Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore
January 16, 2025 08:46 IST
Meta’s recent move of doing away with fact-checking and relying on a Community Notes model undermines the very nature of oversight and shows the need to have more accountability and governance structures for these big corporations
Thu, Jan 16, 2025January 01, 2025 07:30 IST
Even as technologies become more consolidated and corporatised, the efforts of people who fight to keep the internet free, open and empathetic are what make it worth maintaining.
Wed, Jan 01, 2025November 26, 2024 12:32 IST
I had no love lost for X. Like many others, I am happy to step out of this toxic relationship. But like sage dating advice, I am not going to swipe right and hook up with BlueSky on a rebound.
Tue, Nov 26, 2024September 17, 2024 14:00 IST
It stems from a failure to understand that Wikipedia is an open-source model with standards of citation, sourcing and presentation. An attack on this sets a wrong precedent where any form of critical information that powerful organisations do not like can be censored, or indeed become grounds for punishment
Tue, Sep 17, 2024August 12, 2024 15:09 IST
Google is not just a product or a service we use, it is a universe we live in. And even within the jurisdiction of the US, it is not going to lead to any significant changes, apart from Google condescendingly allowing other services to enter a market that it has a majority share of
Mon, Aug 12, 2024June 25, 2024 18:02 IST
He has done more than an individual can and he has been supported by and inspired generations of internet activists who continue to take the risk and leak and spread information that is otherwise shrouded in silence in the name of national security
Mon, Jul 08, 2024May 11, 2024 11:31 IST
As long as we keep accepting the collapse of context and information overload as our default modes of digital engagement, no amount of regulation is going to stop their circulation
Tue, May 14, 2024March 21, 2024 07:36 IST
The regulation of TikTok might be geopolitical, but it is not because it came from China. It’s because TikTok is China, and it has become impossible to extricate government agenda, policies, and practices from the intentions and spread of these digital platforms.
Sun, Mar 24, 2024September 27, 2023 07:07 IST
Excessive focus on economic value presumes that all data can be generated and harvested, and valued only economically. This betrays the fact that data is embodied
Wed, Sep 27, 2023October 11, 2020 06:30 IST
The digital space is essentially a space of erasure by dead information
Sun, Oct 11, 2020August 09, 2020 06:35 IST
Do we fight online because we want to or because algorithms make us?
Sat, Aug 08, 2020May 17, 2020 07:00 IST
The digital is going to become a lever by which people are going to be laid off, their jobs replaced by automation.
Sat, May 16, 2020April 25, 2020 18:31 IST
In the time of COVID-19, the trending of #foodporn points to a glaring inequality
Sat, Apr 25, 2020April 04, 2020 18:00 IST
Even as we're forced to consume news about the pandemic, we must not forget those who don't have our protection and privileges.
Sat, Apr 04, 2020March 20, 2020 17:30 IST
The phrase of the season in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic might very well become the phrase of the year. To curb community spread and our individual well-being, we must find meaningful ways of getting socially distant
Fri, Mar 20, 2020March 06, 2020 17:30 IST
People either dismiss the crisis or avoid scientific measures of control and containment as they put their trust in fake news. A public caution and literacy about how to trust information online are needed.
Fri, Mar 06, 2020February 21, 2020 17:30 IST
If we are okay with the idea that social media feeds curate and show us a friendscape that an algorithm decides, why is it difficult to imagine that it can also customise borders, divisions, and maps to the location of the user?
Thu, Feb 20, 2020February 07, 2020 10:30 IST
You are never alone as things happen to your information and data, without your own consent and content.
Thu, Feb 06, 2020January 26, 2020 06:17 IST
In our digital conversations, it has come to stand in for national pride and celebration of our people.
Sun, Jan 26, 2020January 19, 2020 06:11 IST
These are all actions that make sure that the arc of history remains bent in the right direction, and that paid troll farms and hired authoritative cells do not capture the narrative.
Sun, Jan 19, 2020January 05, 2020 06:21 IST
Trolls who engage in gaslighting end up digging personal histories, find other narratives that do not negate but deflect the main message of the persons, and also unleash viral abuse that makes the person believe that they might be wrong to even perceive an event as traumatic, let alone experience it.
Thu, Jan 02, 2020December 22, 2019 06:01 IST
Conceding our acts of being human to the facts of being digital
Sat, Dec 21, 2019December 01, 2019 08:01 IST
Fake news reduces humans to entities incapable of truth-telling
Sun, Dec 01, 2019November 17, 2019 08:01 IST
The production of the mundane as the spectacular thanks to our screens is centrally responsible for the current nature of our internet interactions.
Sun, Nov 17, 2019November 03, 2019 07:43 IST
The visual predominance has become the default mode of being of our mobile-triggered lives, where every banal moment is potentially viral and presents us as perceptive and quirky and insightfully thoughtful.
Sun, Nov 03, 2019