WhatsApp sues India over new law requiring ‘traceability’ of messages WhatsApp has sued India’s government in an attempt to strike down some provisions of the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code that requires messaging services to identify “the first originator” of information if called upon to do so by law enforcement authorities. India announced the Code in February 2021, …
“To comply, messaging services would have to keep giant databases of every message you send, or add a permanent identity stamp -- like a fingerprint -- to private messages with friends, family, colleagues, doctors, and businesses,”
I bet Facebook are already doing this anyway they just don't want to share.
The only way for tech companies to avoid becoming censors and spies for the every regime whose turf they operate in is to switch to a distributed topology.
Their software needs to move data between users without them holding it or knowing what it is. And they need a new, better model for advertising, with users volunteering their preferences based upon lifestyle options.
Users also need the ability to be able to implement their own censorship on the posts they see, to avoid the things they do not want to see. These censorship screens can be shared and crowd-built. You don't want one, you don't have to have one. Users choose what they can see online, but there are no restrictions on posting.
All do-able now. First to do it can replace FB, Twitter, Instagram and all the rest. This is a generational shift and a once in a tech cycle opportunity.
All tools and technology can be used for good or bad purposes. The Indian government's law is reasonable. Holding people accountable for their posts, that can be traced if needed is a reasonable balance point which will protect people and help restore civility to the Internet.
There is absolutely no need for this regulation.
If a person reposts or forwards, let's say child porn, they are responsible for posting it. And of course the complainant will know who posted it. The guilty party can however cut a deal with the law for a reduced sentence if they divulge where they got it from. And so on it goes till you get to the original source.
To me it seems many governments are finally coming to the realization that they were losing the ability to control the narrative. It also says a lot that these regulations are usually passed in the less democratic countries.
Technically you're right but the government's counter to this approach is, in a country with 450M WhatsApp users, and where stuff gets forwarded literally millions of times, it'd take a very long time to use this approach to trace the original sender, by which time the damage purportedly caused by the message would already be done. So the government is seeking a way to cut to the chase and have a 1-Click way of getting the info. From the government's pov, it's not an unreasonable ask, but, but the way WhatsApp says its app is architected, it will have to "unhaystack" the entire haystack to find the needle, which is obviously anti-privacy.
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