Tushar retweeted
The Indian government is considering withdrawing the legal protection that currently shields social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X from liability for content posted by their users.
According to The Indian Express (November 5, 2026), the IT Ministry has begun discussions on changes to India's safe harbour framework under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Currently, Section 79 protects online intermediaries from being held legally responsible for content uploaded by users, provided they meet certain legal requirements. This allows platforms to host millions of posts, videos and comments without automatically becoming legally responsible for each one.
The government is now exploring whether this protection should be limited to services that simply transmit information, such as internet service providers, telecom operators and peer-to-peer messaging platforms, rather than social media companies.
Why is the government considering this?
A section of the government believes social media platforms can no longer be treated as passive carriers of information. Platforms use algorithms to decide which posts appear in users' feeds, what content gets recommended and how widely it spreads. They also moderate content under their own community guidelines, which may not always align with Indian laws.
The government believes these practices raise questions about whether platforms should continue receiving the same legal protection as intermediaries that simply transmit information.
What developments led to this?
• In July, the government summoned Meta's global policy executives after a video uploaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly withheld on Facebook in India during student protests.
• The government has raised concerns about deepfakes, content moderation and the reach given to certain political narratives.
• X has challenged the government's online content blocking and takedown framework, including the use of the Sahyog portal.
• The Supreme Court's October 15 observations in the Just Rights for Children Alliance vs S Harish case raised concerns about social media companies' failure to adequately prevent the circulation of child sexual exploitation and abuse material.
• A Parliamentary Standing Committee chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has also pushed for stronger action against social media companies and warned that Meta could lose its safe harbour protection.
What else is being considered?
The IT Ministry is also exploring two other changes:
• Requiring social media and messaging platforms to inform authorities before introducing major product changes that could affect user safety. This follows the government's intervention in WhatsApp's planned username feature.
• Strengthening grievance redressal mechanisms so users can seek action against deepfakes, sexually explicit content shared without consent and other forms of non-consensual imagery.
Has the government made a final decision?
No. Discussions are still at an exploratory stage. Removing or substantially changing Section 79 protection would likely require amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000, which would need Parliament's approval.
Any major change to safe harbour could have significant consequences for how social media platforms operate in India and how online content is moderated.
Tushar retweeted
Delhi Police asks X to take down IFF's account and posts. IFF will challenge the notices in court unless they are withdrawn.
The Delhi Police has asked X to remove the Internet Freedom Foundation's account, six of its posts, the accounts of SFLC and @geoblockedindia, and posts by 16 other users, on the ground that they defame the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The posts document and comment on a legal notice sent in the RSS's name to IFF, SFLC and @geoblockedindia, which demanded that the three stop criticising and documenting government blocking orders. IFF received copies of the two police notices from X on the morning of 3 November 2026.
IFF calls on the Delhi Police to withdraw both notices. If they are not withdrawn, IFF will challenge them in court.
What has happened
On 29 October 2026 at 9:54 PM, IFF, SFLC and the operator of @geoblockedindia received a two-page "legal notice" said to be issued on behalf of the RSS. It asked the three to stop opposing the government's blocking directions, stop documenting restricted content, stop posting details of geo-blocked posts, and confirm in writing within seven days that they would comply. It was signed by an unnamed "Authorised Signatory". Several RSS office-bearers have since said on X that the notice is not authentic. IFF replied to the notice, wrote to the RSS at its official address asking whether it had authorised it, and published both the notice and its reply on 30 October.
On 31 October 2026 at 8:06 PM, the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime), Delhi Police, filed an "Illegal Content Report" with X (reference LD-321926). It listed two posts: IFF's post of 30 October on the notice, and SFLC post of the same day. The stated reason was that the posts are "defamatory towards the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh under Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023". The boxes for "safety/security", "defamation" and "other" were ticked. The fields for the nature of the court order and court order details were left empty. The desired action was "Remove/withhold content".
On 1 November 2026, a second notice arrived in the RSS's name. It said the matter had been handed to the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, that complaints had been filed in several states, and that requests had been made to block IFF's X account and suspend the organisations. The Delhi Police had made its first request to X the previous evening. IFF did not know this until X told it on 3 November.
On 2 November 2026 at 8:51 AM, the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) filed a second notice with X (reference LD-322956). It lists 40 URLs. Thirty-seven are posts. Three are the entire accounts of @internetfreedom, @SFLCin and @geoblockedindia. This time the boxes for "Hate speech", "defamation", "safety/security", "enforcement of court order" and "other" were all ticked. The court order fields were again left empty. The stated reason reads: "The posts constitute defamation and illegal content under Section 356 BNS. Under Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules, 2021, read with Section 79(3)(b) IT Act, lawful notices require action within 3 hours."
The 16 other users are @ProdctiveUseful, @PanjwaniManoj, @jidge_, @RatanSharda55, @baxiabhishek, @SchrdingersDbag, @ashleshbiradar, @seemay, @NasirHussainINC, @Being_creat_ive, @AjoyDharmavaram, @othlaw, @_ananyaaa, @AimPoojaind, @incorigibleBhai and @rraoind. Their posts, as far as IFF can tell, comment on the notice or on the notice about it.
X forwarded both notice to IFF on 3 November 2026, at 8:47 AM and 10:03 AM, saying it was doing so "in the interest of transparency" and that IFF may wish to seek legal counsel and challenge the request in court. X's emails do not say that it has acted on the requests. The Delhi Police has not written to IFF, and no court has been approached, as far as the reports disclose. SFLC and @geoblockedindia have separately reported notifications from X about requests from the Uttar Pradesh Police, the Telangana Police and the Delhi Police's Cyber Crime unit, one of them against the whole of the @geoblockedindia account.
IFF's position
IFF condemns this legal action. A police force has made itself the enforcement arm of a private legal notice whose authenticity the organisation it names has not confirmed, and whose demand was that three organisations stop documenting censorship. The notices would deliver exactly what the notice asked for as they would also remove the accounts of the three groups in India that keep public records of what is blocked, and of who ordered it.
The posts in question are about a legal notice sent to us. They quote it, criticise how it was drafted, and say that we will carry on with our work. A person who receives a threat is entitled to publish it and answer it and that is not defamation of the sender.
In the three weeks before the first notice, IFF assisted 86 people whose accounts were suspended or whose posts were withheld in India. SFLC's Free Speech Tracker recorded about 268 content restrictions and 83 account restrictions in the first 29 days of October. @geoblockedindia publishes the orders behind such blocks when platforms disclose them. None of this is unlawful. Documenting censorship and challenging it in court is what the Constitution expects of citizens.
IFF will not delete the posts. If the Delhi Police does not withdraw the notices, we will challenge them in court.
Why the reports are unlawful
Defamation is not a police matter. Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 is a non-cognizable and bailable offence. Under Section 222 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, no court can take cognizance of it except on a complaint by the person aggrieved.
Under Section 174 of the BNSS, the police cannot investigate a non-cognizable offence without an order of a Magistrate. The Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) is not the person aggrieved. The notices disclose no complaint by the RSS and no order of any Magistrate. Whether a statement is defamatory is for a court to decide after hearing its author, with the defences of truth, fair comment and good faith available to that author.
In Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 221, the Supreme Court upheld criminal defamation on the strength of these safeguards. A police officer who asks a platform to remove speech as defamatory has decided the question himself, without a complainant, a court or a hearing.
The posts are protected comment. Exceptions 1 to 3 to Section 356(1) protect the truth published for the public good, opinion on the public conduct of public servants, and opinion on the conduct of any person touching a public question. The posts publish a notice that was sent to us and give our opinion of it. The RSS, if it sent the notice, chose to enter a public question. If it did not, the posts defame no one.
Further, Section 79(3)(b) and Rule 3(1)(d) do not permit this. In Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1, the Supreme Court read down Section 79(3)(b) so that an intermediary acquires "actual knowledge" only through a court order, or a notification from the appropriate government or its agency that unlawful acts relatable to Article 19(2) are being committed. The court said that it would be difficult for intermediaries to judge the legitimacy of the millions of requests they receive, and that the burden must not be placed on them. Rule 3(1)(d), as amended in November 2025 and February 2026, now requires the intimation to come from an officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary or Deputy Inspector General, to be reasoned, and to specify the legal basis and the nature of the unlawful act, subject to a monthly review by a Secretary-level officer. The three-hour window the notice invokes applies to a lawful order that meets these conditions. A web form that ticks "hate speech" and "enforcement of court order" while leaving the court order fields blank, and that gives one sentence of reasons for 40 URLs, is not such an order.
The notices by the Delhi Police are disproportionate. They seek to remove three accounts in their entirety, with years of posts, over six, four and eleven posts respectively. They sweep in 16 third parties whose only connection is that they commented on a public controversy. In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, (2020) 3 SCC 637, the Supreme Court held that any restriction on speech must be necessary, proportionate and the least restrictive measure available, and that orders restricting speech must be published and reasoned. Removing an organisation's entire account for criticising a legal notice fails each of these tests.
The effect is to silence documentation of censorship and providing legal aid to Indian internet users. The accounts named are those that record blocking orders in India. The notice asked them to stop. A takedown request that accomplishes the demand of an anonymous private notice is not law enforcement. It is the use of state power for a private end, which Article 14 forbids.
Our demands
1. To the Delhi Police: Withdraw reports LD-321926 and LD-322956 and confirm the withdrawal in writing to X and to IFF.
2. To the Delhi Police: Disclose the complaint on which the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) acted, the authority under which the reports were filed, and whether any order of a Magistrate under Section 174 BNSS exists. Disclose every request made to any platform in this matter, including those made by the Cyber Crime unit against @geoblockedindia.
3. To X: Do not act on the reports. If any content is withheld in India, tell the affected user before acting, give them the full request, and name the legal basis. Publish both reports to the Lumen database, as the reporting form itself contemplates.
4. To the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Ministry of Home Affairs: Have the Secretary-level review required by Rule 3(1)(d) examine these intimations, and tell police forces that Rule 3(1)(d) is not a remedy for defamation, which the law reserves to the person aggrieved and to the courts.
5. To the RSS: State publicly whether it authorised either notice or any complaint to the police. If it did not, say so to the Delhi Police.
If the notices are not withdrawn, IFF will challenge them in court. We will continue to document blocking orders, to publish them, and to provide legal assistance to anyone whose account or post is withheld in India. Nothing in these notices changes that.
Tushar retweeted
What's happening here is a moment of collective shame.
Hounding someone just because you can't stand their work - to what extent are we going to tolerate all of this?
BREAKING: Madras High Court issues notice on plea seeking investigation into the identity and background of journalist Saurav Das, including his parents, and cancellation of his passport and Aadhaar card if allegations are established.
@SauravDassss @Cockroachisback
Tushar retweeted
दैनिक भास्कर के खुलासे के बाद IAS शिखर अग्रवाल को सभी पदों से हटाया: ढाई साल में एक कंपनी से 40 कॉटेज, विला खरीदने की जानकारी; जानें क्या है पूरा मामला
#RajasthanNews #HindiNews #IAS #DainiBhaskar #Investigation
dainik.bhaskar.com/kiJRjQ97C…
Tushar retweeted
It’s getting worse and worse.
New study shows experts completely surrender their judgments to AI, and they don’t even realise it.
Fifty professional analysts used Claude Code to analyse data and advise a fictional farming cooperative. They faced four analytical decisions, followed by a final policy recommendation.
Unknown to them, AI advice was experimentally manipulated to lean towards opposite directions.
The results are disturbing.
Across the four analytical decisions, experts chose the AI’s preferred option 86% of the time.
Afterwards, half of the experts rated the final recommendation as more their own than the AI’s, and only 15% mentioned the AI in any explanation.
Epistemia is reaching the experts: we risk outsourcing judgment while preserving the illusion of intellectual independence.
What could possibly go wrong?
*
Paper in the first reply
Tushar retweeted
if you don’t smile and thank the person who delivers groceries to your doorstep, the person who drives you to your destination, the person who guards your society, the person who takes out your trash, and so many others, i’m sorry to say this but you suck big time.
Tushar retweeted
It is a mistake from Android to expose these states to apps so that they do random blocks and locks like this to give a false perception of security. What are the people who need the dev settings supposed to do? Disable it every time when they use Ather app? Get another phone and carry that around? Root the phone and completely isolate the app from entire system state?
Tushar retweeted
BJP protesting at one of the three designated protest sites after applying for permission 10 days in advance.
All traders happy in Delhi.
Tushar retweeted
You have to understand. The longer you wait to build skills, the harder life pushes you to settle for something beneath your potential capabilities. Education is a race against premature convergence.
Tushar retweeted
We're hiring a performance engineer at ParadeDB. The role will be 100% dedicated to optimizing query performance and blogging about it.
ParadeDB is fast, but fast is never fast enough. Come help us make it faster. You must be experienced with performance profiling. DMs open.
Tushar retweeted
China has a large number of High Speed Trains that cover this distance in 35 minutes. Our @IASassociation biradari and politicians go on tax paid study tours but will keep expanding this polluting- car first option that takes 5 times the travel time! We are like sheep to accept it!! We will keep paying higher tolls too. No hope!!
Tushar retweeted
In laymans terms,
Titanium implants are strong and the body accepts them, but they’re way too stiff
because the metal takes almost all the pressure, the real bone next to it gets lazy and starts to weaken over time (like a muscle that doesn’t get used).
This was the issue with earlier titanium implants and joint replacements
the new implant though are made from a special zinc alloy shaped like a lightweight, sponge-like lattice
it is flexible and almost like real bone, so it shares the load properly and doesn’t cause that weakening problem
Whats REALLY fucking cool is that its also designed to dissolve over time
So its a temporary implant, and as it dissolves, it releases minerals and ions that actually promote your new, healthy bone in its place
When the job is done, the implant is mostly gone and your own bone has taken over and is the proper strength
-medical engineering is a marvel
today while talkin to my friend (who’s a doctor) I learned something really crazy
That the titanium implants don't just sit in bone they actually bone grows into them
the oxide layer on titanium surface is chemically close enough to biological tissue that cells can't find the boundary so they erase it
osseointegration isn't the implant holding on it's biology deciding the metal belongs there
the skeleton adopts the foreign object as its own
Cyborg vibes
Tushar retweeted
The Election Commission has filed its reply in the Supreme Court to the petition on how the three-member Commission functions.
27 pages, approved by all three members. Its argument: every decision was unanimous, and a Commissioner’s note is a “suggestion,” not a decision.
Here’s what it addresses, and what it doesn’t.
🧵 (1/10)
Tushar retweeted
EXCLUSIVE: India’s biggest news publishers including Ambani's Network18, Adani's NDTV, Indian Express, Times Internet & others mount the most high-profile challenge yet to Modi’s privacy law, warning it would “render investigative journalism a benign and neutered recorder of events.”
DNPA (@publishers_news) has taken the law to the Supreme Court. They argue it would trample investigative work and let New Delhi identify journalists’ sources.
The provisions “constitute pre-censorship which is anathema to any democracy worth its name,” the group’s 698-page filing says.
The key concerns:
🔹 Consent: requiring a journalist to notify the subject of an investigation and seek consent “would allow that subject to destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses”
🔹 Erasure: people can withdraw consent and demand their data be erased, which the group says could force publishers to unpublish or heavily redact news reports
🔹 Sources: a “nakedly unguided” power to demand information that “can extend to privileged communications in possession of a reporter or the informant”
In a letter to the government, the group said India “has chosen to grant broad exemptions to the state, while failing to extend any corresponding protection to the press.”
reuters.com/business/media-t…
Tushar retweeted
If Prasar Bharati can spend ₹15 crore a year on a DD News show featuring a star anchor, while the ISRO Chairman’s basic pay is about ₹27 lakh a year, shouldn’t we rethink our priorities? If India wants to conquer space and attract our finest scientific minds, our rewards must match our ambitions.
Tushar retweeted
Does Japan have a low TFR?
Yes.
Does Japan have by far the highest TFR of all developed East Asian nations?
Yes.
Is Japan's TFR comparable to or higher than that of Euro countries like Italy and Spain, despite far less immigration?
Yes.
Tushar retweeted
we're 26 years into Mac OS X, and apparently this is the first time it occurred to anyone that a root cert might require certificate revocation?
Apple has confirmed they are working on a software update for macOS to patch security issues related to the compromised eMudhra intermediate CAs
"Apple is making further changes to block these certificates in other places on Mac where software checks certificates, such as the command-line tools included with macOS or the Xcode Command Line Tools that use /etc/ssl/cert.pem. These changes will be available in a future software update, and you won't need to edit any files to get them."
Tushar retweeted
The ugly truth about France and some of the other European countries currently in turmoil - and which none of the politicians want to admit because it'd be political suicide - is that you can't solve the problem by going after immigrants (as the right asserts) or the rich (as the left asserts), but you could solve it by going after the old.
One extraordinary statistic for you: people over 60 in France, a quarter of the population, own 60% of France's wealth, non-financial and financial (ofce.fr/pdf/revue/2025/3-192…).
And here is another crazy statistic:
that same quarter of the population, those above 60, receive nearly two-thirds of all social spending by the French government (previssima.fr/actualite/prot…) - which is famously among the highest in the world (France's government spending is an insane 57.3% of GDP).
Last statistic: they make up about 40% of voters because they're a third of registered voters (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/266…), and they turn out far more than anyone else (franceinfo.fr/elections/sond…).
Put our 3 statistics together and there's almost a bit of an apartheid situation here: the old own most of the country's wealth, collect most of the social spending and have the political power to keep it that way.
Which makes them a de-facto rentier class, living off assets and transfers paid for by younger generations.
And, of course, at the risk of stating a truism, the future is built by the young. Yet France keeps effectively taking money away from them to give it to those whose working lives are already behind them - and need the money far less since they already own the country's wealth.
What about inheritance, I hear you ask? That's the funniest/saddest aspect: given that life expectancy has kept rising, the French now inherit a home at 54 on average. The most common case is someone in their 80s leaving it to heirs in their 50s, in effect the very old transferring wealth to the about-to-be old (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fic…).
You can add this to our earlier apartheid statement: on top of all the rest, even when the old finally let go of their wealth, it stays within their own "camp".
That's my personal situation, incidentally: I'm 42, my father is 71 and he is starting to look at ways to pass things on to me and my siblings, when our professional lives are already well settled, so it'll arrive when it changes things the least, which is pretty much the French system in a nutshell.
Now, I get that there'd be some unfairness in going after them: they paid into the system their entire working lives, playing by the rules of a social contract that told them if they paid up they'd collect at the end. Changing the rules now means breaking that promise, which is admittedly unfair.
But there's no magic wealth tree in any society: you can only take it where it is. That's the way most major societal transformations end up happening. They're often triggered by a catastrophic event (the so-called "four horsemen": mass-mobilisation war, revolution, state collapse, plague) BUT what really drives change is a transfer: wealth gets pried from the privileged class who've been sitting on it and handed to those who'll build what comes next.
So, in theory and in an ideal world, you can do without the catastrophic event and directly proceed with the transfer...
The fact that in France, and elsewhere in Europe, it's the youth protesting is probably no coincidence - even though they don't frame it as a generational fight. And even though, cruel irony, the left politicians many of them march behind promise to bring the retirement age back to 60 (lcp.fr/actualites/legislativ…), which would make the situation even worse.
Let's say they understand intuitively that the system is stacked against them, even if they haven't yet figured out how. And politicians are obviously doing what politicians do, meaning pandering to the people who actually vote, while pointing the young towards easier - and politically convenient - scapegoats.
To be clear I'm not saying it's the only problem in France, VERY far from it. I'm also not saying that all old people in France live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of younger generations: there are also plenty of very poor retirees who, if anything, would deserve more.
What I am saying is that it's probably the biggest elephant in the room: everyone can see it, nobody dares mention it - no politician, from any side, wants to run on cutting grandma's pension - and it makes every other problem harder to fix.
Tushar retweeted
PSA for macOS users:
1. Apple’s supplied SSL certificate bundle at /etc/ssl/cert.pem still trusts certificates attackers can forge using compromised eMudhra keys.
2. I confirmed this on macOS 26.7.1 and 27.0.1 using Apple’s built-in curl and Git.
3. An attacker intercepting connections from tools using this bundle could replace downloads with malware. With commands like curl … | sh, that malware would execute immediately.
4. Removing the roots that authorize those certificates blocks the tested chains. Both OS updates restored roots I’d previously removed, requiring me to remove them again.
4. I’ve submitted the findings to Apple’s security team and am awaiting their response. In the meantime, you can apply a temporary fix as outlined below.
5. To check and fix your machine, give an agent like ChatGPT/Codex or Claude Code the following prompt:
“Independently verify whether Apple’s /etc/ssl/cert.pem still permits trust in certificates signed with compromised eMudhra keys. If so, back it up and remove the roots enabling that trust, identified by verified SPKI fingerprints. Confirm Apple’s built-in curl and Git reject those chains while ordinary HTTPS still works. Preserve rollback and never disable TLS verification.”
Note that removing these roots can also block legitimate sites. This is a temporary mitigation, not a substitute for a fix from Apple.
I’ll share the script I used in a follow-up post if you’d prefer to use that directly.
PSA for Codex CLI users:
1. Codex 0.163.0’s release lockfile pins rustls-webpki 0.103.15 and root bundles that can still trust compromised eMudhra certificates.
2. An attacker intercepting your connection could impersonate a server, steal sensitive data, or alter responses, potentially tricking Codex into running malicious commands.
3. Codex 0.164.0, released October 23 at 12:48 a.m. ET, updates those dependencies to fixed versions.
4. To check your codex version run "codex --version". It should be at least 0.164.0.
5. To patch the vulnerability, run "codex update".
6. Apps that bundle their own Codex copy must also be checked.