Silicon Valley Thought India Was Its Future. Now Everything Has Changed.
The India that Silicon Valley once so loved has long given way to a different one.
Hasnain says:
“It’s worth noting, as I wrote when India’s second (and still-in-effect) TikTok ban came into play, that the app had become an easy-to-use arena for conscientious citizens to counter mainstream media censorship, spread the word about protests, and give voice to Indians of different castes, gender and sexual identifications, and ethnicities, many of whom found themselves under attack from the BJP’s Hindu nationalist government. Speaking of that very administration: In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that India’s then–Facebook head opposed applying the company’s hate speech rules to BJP politicians who’d spouted Islamophobic rhetoric online. And the New York Times reported that wealthy Indian workers who emigrated to the U.S. to work for Silicon Valley firms often perpetrated the same caste-discrimination systems that are so rampant in Hindu-fundamentalist regions of India.”
Posted on 2021-06-14T05:09:34+0000