The 176th Block: News from the subcontinent

Or "international news," as some might call it

Sep 17, 2023

This week…

Your reading time is about 7 minutes. Let’s start.

AI-generated image of a woman in office wear reading a book in a subway. She stands in the foreground and the background is a blur. Image is created with Bing Image Creator. — Read and ride. (Image made with *Bing Image Creator*.)

A few stories from the Indian subcontinent this week caught my eye, so I’m sharing them with you in case you missed it. From hyperlocal weather forecasters (and being semi-celebrities in the process) to the creation of a fake cricket league to dupe online bettors, there’s probably no slow news day if you’re paying attention to things that are happening in India – and that’s just one country.

Now and then, I’ll remind readers about expanding our reading materials and media sources beyond the Western and Anglophone bubble. I understand what it’s like to want to but to not know where to start, so I always make sure to drop a few recommendations too. This time, I’ll recommend two Substack newsletters.

First, Proximities by Barry Malone. The deputy EIC at Thomson Reuters Foundation shares three summarised non-Western news stories almost every day. Each summary is less than 100 words and includes a link to news sources that are trustworthy and — perhaps more importantly — recognisable to the Western audience, such as AP, AFP, and Reuters.

The second is Barbara Serra’s newsletter, News with a Foreign Accent. The former BBC and Al-Jazeera broadcaster shares her views and stories from more than two decades working as a TV presenter, including being taken off-air for “sounding foreign” and how being bilingual and Italian finally became an advantage during Pope John Paul II’s illness and death... only to be taken off air again. If anything, read this particular post, which features this quote:

Nameless News Manager (a composite based on conversations I had with several people from various organisations): “Don’t you know? There’s a formula for international news presenters.”
Me: “Really? Well tell me, what’s the formula??”
Him: “The formula is: THIRD WORLD FACE, FIRST WORLD VOICE.”
(pause)
“You see, the problem with you Barbara is that you have it the wrong way around.”

And if you do read the entire thing, you'll learn about why she thinks there is no such thing as “international news.”

And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

ICYMI: The Previous Block dealt with news about newsletter, including using WhatsApp as a newsletter distribution platform. CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.

Hyperlocal weather forecasters are now influencers in India

Raksha Kumar for Rest of World:

Elderly villagers in India remember a time when a designated person from the community would climb up a nearby hillock, peer at the sky, study the clouds, and predict the weather. Shyamappa, 84, recalls making such predictions for her village Alagawadi, located in the southern state of Karnataka. “I was correct about half the time,” she told Rest of World.
This enthusiasm for making weather predictions has now gone digital, with easy access to weather data and technology. A network of young “weather influencers” across India is predicting the weather for specific towns, villages, and even neighborhoods — and then sharing updates through social media or WhatsApp groups.

Meanwhile, the Weather Network app is still affected by the cyberattack from earlier this week; do you think we could do with some of these weather influencers?

‘I log into a torture chamber each day’: the strain of moderating social media

Deepa Parent and Katie McQue for The Guardian:

Many social media platforms in the UK, European Union and US have moved the work to countries such as India and the Philippines.
While OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, has said artificial intelligence could be used to speed up content moderation, it is not expected to end the need for the thousands of human moderators employed by social media platforms.
Content moderators in Hyderabad say the work has left them emotionally distressed, depressed and struggling to sleep.
“I had to watch every frame of a recent stabbing video of a girl. What upset me most is that the passersby didn’t help her,” says Harun*.
“This is one video that affected me like never before. You may have seen the video in its blurred version, but I had to watch it completely and clearly. It will never leave me.”
Harun, 22, was one of eight moderators who agreed to speak to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. Their average pay was less than £8 a day. While those interviewed say they were encouraged to seek help in stressful situations, only one of the moderators found the support helpful.
“The wellness coaches exist as a formality because these global companies need to tick off a legal clause probably. When we get overwhelmed after reviewing a sensitive video, they simply move us to a less sensitive queue until we feel better,” says Harun.
Akash* was 21 when he graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Having had mobility issues since birth, he often felt disheartened when he received rejections from companies based in Hyderabad.
“No one would hire me because I’m disabled. I was desperate to be independent and earn a living,” he says. “When I was told by a headhunter for disabled people that there was a vacancy for a moderator, I applied, expecting a rejection.
“I was elated when I finally found the job. Since then I’ve realised this is not what I signed up for. It feels as if I log into a torture chamber each day.”

By now, we all know how this one goes.

The wild quest to create a fake Indian Cricket League

Sean Williams for SI:

It took around a month for local media to break the news of the plucky villagers who’d built a league from nothing and rigged games to put one over on Russian bettors—a plot ripped, it seemed, right from the pages of a Bollywood script. Headlines soon blared across the globe. In Great Britain, The Guardian noted how the “scheme has echoes of The Sting”—the 1973 Paul Newman and Robert Redford movie in which con men organize a fake betting parlor to scam a mob boss.
Cops at the time claimed the scheme had raked in a total of $4,300, a small figure to American ears but big-time dollars in Molipur. Cricket stars chimed in on social media, as did the real [cricket play-by-play commentator and pundit Harsha Bhogle]. “Can’t stop laughing,” he tweeted.
But something much bigger was going on. And it wasn’t a comedy at all.

Where there’s a will, they say. But to create an entire fake league, with rented pitch and hired umpires, and all, is simply incredible.

What I read, listen, and watch…

I’m reading Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop. Since I’m on public transit five hours a week, I have a lot of commuting time for literary consumption. But also because I’m on public transit, I stick with light-reads — nothing too heavy and deeply engrossing that I might miss my station or stop paying attention to my surroundings. Currently, I rely on Tiktok’s #BookTok for blind recommendations (I’m adventurous, what else can I say), but I think my FYP is also intersecting with #QueerTok and #AsianTok, which is probably why this book came up. We all need more saphic Asian women in fiction. Bonus points that most of the events in the book take place on a subway. Kamrun Nesa’s 2021 review for NPR is here, if you don’t mind mild spoilers.
I’m listening to Tech Policy Press’ podcast The Sunday Show on the problem with the “Big” in Big Tech.
I’m watching More Perfect Union’s video about how Roblox exploits kids.