football matches after a drought. I love the feeling when I get a notification on my phone that says line-ups are available. It is when my tinfoil hat is at its largest.For me, the only way to make sense of who is playing is to look at who is not playing. Let me explain. If I look at the starting eleven, all of it makes sense to me. For example, if in a game, Messi, Coutinho, Fati, and Griezmann are starting, I would not question it. But, when I look at the bench and see Dembele, I come to know of the trade-off the coach had to make to come to this preferred line-up.

China’s new data security initiative has implications for India

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Recently, the Chinese government announced the launch of a new Data Security Initiative. Outlining its components, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he hoped that China can provide a “blueprint” for the formulation of international rules for digital security.The Chinese initiative entails eight broad principles, which include a call for supply chain stability, pledges against data theft and surveillance, norms for data storage and access, and a requirement for technology companies to not abuse their market dominance.

 Wang’s announcement came a month after the United States launched its new Clean Network program in early August.The US initiative explicitly seeks to exclude Chinese telecommunications firms, apps, cloud service providers, and undersea cables from internet infrastructure used by the US and partner countries. The initiative draws upon a range of different standards, such as the Prague Proposals and the European Union’s 5G Toolbox.

Facebook services integration comes with trade-offs

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In case you are interested in technology policy, you might have heard rumours about Facebook trying to merge its services, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for a few years now. The very idea of the move has proven to be controversial since its inception.Earlier this week, Facebook allowed select users on Messenger and Instagram to message from one app to the other, and we got one of our first glimpses on what integration of Facebook platforms might look like.As I hinted in the introduction, there is some historical context to this. The idea has been in the works for a few years now. The progress on this has also been chronicled well by Steven Levy in his book, Facebook: The Inside Story. It is an excellent read, but if you do not have the time, here is a short summary.

The need for anti-trust reform

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Earlier this month, the Competition Commission of India dismissed an anti-trust case against Amazon. Here is some context. The Dutch apparel company Beverly Hills Polo Club (BHPC) approached CCI, claiming that Amazon had been indulging in anti-competitive practices. They had plenty of allegations, and strong evidence to support their claim. Let me go through them one at a time.1.         BHPC claimed that they do not sell on Amazon and rely on their own website (and Tata Cliq) for selling their products. However, Amazon offers similar products at a deeply discounted rate which makes it unviable for BHPC to compete with the prices being offered. Sacrificing profit for market share has long been Amazon’s approach to business and its deep pockets give it the financial muscle to do that.

Why we need to rethink how we disagree online

This article originally appeared in the Deccan Herald. An excerpt is reproduced here.Intentions as well as consequences are important in the information ecosystem. In July, an anonymous Twitter handle that purportedly offers ‘unpopular unapologetic truths’ distastefully advised its male followers to "only marry virgins". A quick Twitter search suggests that this wasn't the first time this account had engaged in such rhetoric, it wasn't the last either – but on this particular occasion it broke out from its regular set of followers to garner wider attention.Understandably, there was outrage. Some of the account's past content was called out, regular followers of the account were called out, both the tweets in question and the account were reported in unison by multiple users and more. However, two days later the account itself declared victory stating that interest in its content had increased and 'weak' followers had been cleared out.Earlier in the year, efforts by the campaign 'Stop Funding Hate' led to a movie streaming service, a business school and an ad-network excluding a far-right Indian website from their ad programs. However, the website itself claimed an increase in voluntary contributions 'upto 700 per cent' and also stated that there was no drop in advertising revenues.And in an ongoing instance, in late August, a news anchor tweeted out a ‘teaser’ video of an upcoming series that claimed it would unearth a conspiracy enabling minorities to occupy a disproportionate number of civil services posts in the country. An indicative analysis, using the tool Hoaxy, seemed to show that a lot of the initial engagement came from tweets that were meant to call out the nature of the content via quote tweets.Often, many of these accounts had a large number of followers themselves.Around the same time, an analysis by Kate Starbird, an eminent crisis informatics researcher, showed a misleading tweet by Donald Trump spreading “much farther” through quote tweets than through retweets. She also pointed out that a lot of the early quote tweets were critical in nature and calling on the platform to take action.While the matter of this particular series itself is sub judice, let’s focus on the days just after the tweet in question. In four days, the anchor’s follower count had grown nearly five per cent. In the ensuing period there have also been multiple hashtag campaigns professing their support both for the anchor and channel.What is common in each of these situations is that efforts to call out problematic content may have inadvertently benefitted the content creators by galvanising their supporters (in-group), propagating the content on digital platforms (algorithmic reward) and perhaps even recruiting new supporters who were inclined to agree with the content but are only choosing to participate as a result of the amplification and/or perceived attacks against their points-of-view or beliefs (disagreement with the out-group).

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Does Lakshman have a right to know?

This article was first published in Deccan Herald. Views are personal.Earlier this week, I decided to scratch an itch that had been bothering me for a while. I took out some time in my calendar after work, dimmed the lights in my room, opened Netflix and started playing Main Hoon Na. I was halfway through the movie; at the point where Lakshman (Zayed Khan) is hanging from a ledge, all my knowledge about data protection came rushing at me.

With ARM in kitty, Nvidia most impressive firm you never heard of

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Listening to Pivot podcast earlier this week, I came across this quote from Professor Scott Galloway, “Nvidia is the most impressive company you have never heard of”. Up until last week, I would have argued that you could make a stronger case for this statement to be applied to ARM Holdings. But considering that Nvidia bought ARM Holdings from Softbank this week, Prof Galloway is right.In case you do not track the semiconductor space, there is a chance that you are yet to hear about this deal. Or in case you have heard about this, you do not understand why it is important. I discussed in a previous column that while we have been looking elsewhere in the past few months, the US and China have been involved in a high tech geopolitical rivalry around the semiconductor space. The US has been placing sanctions on Chinese companies. The most high profile of which resulted in cutting off Huawei’s access to the world’s leading foundry, making it harder for the Chinese giant to procure chips.

Regulating online pharmacies must be an inclusive exercise

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.The most exciting aspect of looking at tech policy is the sheer amount of sectors it intersects with. Given the nature of the pandemic, more of our world has moved online than ever before, and will continue to do so in the coming months. This applies not just to retail, entertainment, and communication, but also for medical needs. Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed a push in the online pharmacy space.Reliance Industries has spent $83.06 million (₹6.2 billion) in cash to acquire a majority stake in Netmeds, an online pharmacy. Amazon has also launched its own online drug service. There are also other competitors in the space such as 1mg, Medlife, and PharmEasy.

Should India have its own social media content moderation rules?

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Earlier this week, Economic Times (ET) broke the story that top officials had begun preliminary discussions on whether India should have its own guidelines on content moderation. What always strikes me when I read news around this subject is that consensus around platform moderation is always negative. No one ever is happy with the current amount of content moderation that platforms are undertaking. Some people think it is too little, while others think it is too much.

Drilling Into Indian Twitter's Interest in Sweden's Violent Riots

This article appeared in TheWire.Over last weekend, hashtags such as SwedenRiots, NorwayRiots and WeAreWithSweden were trending on Twitter in India.This may have seemed surprising, but if anyone spent a few minutes looking at the content that was being shared, it became painfully obvious why this was happening.A cursory Twitter search showed that many accounts which typically share India-centric majoritarian content were actively participating in the conversation, with plenty of local references to recent violence in Delhi and Bengaluru.A more extensive examination using a combination of tools like Hoaxy, Twitter’s Advanced Search feature and APIs allowed us to dig in a little bit further.

In parallel, let’s also keep in mind the framework of Dangerous Speech, which can be defined as ‘any form of expression (e.g. speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or commit violence against members of another group.’

First, using Hoaxy, I attempted to get a sense of network clusters for these hashtags. Now, Hoaxy samples tweets, so its results should be considered indicative.The size of the circles and density of clusters around it represent the amount of engagement (retweets, mentions, quote) an account receives.The names that the visualisations throw up help corroborate, to an extent, what the Twitter search suggested – that a lot of the activity on these hashtags was being driven by accounts that associate themselves with pro-Hindutva narratives.Where did they come from?Next, I used Twitter’s API to capture around 60,000 tweets across these 3 hashtags on August 29 and 30. Approximately 30,000 unique accounts shared content using at least one of these 3 hashtags. It is not uncommon for accounts not to include location data. For these hashtags, typically 40% did not (For context: I’ve typically seen this number vary between 45 and 60%).In the doughnut charts below – which plot the number of tweets by location for the remaining accounts – the predominance of Indian locations is visible. 

Location of accounts for SwedenRiots

Location of accounts for WeAreWithSweden

Location of accounts for NorwayRiots

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Amazon and Flipkart make lockdowns effective

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle.One of the most important features of tech policy is the sheer number of disciplines it intersects with. With the pandemic getting worse, in India, we have gone back and forth on locking down areas to stop the spread of the virus. Over the past few weeks, we have seen lockdowns happen in Jharkhand and West Bengal. As you hear how and where lockdowns are being imposed try to keep in mind the role e-commerce plays in making sure such measures are effective.It has also been fascinating to witness how the government’s thinking has evolved in this regard. There has been renewed importance placed on the sector. And that’s not just because of reports of a new draft e-commerce policy, but because of how e-commerce has been seen as a mitigating instrument to manage lockdowns.

The UPI payments space is in for its biggest shift yet

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Around 10 years ago, back when the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) was still prevalent, I remember trying to persuade a friend of mine to get himself a Blackberry phone so that we could chat on BBM. He countered me saying that WhatsApp (emerging at the time) would overtake BBM soon enough. It was free, worked across multiple platforms and did not require people to be on Blackberry. At the time, I could not take him seriously. BBM was here to stay. I have never been more wrong.Earlier this week, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) dismissed an anti-trust case against WhatsApp Pay. WhatsApp has been trying to launch a payments feature for a while now, and it is currently in beta, shared with a small share of users. The order by CCI is forty-one pages long, but the basis for the dismissal is that UPI payments apps are an evolving market. Currently, when the feature is in beta, it is implausible to assume that “WhatsApp Pay will automatically get a considerable market share based on pre-installation”.

Reining in platforms like Facebook

In December 2015 the founder and Chief Executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, wrote passionately in The Times of India why it was important to give free access to internet. He was promoting the idea of ‘Free Basics’ launched by Facebook. It would give free access to basic internet services to all Indians. No charge would be applied for data use by the telecom company to access Facebook and a few other sites. Facebook would pay directly to the telecom company for the data. It was what he called a bridge to full internet access. It would close the digital divide. It would lead to digital equality. He claimed that full internet access would lift millions out of poverty. He compared this free service to provision of free basic health or education. It was a persuasive pitch.Unfortunately for him, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) turned it down. Why would TRAI turn down a free service being offered by the social media giant? The answer is subtle but very important. While some free access to internet is better than no access, the Facebook free offer was giving access to only certain websites. Thus the poor who opted for Free Basics would be able to roam only where Facebook allowed them to roam. This curtails a more basic kind of freedom, i.e. freedom to roam the internet. And all other smaller websites would have to pay Facebook to enter this “walled garden”. This is opposite to the principle of net neutrality. A profitmaking organisation like Facebook was offering “free services” because it hoped to make those free customers become sticky and paying customers, in the future. It was like a “foot in the door” policy, giving freebies in the beginning, that any monopoly uses to oust competitors. Once it has hundreds of millions of users inside the “walled garden”, it would charge monopoly pricing to those who wanted to access those customers. It would become a gatekeeper to a privately owned corner of the internet. Thanks to a nationwide people’s campaign for net neutrality, the Facebook plan for Free Basics failed. Read More

Forget TikTok, what India must focus on is semiconductors

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In case you have been following the news, developments around TikTok are hard to look away from. The app has been associated with Twitter, Apple, and Microsoft. Closer home, reports have surfaced claiming that ByteDance is in talks with Reliance for investment in the short video app. While news around TikTok’s future is catchy, it takes away from the more significant shifts that are currently occurring in the global technology landscape.I am specifically talking about semiconductors.

India needs to be more mindful in regulating non-personal data

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In September 2019, the Indian Government formed a committee chaired by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan to look at the regulation for non-personal data. The committee recently came out with a governance framework, comments to which can be submitted by August 13.As far as I can tell, the committee is one of the first efforts in the world to exclusively look at non-personal data, which itself is a vast term. Non-personal data refers to the universe minus personal data. This can include a company’s financials, information on a country’s infrastructure projects, traffic data and so on. Besides, unlike the mandate to regulate personal data, where the goal is to put more power in the hands of the users, the committee is tasked exclusively with unlocking the value of non-personal data.

Why Amazon, Apple, FB and Google are in the dock. It’s not just about economy

There was quite a bit of symbolism when the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google appeared before the anti-trust committee of the House of Representatives of the US Congress last week. Here were the heads of the world’s most valuable companies, captains of the tech industry and some of the world’s richest men summoned to defend themselves before elected representatives of the world’s most powerful state.

All four men looked suitably humble and contrite. They even dispensed with their trademark Silicon Valley superhero costumes for the sober formal suit — well, at least on their visible upper bodies. So, here was the State demonstrating its supremacy over private companies, with the richest merchants of the kingdom bowing before the monarch’s court.

Yet, the hearing itself was conducted using a videoconferencing application over broadband internet, demonstrating just how dependent the modern State is on technology companies. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic — and indeed because of it — the four companies have outperformed the rest of the US economy. Together they are currently worth almost $5 trillion. On the day of the anti-trust hearing, they, together with Microsoft, represented over 20 per cent of the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock market index. Such a concentration of wealth is extraordinary and has taken place after 42 years. As for ordinary citizens, as a New York Times journalist admitted, it is impossible to live without using the technology and services they provide.Read more

What we learned from the US antitrust inquiry

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.This week gave us one of the most significant developments in antitrust that we have had in a long time. The CEOs of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook publicly sat down for an antitrust inquiry. As a general principle, I try to stick to developments that can have the most significant impact in India. However, the issue with technology, and with events such as this, is that they can have ripple effects in how these companies operate around the world (including India).Before the hearing began, two major points struck me. Firstly, it seemed a bit unfair that all four CEOs had to be questioned at the same time. Given how different the nature of each company is, it did not seem fair to address them all in six hours. Secondly, I predicted that going by an Apple commissioned report, the hearing might be an exercise in cross-talking.

Are we seeing the beginnings of an ‘Indian internet’?

Almost a month ago, the Ministry of Information Technology took the unprecedented step of banning 59 apps/services on the purported grounds that these services were prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India. At the time it was unclear what a ban entailed and how it would be implemented and/or enforced.

However, the subsequent weeks between companies voluntarily suspending their services, Apple and Google de-listing them from their respective app stores and telecom service providers being ordered to block these apps, the ban has been 'technically' enforced from the perspective of an average user that may not want to navigate the world of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and TOR. So, for now, it appears that we have the answer to the second question.

Reports now suggest that 47 more apps could be facing a ban with another 275 being monitored closely.

Forests, trees and branches of the internet

In the context of the stand-off between India and China, these moves have and will be portrayed as a strong response to China. As Alex Stamos (former CSO at Facebook) of Stanford's Internet Observatory illustrates there are several overlapping considerations - many of these are applicable to India too.

Thus, as far as the future of the internet in India (and even the world) goes, these developments cannot be viewed in isolation. And must be looked at in combination with recent events in India, its stated position on cyber sovereignty as well as global trends.

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iPhone 11 is now ‘Made in India’, but Modi govt must see it doesn’t get too taxing for Apple

If you purchased an iPhone 11 recently, chances are that you have in your hands a smartphone assembled in India. After over a year of speculation on whether or not Apple will assemble its top-of-the-line product from a factory in India, news emerged last week that the iPhone 11 has indeed been “Made in India” at its contract manufacturer Foxconn’s plant near Chennai. This is good news that the Narendra Modi government can well claim as a success. But it’s important to understand why it is good news and what kind of success it is, to ensure that new government policies do not undermine this achievement. Read more  

Apple’s Anti-trust Hearing May Be an Exercise in Cross Talking

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In an event that is set to send sparks flying throughout the global tech ecosystem, the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have agreed to testify to the American Congress for an anti-trust inquiry. Even before the inquiry, there has been cynicism around whether it is a good idea at all to have Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg answering questions so close to each other. Because all of these companies have very different business models, the limited time is likely not going to be enough to achieve a lot.Each of the four companies has been labelled as potentially ‘too big’ and arguments have been made in favour of breaking them up. But it is only Apple that comes to the event with a very recent chip on its shoulder. The App Store was involved in a very public fight with Basecamp around whether an app by the developer should be allowed on to the platform without paying the 30% cut that Apple charges.