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29 Dec, 2023

- How AI shook the world in 2023

The Rise of AI

How AI shook the world in 2023

With commercial tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney becoming widely available, AI was used for all things wonderful … and worrying.

Illustration by Daniel Zender for Rest of World

By Daniela Dib

29 December 2023

2023 was the year that generative AI truly went global. Tools like Midjourney and Dall-E became part of the mainstream, getting more accurate with increased use. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which launched in late 2022, fueled the imagination of tech enthusiasts who used the tool for various new purposes: from a legal ruling in Colombia to a TikTok business created on the platform. Although visits to the ChatGPT site peaked in May and plateaued afterward, the page had been seen a staggering 1.7 billion times by the end of November, according to Similarweb data.

Everyone seemed to find a different use case for AI in 2023. Politicians in India used it as an excuse to deny inconvenient truths, claiming a controversial leaked audio was fabricated using the technology. Advertisers, meanwhile, ran wild with the technology: ad agency Ogilvy created different versions of an ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood star, for small shops to personalize with AI and have him become their brand ambassador. Photographers, getting ahead of the risk of losing their livelihood to AI, used it to create award-winning images. All year, Rest of World cut through the noise and looked at the wider implication of AI. From women left heartbroken by their AI companion to artists being pushed aside by their own AI copycats, here are some of the most unexpected ways AI was used around the world in 2023.

Religious chatbots that say killing is acceptable

Between January and March, at least five religious chatbots popped up in India. Powered by GPT technology, they provide answers based on the Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture. Known as GitaGPTs, these chatbots mimic the tone of the Hindu god Krishna and promise users to be an “AI spiritual companion.”

Experts say chatbots like these can help make religious texts more accessible, but they can also have unintended and dangerous consequences. Because they’re “playing god,” whatever these chatbots say could be perceived as gospel, even though they’re just fabricating believable answers based on statistical probabilities. Rest of World found that some of the answers generated by the Gita bots opined freely — and dangerously — on topics such as casteism, misogyny, and even law. Three of these bots, for instance, said it was acceptable to kill another if it is one’s dharma, or duty.

The real heartbreak of falling in love with an AI boyfriend

In March, Chinese AI voice startup Timedomain launched “Him,” an app with voice-synthesizing technology that provides virtual companionship to users. Most of these users were young women who customized the Him characters and then interacted with them as if they were their long-distance boyfriends. They received affectionate voice messages daily — morning calls, reminders to eat healthy, bedtime stories, and even poems.

Users quickly grew attached to their AI companions. So when Timedomain announced that Him would shut down in early July due to stagnant user growth, many women were devastated. “He died during the summer when I loved him the most,” a heartbroken user wrote on social media app Xiaohongshu. Others rushed to save voice messages; some even reached out to investors, hoping to raise enough money to save Him.

AI brings artists back to life, on demand

Sidhu Moosewala, one of South Asia’s most influential hip-hop figures, was shot dead by gunmen on May 29, 2022. A year after his death, tens of new tracks with his voice were generated using AI and distributed across SoundCloud and YouTube. Some of the tracks garnered thousands of listens, fueling debates over copyright laws and royalties in the age of AI.

Moosewala’s AI tracks aren’t the only ones stirring up the music industry. Chinese-made AI programs like So-Vits-SVC, shared by programmers on platforms like GitHub, let internet users train deepfake voice models and re-create celebrity voices. From Singapore to Spain, living singers now have to compete with dead artists brought back to life by AI.

Singaporean artist Stefanie Sun is resigned to her fate: her AI version is more popular than she is. She penned a blog post in May with a warning that no human would be able to compete with AI: “How do you fight with someone who is putting out new albums in the time span of minutes?”

History rewritten by AI

What if Mexico had invaded the U.S.? Using AI-powered image-generation tools, people set off to reimagine reality.

On TikTok, accounts like @what.if_ai published content inspired by decolonial curiosity. Commenters and followers suggest prompts to the account’s owner, who then uses ChatGPT to write a corresponding script, and Midjourney to produce accompanying visuals. The result is images that show non-Eurocentric alternative realities — a world in which the U.K. is ruled by India, or in which Spain is invaded by the Philippines.

In Argentina, an Instagram account called IAbuelas posts AI-generated images that imagine what babies kidnapped 40 years ago during Argentina’s dictatorship would look like today. The images are made by splicing photos of the child’s parents using Midjourney and then applying an aging filter. Some considered the images a useful tool to raise awareness, while others warned that the images were simply artistic representations and should not be taken as real.

Daniela Dib is a Rest of World reporter based in Mexico City.

28 Dec, 2023

- Our favorite Rest of World photos from 2023

Year In Review

Our favorite Rest of World photos from 2023

39 photographers, 31 cities, 22 countries. This is what global tech looked like this year.

Rest of World

By Munira Mutaher

28 December 2023

Technology is reshaping the daily lives of the 4 billion people living outside the West. You can see it through the lenses of Rest of World’s photographers: From the quiet corners of coworking spaces in Colombia to talking card readers in India to large-scale water-guzzling EV factories and emoji-shaped pinãtas in Mexico.

In 2023, we sent 39 photographers to 31 cities and 22 countries, from Uganda to Iraq. Our photographers went to India in search of scam call centers and met with a crypto pastor in an Argentine prison.

Take a look at some of our favorite photos from this year.

Cindy Liu for Rest of World

Cambodia’s Buddhist monks have become TikTok superstars, but seeking fame on TikTok could conflict with monastic code.

Photographer Cindy Liu traveled to Battambang to meet viral monks who are clashing with Buddhist authorities. According to tradition, monks are banned from drawing attention to themselves. But that hasn’t stopped them from using TikTok to preach, with some amassing more than half a million followers.

Alejandra Rajal for Rest of World

How China took over the world’s online shopping carts

To show the global growth of Chinese e-commerce platforms like Shein, Temu, and TikTok Shop, photographer Alejandra Rajal sourced the reflective and crinkled packaging sent by the e-commerce companies and laid them out in colorful patterns to highlight these companies’ scale and rise. You can see parts of her process here.

Deepti Asthana for Rest of World

How Urban Company built an empire of female gig workers in India

By getting access to training centers and clients’ homes, photographer Deepti Asthana shows us how gig work is transforming India’s beauty services industry from the inside. With a workforce that is one-third female, Urban Company is the biggest employer of women in India’s platform economy.

- Kirtan P Deka for Rest of World

Online sports betting in South Asia has a new target: Archery

In the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, online streaming and digital payments have given new life to the traditional sport of archery. Kirtan P Deka photographed this century-old game as it found a new audience among online gamblers.

George Etheredge for Rest of World

Signal President Meredith Whittaker on resisting government threats to privacy

George Etheredge shot portraits of Meredith Whittaker just over a year after she took over as president of the Signal Foundation. The encrypted messaging app is on the front lines of encryption battles in India, Russia, and Iran.

Warun Siriprachai for Rest of World

How BYD snatched Tesla’s crown

In Bangkok, Warun Siriprachai met with a group of BYD electric car owners, a fast-growing community in Thailand. Selling vehicles at less than half the price of a Tesla, BYD dominates the Chinese EV market and has its sights set on the global arena.

Esther Ruth Mbabazi for Rest of World

Inside the world’s last internet cafes

For this project, six teams of photographers and writers set out to document some of the world’s last internet cafes. From backpacker haunts in Nepal to impromptu daycare centers in Mexico City, this visual experience captures a once ubiquitous environment that represented a high-tech future.

- Angie Smith for Rest of World

How viral memes conquered piñata design

In the lead-up to New Year celebrations, Angie Smith visited piñata vendors in Mexico City, where traditional piñata designs are quickly being replaced by more instagrammable ones.

Daro Sulakauri for Rest of World

The tech workers exiled from Europe’s last dictatorship

The political repression in Belarus forced huge numbers of people to leave the country, many of whom were tech workers. Photographers Daro Sulakauri and Andrej Vasilenko visited cities in Lithuania and Georgia to trace the journey of the Belarus tech community.

Harsha Vadlamani for Rest of World

Meet India’s MrBeast — selfless saint or fame-hungry vlogger?

In mid-February, photographer Harsha Vadlamani traveled to the suburbs of Hyderabad, India. There, he met a milkman’s family as they were surprised with a gift of over two dozen buffaloes and calves. The entire event was orchestrated by Harsha Sai, India’s most popular stunt philanthropist — working in an area of YouTube where generous acts of kindness are turned into spectacles and monetized for views.

Muhammad Fadli for Rest of World

The race to put Indigenous land on the map

On a balmy day in August, photographer Muhammad Fadli drove past expanding stretches of palm oil plantations to reach the Long Bangan community in Sarawak, Malaysia. To stop their ancestral land from being turned into plantations, these communities are using GPS and drones to “decolonize the map” and prove their land rights.

Saumya Khandelwal for Rest of World

Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India

Photographer Saumya Khandelwal documented how Foxconn, in its continued effort to build iPhones in India, flew hundreds of Chinese engineers to India. The Chinese workers struggled to bring Indian factories up to speed — and often clashed with their Indian counterparts.

An Rong Xu for Rest of World

Taiwan’s most popular EV company, Gogoro, wants to reach the world

In Taipei, An Rong Xu photographed the facilities of Gogoro, a Taiwanese company with a revolutionary EV network. Gogoro battery-swapping stations are as common as gas stations in Taiwan, and the network supports nearly 400,000 swaps a day.

Andres BO for Rest of World

How digital nomads have reshaped cities around the world

In Medellín, photographer Andrés BO visited coworking spaces where foreign coders and digital marketers crowd the tables, drinking pour-over coffee and enjoying loaded avocado toast. The increase in digital nomads can offer an economic boost to cities, but rising rents are leaving locals priced out.

Cesar Rodriguez for Rest of World

A new Tesla factory comes to a parched corner of Mexico

César Rodriguez traveled to drought-stricken Monterrey, Mexico, where working-class residents ration water while big companies like Heineken and Coca-Cola continue business as usual. With a massive Tesla factory on the horizon, locals are increasingly worried about the looming environmental threat.

Nipun Prabhakar for Rest of World

YouTube is bringing viral fame to one of Delhi’s oldest markets

Weaving through the narrow bylanes of one of India’s biggest markets, Nipun Prabhakar met traditional clothing store owners who are hiring YouTubers to market their wares.

Munira Mutaher is a documentary photographer and researcher based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

27 Dec, 2023

- The best articles we didn’t publish in 2023

Year In Review

The best articles we didn’t publish in 2023

Our favorite global tech stories from publications not named Rest of World.

Weston Wei for Rest of World

By Rest of World Staff

27 December 2023

The deluge of global tech news was especially overwhelming in 2023, a year that saw the rise of generative AI, the aftermath of a funding slump, and the global ascent of Chinese shopping apps. We’ve covered a lot of it at Rest of World, but, admittedly, other outlets published some stories that made us just a little bit jealous. Here is a list of the articles, podcasts, and visual projects that we most admired this past year. They cover topics including Brazilian elections on Twitter, video game boyfriends in China, and tech’s role in the Gaza crisis.

“‘Let Me Tell Them Goodbye Before They Get Killed’: How eSIM Cards Are Connecting Palestinian Families”

By Lam Thuy Vo, The Markup

Arguably, internet access is a fundamental human right. At Rest of World, we’ve covered what can happen when it is disrupted, such as when governments shut down the internet to silence dissent or when outages harm the livelihoods of tech workers and gig workers. In this article, Lam Thuy Vo shows how Palestinians deal with an internet shutdown during war, when connectivity is vital. A poignant moment in the story is when Gaza resident Farid Sami Alzaro was finally able to go online and call his grandmother. — Zuha Siddiqui, Labor x Tech Fellow

“The Massive Guatemalan Operation That Wants to Sell Americans Their Old Clothes Back”

By Adam Minter, Bloomberg Businessweek

Central America’s Megapaca profits from the clothes the U.S. discards — mostly fast-fashion items from brands like H&M and Forever 21 that have been worn only once or twice. This thorough look into the company shows how it imported 45 million pounds of used goods from the U.S. in 2022 and resold them online and in stores throughout the region. The Megapaca brand is so well known among the Central American diaspora that the company is confident it will soon be able to open up a physical store in the U.S. — Daniela Dib, Latin America reporter

“Is Temu the Future of Buying Things?”

By John Herrman, New York Magazine

Temu has become a household name in the U.S. Just as Netflix is shorthand for an endless stream of increasingly mind-numbing content, Temu now invokes visions of a slot machine spewing piles of unbelievably cheap knockoffs, delivered to your doorstep from thousands of kilometers away. Can’t afford a pair of $130 Hokas? Just get the $35 “Home” shoes sold on Temu that, aside from their name, look identical. John Herrman deftly captures the fever dream of Temu, just as it crested over the American consumer, and rightfully puts it in the context of TikTok, another explosive Chinese tech company winning over global users. “[Temu’s] goal is to convince you, after an extended period of bent-neck brain-dead scrolling, to actually buy something, anything, for just a few dollars.” Increasingly, we’re convinced. — Michael Zelenko, executive editor

Adriana Zehbrauskas/The New York Times/Redux

“Inside Taiwanese Chip Giant, a U.S. Expansion Stokes Tensions”

By John Liu and Paul Mozur, The New York Times

Advanced chip manufacturing moved from the United States to Asia decades ago. Is it possible for the U.S. to get it back? For this story, John Liu and Paul Mozur speak with TSMC employees to find out why the Taiwanese chip giant is struggling to transplant one of the most complicated manufacturing processes to Arizona. One challenge, according to a chip engineer, is that “Americans are the most difficult to manage.” — Viola Zhou, China reporter

“A professor was murdered after a Facebook post branded him a traitor. Was Facebook complicit in his death?”

By Tekendra Parmar, Business Insider

In the weeks before Ethiopian professor Meareg Amare was murdered in front of his home, Facebook repeatedly ignored reports to take down posts doxxing him and lodging false criminal accusations against him based on his ethnicity. That’s the finding that leads this Business Insider investigation. But the story goes deeper, painting a picture of widespread negligence by Facebook through its Trusted Partners program. The program leans on local civil society groups around the world to flag posts for takedowns in regional languages. Six such partners allege Facebook routinely refused to listen to their expert recommendations, even in Amare’s case, when the posts clearly put his life at risk. — Andrew Deck, reporter

Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

“An Internet Shutdown Means Manipur Is Burning in the Dark”

By Parth M.N., Wired

The horrifying opening scene of this story on the Manipur conflict will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading the piece. It details just a single example of the brutal conflict between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities that has engulfed the region, claiming more than a hundred lives and displacing thousands of people. The violence erupted in May, but, thanks to an internet blackout, went largely unreported for months. Parth M.N. was among the Indian journalists who visited the region when news of the situation finally began to leak out, and he relates the heartbreaking testimonies of people caught up in the brutality. The Indian government claims internet blackouts help stem disinformation and maintain peace, but human rights organizations say the extent of the violence might have been averted if people in Manipur had been able to raise the alarm. It’s a distressing read. — Victoria Turk, Features director

“The Santiago Boys”

By Evgeny Morozov, Post-Utopia and Chora Media

In the 1970s, Chile’s government had a revolutionary idea: What if technology served the public good? This nine-part podcast tells the story of a group of young, utopian tech engineers who were hired by Chilean President Salvador Allende to create a more egalitarian economy. Evgeny Morozov details their Cybersyn project, how the coup against Allende interrupted it, and “what could have been.” The episodes are long and dense, with a dizzying amount of information, but everything falls into place at the end. — Laís Martins, Labor x Tech Fellow

Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters/Redux

“Gaza’s tech ‘window to the world’ shattered by Israel-Hamas war”

By Nazih Osseiran and Avi Asher-Schapiro, Context

At Rest of World, we cover many of the challenges tech workers face around the world, but this was a story that captured what happens when an entire ecosystem of tech workers is annihilated. It’s not an easy read; neither should it be. Nazih Osseiran and Avi Asher-Schapiro document how a sector that grew and supported the economy despite hardships was destroyed overnight. In its starkness, the story captures the unfathomable truth. — Durga M Sengupta, South Asia editor

“In Africa’s first ‘safe city,’ surveillance reigns”

By Njeri Wangari, Coda

The Kenyan government installed a vast web of networked Chinese CCTV cameras across Nairobi, with the promise of ensuring security. But with a ballooning crime rate, it’s unclear if this massive system of surveillance has helped much. With the help of great photographs, this story digs into the functionality and relevance of the project, asking why the government adopted it in the first place. — Damilare Dosunmu, Africa reporter

“China’s Newest Dating Craze: Real-Life Meetups With Virtual Boyfriends”

By Wu Peiyue, Sixth Tone

This feature by Rest of World contributor Wu Peiyue, on women who hire female cosplayers to dress up as their favorite male video game characters and go on dates, surprises from start to finish. The popular new service might seem bizarre or frivolous, but demand for it is rooted in a deep-seated social issue: Due to a growing gender divide, Chinese women are increasingly opting against real-life relationships with men. — Kevin Schoenmakers, Features editor

“Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’”

By Rebecca Tan and Regine Cabato, The Washington Post

A new type of worker has emerged, mostly in the Global South, annotating huge amounts of data to train generative AI models. In the Philippines, more than 2 million people spend their days on so-called micro-tasks, such as distinguishing people from trees in videos for autonomous driving systems or editing text for ChatGPT. But, as Rebecca Tan and Regine Cabato uncover, workers are often paid below minimum wage or sometimes locked out of their accounts with no pay or due process. One former Filipino official said micro-tasking “can’t be our future,” but workers say they don’t see an alternative. — Lam Le, Labor x Tech Fellow

The New York Times/Redux

“China Took Her Husband. She Was Left to Uncover His Secret Cause.”

By Vivian Wang, The New York Times

Wang’s interview with Bei Zhenying, the wife of the legendary Chinese blogger Program Think, reveals the ordinary life behind his almost mythical online persona. Following his arrest in 2021, Program Think’s true identity gradually emerged as Bei began to advocate on his behalf. The captivating story shows the ingenuity and tenacity with which Chinese citizens navigate the internet under an authoritarian regime. — Caiwei Chen, China reporter

“Your stuff is actually worse now”

By Izzie Ramirez, Vox

This engaging piece tracks the meteoric rise of fast fashion apps like Shein — and their wider cultural and ecological ramifications — by looking at why everything, from clothes to gadgets, is a worse version of itself compared to just a few years ago. It examines how the intense competition among fast-fashion companies and the resultant race to the bottom, the growth of insane shopping “hauls,” and the promise of one-day or same-day delivery have contributed to severe worker exploitation and environmental harm. — Mithila Phadke, copy editor

“When Ukraine goes dark”

By Ruby Mellen, Zoeann Murphy, Kostiantyn Khudov, Yutao Chen, and Kasia Strek, The Washington Post

Through the winter of 2023, the Washington Post examined the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine on infrastructure many might take for granted. Through creative visual storytelling, data, and design, the Post team explains the toll power cuts are having on civilians. — Cengiz Yar, deputy editor

“Inside Elon Musk’s First Election Crisis—a Day After He ‘Freed’ the Bird”

By Vittoria Elliott, Wired

Brazilians love Twitter (now X) and love discussing politics on the platform. That’s why many people in the digital rights space were concerned when Elon Musk acquired Twitter less than a week before the runoff in Brazil’s presidential elections. One year later, Vittoria Elliot takes us back to what happened inside Twitter at the time, as employees scrambled to respond to Brazilian authorities who were threatening to fine or block the service during the runoff vote. — Laís Martins, Labor x Tech Fellow

Adam Dean/The New York Times/Redux

“‘Don’t You Remember Me?’ The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text”

By Zeke Faux, Bloomberg Businessweek

Never want to read about crypto ever again? Make an exception for this rollicking yarn by Zeke Faux, an excerpt from his equally absorbing book, Number Go Up. Faux takes us along for the ride as he allows himself to be drawn in by “Vicky,” a scammer who tries to get him to buy Tether, a stablecoin. In an attempt to understand the crypto scam ecosystem, Faux ends up traveling to Cambodia, a hotspot for “pig butchering” schemes. There, he meets trafficking victims forced into scamming and even attempts to work his way inside a scam compound by posing as a tourist. It’s as wild as it sounds. — Victoria Turk, Features director

“Netflix turns to South Korean writers and crews as Hollywood strikes. But they feel exploited too”

By Max Kim, Los Angeles Times

At Rest of World, we love a good story on how Silicon Valley is affecting countries outside the West. Following Squid Game’s success, Netflix is investing in more South Korean content. But tech companies often see overseas suppliers as cost-cutting opportunities. Netflix’s business practices, which in Hollywood helped spark two strikes, are giving Korean crews second thoughts. — Kevin Schoenmakers, Features editor

26 Dec, 2023

- 23 Rest of World stories that defined 2023

Collection

23 Rest of World stories that defined 2023

Beyond artificial intelligence and Elon Musk — two topics that dominated Western headlines this year — Rest of World offered our readers a vast vision of the broader tech world in 2023. We showcased and celebrated how devices like Paytm’s cheap, tiny speakers are fostering fintech growth in India by reading out payment receipts to vendors who may be unable to read. In war-ravaged Sudan, we covered how small, resilient startups are adapting their businesses to help people find food. In May, we wrote about how the hundreds of migrants stranded between the walls of the U.S.-Mexico border relied on delivery apps to survive.

From delving into the “hell” inside iPhone factories in China to documenting the struggle of building similar facilities in India, in 2023, Rest of World published around 500 articles from more than 50 countries.

Here’s a list of 23 2023 Rest of World stories that we’re particularly proud of. Thanks for reading, and watch out for our work in 2024.

– Itika Sharma Punit, Deputy Editor

Features 31 January 2023

“iPhones are made in hell”: 3 months inside China’s iPhone city

Workers describe a peak production season marred by labor protests and Covid-19 chaos, right as Apple reconsiders its China supply chain.

By Viola Zhou

TikTok Domination 7 March 2023

TikTok’s viral monks are clashing with Buddhist authorities

Superstar monks have built massive followings — but dancing, singing, and fame-seeking are all violations of the monastic code.

By Fiona Kelliher and Cindy Liu

E-commerce 23 March 2023

How Nigerians are using WhatsApp groups to fight food inflation

As economic factors worsen food shortages, bulk-shopping groups are buying directly from producers.

By Kingsley Charles

Money 4 April 2023

How tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

Vegetable carts, flower shops, mom-and-pop stores: Small speakers that read out digital payment receipts are making fintech companies big money.

By Adnan Bhat

The Platform Economy 27 April 2023

Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk

The company has not refused a single request since Musk took ownership, according to self-reported data.

By Russell Brandom

Labor 21 April 2023

AI is taking the jobs of Kenyans who write essays for U.S. college students

Ghostwriters say the meteoric rise of ChatGPT has coincided with a drop in income.

By Martin K.N Siele

Access & Connectivity 6 April 2023

Teaching inmates in Argentina to make video games in prison

“Gaming studios need employees, and the formerly incarcerated need a place to work once they’re released.”

By Lucía Cholakian Herrera

The Platform Economy 4 April 2023

How China’s hottest social media app turned Düsseldorf into a foodie destination

The trendiest food city in Europe isn’t Paris or London. It’s Düsseldorf — thanks to Xiaohongshu.

By Krish Raghav, Yan Cong and Carwyn Morris

Politics 12 May 2023

Desperate migrants are ordering Uber Eats through the U.S.-Mexico border wall

Stranded between border walls, migrants risk losing contact with the outside world as they use up their phones’ data and battery life.

By Yolanda Morales

Features 23 May 2023

When digital nomads come to town

Cities from Canggu to Medellín are welcoming tech workers, but locals complain they’re being priced out.

By Stephen Witt

Innovation 15 June 2023

As war rages in Sudan, small startups are helping people find food, money, and flee

The ongoing crisis has severely damaged the country’s infrastructure. A group of local apps are filling the void.

By Damilare Dosunmu

Creators & Communities 20 June 2023

Nigerian engineering students’ favorite teachers are Indian YouTubers

The channels, run by tutors and educational institutes, are helping bridge the gap in Nigerian education.

By Sekinat Motunrayo Ojeniyi and Samriddhi Sakunia

Features 20 June 2023

The race to put Indigenous land on the map

In Borneo, Indigenous communities are using mapping tech to claim their land rights and fight the expansion of oil palm plantations.

By Liani MK and Muhammad Fadli

EV Revolution 27 July 2023

As EVs surge, so does nickel mining’s death toll

In the mineral-rich fringes of Indonesia, whose nickel will feed EV giants like Tesla, the deaths of miners continue to mount.

By Ayomi Amindoni

The Rise of AI 11 July 2023

The workers at the frontlines of the AI revolution

The global labor force of outsourced and contract workers are early adopters of generative AI — and the most at risk.

By Andrew Deck

The Rise of AI 5 July 2023

An Indian politician says scandalous audio clips are AI deepfakes. We had them tested

Deepfake experts noted that AI can be used as a cover by politicians when embarrassing audio and video clips of them emerge.

By Nilesh Christopher

Labor 31 August 2023

Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

Brazilian delivery workers take their fight to get app users to pick up their orders to local legislatures.

By Laís Martins

The Rise of AI 17 August 2023

These women fell in love with an AI-voiced chatbot. Then it died

An AI-voiced virtual lover called users every morning. Its shutdown left them heartbroken.

By Viola Zhou

The Rise of AI 10 October 2023

How AI reduces the world to stereotypes

Rest of World analyzed 3,000 AI images to see how image generators visualize different countries and cultures.

By Victoria Turk

Q & A 17 October 2023

Signal President Meredith Whittaker on resisting government threats to privacy

The encrypted messaging app is on the front lines of battles over encryption in India, Russia, and Iran.

By Andrew Deck

The Rise of AI 30 October 2023

AI Modi started as a joke, but it could win him votes

AI-generated songs, like the ones featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are gaining traction ahead of India’s upcoming elections.

By Nilesh Christopher

Global 14 November 2023

China: The world’s shopping cart

From wildly popular e-commerce apps to the rise of livestream shopping, China is changing the way the world shops.

By Rest of World Staff

Features 28 November 2023

Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India

Chinese engineers are flying to India to train the next generation of iPhone builders.

By Viola Zhou and Nilesh Christopher

21 Dec, 2023

- Four predictions for 2024

Exporter Newsletter

Four predictions for 2024

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

By Russell Brandom

21 December 2023

This will be the final Exporter of 2023 (we’re taking off next week for the holidays), so I want to take a minute to thank you all for being part of the ride. We sent out our first issue on June 1, with the basic plan to cover what U.S. tech companies do outside their home turf. In the months since, it’s proven to be a richer topic than I could have imagined. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the newsletter as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

Of course, there’s a whole new year ahead of us, too, so I’m sending you off with four predictions for the next twelve months. Here’s what I think 2024 has in store for us:

Meta will face an ugly election scandal

2024 is a year of big elections, including in India, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United States — and platforms are not prepared. The layoffs at the beginning of this year hit trust and safety teams hard, and Meta in particular seems to have given up the kind of election integrity work the company adopted after the scandals of 2016. Pulling back those resources in the U.S. would be bad enough, the situation is even worse in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia (both with elections coming up), where language and cultural barriers could keep dirty tricks from being noticed and shut down.

All the pieces are in place for another damaging scandal, in which one of Meta’s platforms is systematically exploited to bypass or discredit the election result. I think WhatsApp is more likely to be the culprit than Facebook or Instagram — but it could be any of the three. And while outside groups like the Integrity Institute have been warning of the danger, there’s no sign Meta is listening.

China’s semiconductor gap will widen

Since President Biden took office, he’s been gradually escalating the semiconductor restrictions on China — and when the AI boom kicked off in earnest this year, those restrictions got even tighter. Chinese companies are already struggling with limited access to the most advanced hardware, and the recent breakthroughs in mainland foundries are unlikely to stop the bleeding. Until the country’s chip-makers catch up, it’s going to be much harder to build AI products inside Chinese borders.

An optimist might predict that this will spur greater investment from the central government, mobilizing resources around the goal of building an independent supply chain for microprocessors — but I’m not an optimist. Instead, I think we’ll see an exodus of talent to other fields or, where possible, to other countries. The gap will only get deeper in the years to come, and its impact will be felt for decades.

Online platforms will cross swords with the Indian government

As China gets chilly for U.S. businesses, many tech companies have looked to India as a place to expand — particularly Apple and Meta. But like China, India is increasingly willing to flout international norms. This year saw both sectarian mob violence and extended internet outages in Manipur. The killing of a Sikh separatist in Canada continues to raise uncomfortable questions for the Modi administration. Tightening controls on mainstream press outlets have driven many journalists to online platforms like YouTube, making U.S. tech companies one of the few checks on the Modi government’s speech controls.

Meta is already feeling pressure from the new grievance appellate committees, and it won’t be long before YouTube and X/Twitter feel it too. Stirring the pot on all of it is India’s pending election, which is likely to be a consolidation of power for Modi’s BJP. Put it together, and you’ve got all the ingredients for the kind of high-profile policy dispute we haven’t seen since Apple in San Bernardino.

Efforts to regulate gig work will stall

For ambitious politicians on the left, delivery and ride-hailing platforms can seem like an easy target. They’re big, unpopular incumbents and have made a business model out of dodging labor rules. Bringing them in line with the rest of the workforce should be an easy win for a pro-worker candidate — but in practice, the politics are trickier than they seem. With a large workforce already in place, many gig workers are wary of anything that will cut into their paychecks. Unions and other reform groups have real ideas for how to improve the system, but they’ve had trouble getting a critical mass of workers on board, which has left reform efforts stalling out.

So far, we’ve seen different versions of this stalemate in Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, and throughout the African continent. There are unique factors in each country, but the underlying political challenge is the same: none of the movements have been able to win over enough workers to force the issue. And with gig work reform movements brewing from Mexico to Singapore, it’s a good bet we’ll see that same problem manifest in new countries as new candidates come to power.

Russell Brandom is the U.S. Tech Editor at Rest of World.

20 Dec, 2023

- Anxious and online, Chinese youth embrace spirituality apps

Creator Economy

Anxious and online, Chinese youth embrace spirituality apps

Young Chinese people are hiring online tarot readers and feng shui masters to seek cheap therapy.

Daniel Zender for Rest of World

By Caiwei Chen and Viola Zhou

20 December 2023

- Young Chinese are hiring online psychics to predict the future and seek relationship and career advice.

- On spirituality apps, users can pay to consult fortune tellers in Clubhouse-like chat rooms.

- But such spiritual services often run into censorship due to the state crackdown on “feudal superstitions.”

Huang Yue, a 25-year-old graduate student in Beijing, has been grappling with anxiety and indecision for most of 2023. She started a challenging graduate program, couldn’t decide whether to end her rocky relationship with her partner, and became anxious about job prospects after graduation. And like many others in China, she turned to spirituality app Cece. With horoscopes, astrology charts, and even the ability to book a one-on-one chat with a psychic, Huang looks to the app for reassurance about her life.

“It is a way for me to seek meaning and solace in this absurd world,” said Huang. “In these uncertain times, I find myself clinging to any form of external validation that can offer some comfort.”

In China, where economic challenges and high unemployment loom, young people are increasingly turning to online spiritual services for guidance. Despite government scrutiny of spiritual practices, the industry is growing: according to market research firm Frost & Sullivan, China’s pan-mental-health market was estimated to reach 6.68 billion yuan ($940 million) in 2023, and 10.41 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) in 2025.

Backed by Tencent, Cece is a leading spiritual app in China. It almost doubled its MAU during the first year of the pandemic and reached over 1 million monthly active users in 2021. Users register by entering their birth time and location, which the app uses to generate readings based on the Chinese zodiac or astrological signs.

The astrological data can be shared with human fortune tellers in the app. For the equivalent of a few dollars, users can consult a Cece “master” in Clubhouse-like chat rooms, each specializing in fields like relationship advice or career planning. “Does the chart say anything about my career in 2024?” a user asked a feng shui master in a Cece audio chat room in November. “You will be going under financially the entire 2024, but when 2025 comes, your luck will go upward,” the fortune teller answered after studying the user’s hexagram, a figure composed of six horizontal lines that indicate one’s future derived from traditional Chinese text I Ching.

Those fortune tellers are part of a growing number of spirituality gig workers, who provide a sympathetic ear at affordable prices. On Cece, for example, “masters” need to pass tests on work ethics and astrology before they can provide consulting services. Their rates increase based on how many hours they work. Abigail, who works at a state-owned enterprise and requested a pseudonym to avoid being identified, has a side job on Cece. She’s worked with more than 1,000 users and has seen her rate of pay increase from about 3 yuan (42 cents) per minute in 2021 to 10.80 yuan ($1.50) per minute. “What does he think of me,” is one of the most commonly asked questions, Abigail told Rest of World.

Besides the public chat rooms, Cece also offers a private “listening” service offered by trained counselors. Zhai Liqin, 38, a self-taught therapist, spends three to five hours speaking to users on Cece every day, at a rate of 2 yuan (28 cents) per minute. Zhai started teaching herself psychology six years ago, when she was a stay-at-home mom. She signed up for various online classes and eventually became a licensed social worker in 2021.

Zhai, a mental counselor now, runs an offline mental counseling business while logging on to work 4–5 hours a day on Cece. Her rate is significantly different on Cece versus in-person: one offline session costs 300 yuan ($42), while, on Cece, she is available at 2 yuan (28 cents) per minute. “I like working online as a listener,” she told Rest of World, “because it comes with more flexibility, allowing me to take care of my daughter while making some extra cash.”

Although the Cece app avoids the terms “therapist” or “counselor,” listeners have to go through a lengthy credential review process. Once approved to work on Cece, listeners list their training courses and certification on their profile. Their consultation costs between 1 and 7 yuan (14 cents to $1) per minute, depending on the listeners’ work experience and popularity. Listeners cannot decide their own rate, according to Zhai.

Zhai does not consider what she does on Cece psychotherapy. “Cece listening sessions are only fit for handling users without severe mental issues. I could not work with the clients consistently through structured sessions and would only have the opportunity to provide surface-level validation on listening sessions,” Zhai said.

Experts agree that digital spirituality apps like Cece aren’t a replacement for professional help, especially given the platforms’ focus on fortune tellers, psychics, and other practitioners of pseudoscience. “It takes thousands of hours to train a licensed mental counselor, who would know how to handle tricky issues like boundary with the client and their own subjectivity,” Molly Lin, a PhD candidate in psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told Rest of World. “Digital spirituality practitioners and listeners lack professional knowledge like this. When handling clients with delicate mental conditions, this could be misleading and even dangerous.”

“It is a way for me to seek meaning and solace in this absurd world.”

Spiritual services often run into state censorship, due to the government’s crackdown on “feudal superstitions.” Social media platforms like WeChat have banned creators from profiting off “superstitious” services. A search for keywords like “tarot” or “horoscope” returns no relevant results on Xiaohongshu.

Still, psychics find ways to circumvent the ban, sometimes by advertising in English or using a crystal ball emoji to indicate fortune telling. Ting Guo, an assistant professor of cultural and religious studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told Rest of World that outside of the government’s control over religion practices, people have turned to alternative spiritualities to get help navigating their lives.

“The consequences of choosing the wrong path are dire when the economy is suffering,” Vivian Ma told Rest of World. Ma moonlights as a tarot card–reading psychic on WeChat. She says the psychic gig pays about the same as her full-time job as a designer.

For spirituality businesses, maintaining visibility while avoiding government scrutiny is a delicate balance. “Creating a digital spirituality business in China is walking a fine line. Many apps aim to engage users by hinting at the supernatural, yet they must be cautious to not attract government clampdowns,” Coco Chen, co-founder of dream analysis app Dreamore, told Rest of World. Cece brands itself as a “pan-psychological” platform.

Huang, the graduate student, has paid for consultation with “masters” in the app multiple times when frustrated with her life, partly because it’s much more affordable than psychotherapy. On Cece, a 30-minute call with a master costs as little as 60 yuan ($8.40), compared with 300 yuan ($42) sessions on therapy apps. Huang also prefers paying by the minute on Cece, instead of being bound to hour-long recurring sessions.

In October, Huang got back together with her ex-boyfriend. Her friends had described the man as “toxic,” but a Cece horoscope reading indicates high compatibility. “I was just looking for a push in the direction my heart already desires,” said Huang, “but often it is not until you flip the coin that you actually know what you want.”

Caiwei Chen is a Rest of World reporter based in New York.

Viola Zhou is a reporter at Rest of World.

19 Dec, 2023

- YouTube is the last bastion of unbiased journalism in India

- Why African startups must invest in tech policy conversations

Features

YouTube is the last bastion of unbiased journalism in India

As Narendra Modi's government clamps down on the free press, top journalists are going solo to report unbiased news.

Visuals by Ishan Tankha for Rest of World

By Sonia Faleiro

19 December 2023 • New Delhi, India

O

n November 30, 2022, Ravish Kumar, one of India’s best-known journalists, picked out a navy-blue suit to wear on the defining broadcast of his career. Based in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India, Kumar had worked for cable news channel NDTV for 27 years, becoming a senior executive editor and anchoring some of its flagship shows. He was a household name. And he was about to publicly announce his resignation.

It had been a difficult year for Kumar. His elderly mother was unwell, thousands of kilometers away in the state of Bihar. Death threats had been pouring in on his personal phone from supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took issue with his political coverage. And now, NDTV was facing a hostile takeover by the family of an oligarch known for his decades-long friendship with the prime minister.

After 27 years of working on some of NDTV’s flagship shows, Ravish Kumar resigned as the cable channel was acquired by investors linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kumar felt he had no choice but to leave before that happened. For years, NDTV had reported critically on the Modi administration, even as the government clamped down on the press. The government boycotted the network and made accusations of money laundering that cost the company lucrative sponsorships and forced it to lay off a significant proportion of its staff. Yet NDTV held strong. It would not become part of the “Godi media,” a term Kumar had coined to describe pliable journalists — a play on “Modi” and the Hindi word for “lap,” as in “lapdog.” Now, the takeover threatened the company’s independence.

“It was going to become just another media band singing Modi’s praises,” Kumar told Rest of World on a visit to his office one evening this August. “The new management would create a newsroom that would be hostile to the kind of work I did. I didn’t want to give them the opportunity to insult me, not even for one day.”

Kumar took to his YouTube channel to announce his decision. Standing tall with his silvery hair swept back, he kept a smile on his face. No one would guess that he had been close to tears while writing this resignation speech. He thanked his viewers for their decades of support. “I feel like the bird that has lost its nest because someone else snatched it away,” he said. He warned his fans to be wary of the authoritarian forces dividing the country. “What we have [in India] today is truly the dark age of journalism,” he said. “Our media ecosystem has been gutted and destroyed.”

After recording his final take, Kumar felt his eyes welling up. Over the next few days, the video went viral. It now has 9.6 million views.

Kumar is one of several high-profile Indian journalists who have left mainstream media organizations over the past few years and turned to YouTube and other social media platforms instead. These journalists see their own channels as the only way to continue their work in a country where the government is hounding noncompliant media out of their jobs. Ahead of the general election expected to take place in April or May 2024, in which Modi is standing for a third term, social media may be the last space to share unbiased news. “The idea is to report the news the old-school way,” Faye D’Souza, a former executive editor at the media company Times Network, told Rest of World. “To calmly tell people what is going on.”

But going solo is punishing work in a country that the World Press Freedom Index now ranks 161st out of 180. A YouTube channel or Instagram account does not offer the same protections as working for a mainstream media company: There is little financial security, legal support, or physical protection. Alone in their own homes, several of India’s best-known journalists told Rest of World they are fearful for their future. They spoke of online threats and warnings over the phone, of being frozen out by friends and family; of fears their equipment could be seized, their homes raided, or they could be thrown into jail.

For many, the NDTV takeover that inspired Kumar’s resignation was a nail in the coffin for journalism in India. Akash Banerjee, who hosts the political satire channel The DeshBhakt (The Patriot) on YouTube, said he had lawyers in place. “Because I know the knock on my door is inevitable. The government has a way of getting to you.”

A teleprompter displays Kumar’s signature opening line, “Namaskar, main Ravish Kumar.”

Modi’s attitude towards the media was shaped by one of the most infamous episodes of violence in India’s history. In 2002, when he was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, Hindu mobs went on a deadly rampage against Muslims. According to unofficial estimates, nearly 2,000 people were killed. Modi accused the media of exaggerating the extent of the violence. Speaking to The New York Times five months after the riots, he said his only regret around the deadly attacks was that he did not “handle the news media better.”

Since being elected prime minister in 2014, Modi has used every tactic in the authoritarian playbook to bend the media to his will. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has frozen advertising (government advertising is a major source of revenue for many Indian publications), raided offices, threatened journalists, shut off the internet, conducted digital surveillance on critics, prevented journalists from traveling abroad, and arrested and detained scores of media personnel under false pretexts including charges of terrorism. Modi is disdainful of journalists, calling them bazaru, meaning “for sale.” His supporters use the term “presstitutes” and “anti-national” to hound journalists on social media.

The threat of harassment and financial ruin has worked: Many of the country’s major newspapers and cable networks are effectively propaganda megaphones for Modi. Pro-Modi oligarchs and other individuals with political links to the BJP now own virtually all of India’s leading media, according to Reporters Without Borders, which noted “a significant trend towards concentration and ultimately control of content and public opinion.”

Journalist Manisha Pande’s YouTube show TV Newsance wields humour to criticize the media.

The journalist Manisha Pande recalled her days as a principal correspondent at national newspaper DNA, where she worked from 2013–2014. Pande told Rest of World about a story she had pitched about Modi’s broadening appeal. “I got a call [from the editor-in-chief] saying, ‘Make sure it makes him look good. Do a cover story on how sexy Modi is to the Indian housewife.’” Pande wrote the story, but she wasn’t happy about it. “I had wanted to write about why Modi’s popularity went beyond Hindu populists,” she said. “Not some piece about his sex appeal.”

Pande resigned from DNA that May. The following month, she joined Newslaundry, a media monitoring site, where she is now the managing editor and also hosts the organization’s YouTube show, TV Newsance.

In Mumbai, D’Souza, who worked at the Times Network from 2008 to 2019, at times felt similar pressure to present the government in the best possible light. “I was focusing a lot on things that really mattered to me,” she told Rest of World. “Crime against women, child rights, taxation, inflation. These things also resonated with the audience. But towards the end of 2019, the questions started like, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ ‘We’re getting calls about this story.’ ‘We would prefer it if you asked us beforehand.’ I got the sense that they were uncomfortable with the work that I was doing.”

“I got the sense that they were uncomfortable with the work that I was doing.”

Traditional media networks also found themselves increasingly competing with digital formats. In 2016, telecom company Jio brought millions of Indians online with its offer of superfast internet at cut-rate tariffs. As public attention shifted to online platforms, cable news companies tried to keep up. Investment in investigative reporting plummeted. Debates became a prominent feature because they required less time and money to produce.

“I call them kutta-billi debates — cat-and-dog fights,” said Banerjee, who was a broadcast journalist with the English-language channel India Today before starting The DeshBhakt in 2018.

News channels, observed Pande of Newslaundry, were now missing a crucial element: trustworthy news. “When the West talks about the decline in Indian democracy, our response is that we have free and fair elections,” she said. “And yes, we do. But democracy is also about institutions and the media is a huge part of those institutions that make a democracy. If we don’t have a news media that’s giving you credible information, how are you going to go and make that voting choice?”

The pressure on Indian media made journalists even more susceptible to manipulation. Neutrality became a relic of the past as anchors engaged in name-calling, religious bigotry, and xenophobia in service of the government’s majoritarian agenda.

Modi’s government has been known to raid offices, prevent journalists from traveling abroad, and arrest scores of media personnel under false pretexts.

When Kumar filmed his resignation video, he hadn’t planned to make YouTube his career. Although he’d opened an account on the platform in mid-2022, it was largely to prevent others from impersonating him. His most popular video before his resignation was of him riding shotgun in a Tesla in New York City.

But following Kumar’s departure from NDTV, fellow journalist Ajit Anjum suggested a pragmatic lifeline: monetize his channel. Like Kumar, Anjum had enjoyed a long career in broadcast TV before he resigned in 2019, following a confrontational interview with a Modi cabinet minister. Anjum joined YouTube and swiftly amassed more than 4.5 million subscribers. “People will forget you,” Anjum warned, urging Kumar to act swiftly.

Kumar filmed the video about the violence in Manipur seated on a bed in his New York hotel room at 4 a.m.

TV had made Kumar famous. He had started his NDTV career in 1996, as a mailroom clerk. Newly arrived from a village, the Hindi-speaking Kumar cut an incongruous figure in the urbane environment of the English-speaking newsroom. A colleague compared him to a mouse. “No one thought I had a place there,” he told Rest of World. “But I knew.”

When the network launched Hindi-language channels like NDTV India, Kumar’s performance and felicity with the language won him a promotion to the role of translator and editor before he made a name for himself as a reporter in the late 1990s. He was famous for his on-the-ground reporting where he walked around the city in shirts with rolled-up sleeves, bulky microphone in hand, talking to people about the cost of onions or lack of jobs. “English journalists have traditionally been close to power,” he said. “But Hindi-speaking journalists have always been close to the public.”

When he became an anchor, his signature opening line, “Namaskar, main Ravish Kumar,” signaled to viewers the beginning of a conversation that directly affected them. Millions of Indians came to trust the tall, straight-talking figure with the now-distinctive flick of silvery hair.

Kumar was hesitant to leave all that for YouTube. “I’d always thought, ‘What are YouTube views next to TV?’” he told Rest of World, hunched forward on a sofa in his home in western Uttar Pradesh, scrolling intently on his rose-gold laptop. A glass of syrupy Rooh Afza, a cup of tea, and a samosa sat untouched. “It wasn’t worth talking about.”

Kumar had known that no TV network would risk hiring him. Even so, the industry’s silence hit hard. He realized he had no choice but to give YouTube a try. “Everything was dependent on me,” he said, ticking off a list of accumulating debts — support for his family, his mother’s medical bills, relatives’ school fees.

Well-wishers came forward to help him set up his new business. Strangers reached out over social media to present him with his first Rode microphone — a YouTuber’s holy grail — and camera lights. Stand-up comic Kunal Kamra, who had himself faced harassment for his critical commentary of the government, sent over a technician to help Kumar navigate his new teleprompter. Others assisted with graphics and a background score.

Kumar created an improvised studio in a small apartment he had used as a guesthouse for his in-laws. He rearranged the dining table to accommodate studio lights and set up a green screen against one of the walls. His videos often follow a similar format. After his signature introduction, he poses a question related to the news of the day, usually focusing on abuses of political power, which he then spends the next 20 minutes answering.

Kumar publishes at least five videos weekly. He writes his own scripts, which can run up to 6,000 words — about 30,000 words a week. The pace is relentless. And sometimes it isn’t enough. His videos need to get upwards of at least 2 million views, he said, in order to be sustainable. But it’s hard to predict what will be a hit. One of his most popular videos, published in April, delves into the murder of a mobster politician and his brother, who were shot dead as the police took them to a hospital in Uttar Pradesh. It has more than 8 million views. A more recent video on a matter that has similarly consumed the news cycle — of 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in northern India — has only 592,000 views so far.

As we talked in his living room that evening in August, Kumar scrolled through his YouTube page, pointing out videos of which he was particularly proud. “I made this in a hotel room in New York,” he said, clicking on a video about Manipur, the northeastern Indian state embroiled in a civil war. He remembered that he started recording the video at 4 a.m. A hotel worker, alarmed by Kumar’s voice, knocked on the door to make sure he was alright. “How do I explain that I’m a journalist?” Kumar said. “That I have to record this video or it won’t be edited in time? That I can’t afford to sleep? But the interruption inspired me to change the script. I wrote, ‘I feel like screaming, but who do I scream at and where do I scream? It’s better that I stifle the scream within.” That video now has 6.1 million views.

Kumar is almost entirely reliant on the Google-owned site’s AdSense program for his income. The revenue he gets from the ads that run before and during his videos is enough for now, he said, to support his family and employ six full-time members of staff, who serve as camera person, researchers, editor, and thumbnail designer.

“It was because of YouTube that I could finally pay my mother’s medical bills,” he said. “Otherwise I would have been humiliated.”

On a rainy morning this past August, D’Souza, the former Times Network journalist, was taking a work call from her apartment in Mumbai while sipping on her first cup of coffee. While her 1-year-old-son and fluffy white dog played at her feet, D’Souza and her executive editor thrashed out the best way to break the day’s big news to her followers.

The headline story concerned a deadly crime that had taken place the previous day on a Mumbai-bound train. A police officer with the Indian Railways had shot dead a colleague and three passengers. The media had largely focused on a mental health angle, but a video making the rounds on Twitter told another story: It showed the guard telling one of his victims, who lay dying at his feet, that if he wanted to live in India he had better vote for Modi. “He went looking for Muslims,” D’Souza told Rest of World. “He shot people he could visibly identify as Muslims.”

D’Souza didn’t know whether she could run this story angle on her channels. Several news sites had already done so, but as a small, independent media house, she was in a more precarious position. “We’re being very careful about how we deal with what’s happening in this country right now,” she said.

Anubha Bhonsle, the former executive editor of CNN-News18, works from her home-office in southwest New Delhi.

Since quitting her job in TV, D’Souza has emerged as a juggernaut among India’s YouTube journalists. From her family home, she runs a media company with a news app, Beatroot News, and her own Instagram feed, which has 1.6 million followers. She has had sponsorship deals with Bumble and Glenlivet whisky, and is in demand as an event speaker. She is also a favorite of the Bollywood set, and her content is often reposted by accounts with tens of millions of followers.

But being a successful journalist in India puts a target on your back. To avoid accusations of bias from the government, in 2019, D’Souza stopped sharing her opinions online. “I don’t put out how I feel about something,” she said. “So you can’t hold that against us.” She calls her decision to self-censor “a conscious security net.”

Posting videos that offend the government and its followers risks jeopardizing YouTubers’ livelihoods. In some cases, the backlash can spill over into physical violence. In August, the sister and brother journalist team behind the YouTube channel Pal Pal News woke up to find that their house in northwest Delhi, where they weren’t living at the time, had gone up in flames. YouTuber Khushboo Akhtar told the Committee to Protect Journalists that she believed the attack was retaliation for the channel’s “critical coverage of the challenges faced by Indian Muslims and other underrepresented groups.”

D’Souza decided not to mention the Islamophobic angle on her Instagram feed, although she doesn’t shy away from talking about anti-Muslim violence in India more generally. Like many of her colleagues on YouTube, she treads gently, but firmly. “My ambition is to lead more and more news providers to change their tune because I think that the audience can’t take the hate anymore,” she said. “We can create a pocket of resistance.”

Anubha Bhonsle has also had to change her approach to journalism. She was previously executive editor of the English-language cable channel CNN-News18, formerly known as CNN-IBN. In her role there, she traveled the world covering major events, from elections to earthquakes. She was drawn to deep dives on tough topics — the upcoming elections, the latest Supreme Court ruling. She resigned in 2017 and now runs her own YouTube channel and Instagram page, also using the name Newsworthy.

One evening in August, Bhonsle welcomed Rest of World into her house in the southwestern part of New Delhi. At the top of the stairs, in a light-flooded space, was the office she had designed for herself with custom bookshelves and white walls. Every weekday at around 8 a.m., Bhonsle makes the short walk from her bedroom and talks to her team of four over Signal. Her more than a decade in broadcasting has prepared her to run her newsroom methodically. By 4 p.m., like clockwork, the Newsworthy Instagram feed spits out the stories of the day.

“We can create a pocket of resistance.”

Bhonsle said India’s mainstream media was now so ill-equipped to report the news that she and her team spent most of their time sifting through propaganda. “The bulk of the work is bloody understanding what’s going on,” she said, with a rueful smile.

The day of our visit, her team had settled on a roster of 12 to 15 stories. After that, it was time to assemble them by gathering information from still-trusted sources such as the wire services and a handful of independent websites. Bhonsle also works with other journalists, but is limited by budget. This also affects her ability to pay for photos and videos, and she relies on a bank of icons and images to build her stories.

Bhonsle, like Kumar and D’Souza, is self-sufficient, but her journalism is subsidized by her day job — a social impact communications firm that she created, which allows her to run her online news platforms. “It’s a challenge,” she said.

For journalists with a smaller audience, the struggle to make a living is even more daunting. The platform’s algorithms make it impossible for all but the leading YouTubers to profit from their work. YouTube uses various metrics for payouts, with one of the most significant being cost per thousand ad impressions, or CPM, which is set by the advertiser. But the CPM can differ by country, with advertisers in India paying much less than those in the U.S., for example.

Earlier this year, Bhonsle produced a YouTube content package addressing the violence in Manipur, including an explainer video, an accountability-focused piece, and a third video spotlighting the stories of students forced to flee the turmoil. Her feed represented the news she felt people needed to have. But there was one thing she couldn’t do: report the news from the ground. “To be honest, I shouldn’t be here in Delhi,” she told Rest of World. “I should be in Manipur. It’s a state I worked in, it’s a place I know. But I’m now responsible for four other people. I can’t just pack my bags. I don’t have that money.”

Working with other local journalists and wire services, much of Bhonsle’s day is spent on phone calls and verifying news sources.

In October, Kumar received a copyright notice for one of his videos. He felt sure he hadn’t done anything wrong, but since YouTube prohibits creators from earning income on videos while they are under dispute, he was forced to contact a lawyer to intervene, and couldn’t earn any money on the video until the matter was resolved.

Copyright claims are increasingly emerging as a way to censor critical content. One prominent Indian YouTube journalist has spoken out about receiving copyright claims from the public service broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, which has exclusive rights to film parliamentary proceedings. Prasar Bharati has previously denied the allegations, saying it did not make copyright complaints on public service content, but Meghnad S, a journalist who posts Youtube videos on his channel Meghnerd, confirmed he had also received a complaint from the broadcaster. Prasar Bharati did not respond to questions from Rest of World.

In response to a question from Rest of World, YouTube said it was not up to the platform to decide who “owns the rights” to content. It said it offers ways for rights holders to request removal of content they believe infringes their copyright, as well as tools for uploaders to dispute incorrect claims.

Meanwhile, the government has been more direct in its efforts to control journalists by blocking access to content under the Information Technology Act, which governs online exchanges, e-commerce, and cybercrime. From 2021 to October 2022,  it used this law to block 104 channels from YouTube. In one high-profile case in January, it directed social media platforms to block a BBC documentary that implicated Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots. At the same time, the BBC issued copyright claims to YouTube against the documentary being circulated without permission.

According to Apar Gupta, a lawyer who co-founded the New Delhi-based advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation, India’s IT laws have traditionally offered safe harbor protection to online platforms. This means tech companies are shielded from liability for the content posted on their platforms, provided they act “expeditiously” in response to government takedown requests. “YouTube is negotiating a very difficult climate in India,” Gupta said. “If they want to maintain service availability, they have to negotiate an environment in which rule of law often follows political interests.”

From January to June 2023, YouTube received the third-highest number of government takedown requests from India, following Russia and Taiwan, according to the latest Google Transparency Report. The most commonly cited reason was “defamation,” with other categories including “hate speech”, “national security”, and “government criticism.” Responding to a question about these figures, a YouTube spokesperson told Rest of World, “All our policies are applied consistently across the platform, regardless of the creator, their background, political viewpoint, position or affiliation.”

Critics of the platform dispute this position, however, pointing to the now-infamous case of the Hindu extremist Monu Manesar, who used his YouTube channel to spread anti-Muslim hate. Manesar, who belonged to a militant group affiliated with the prime minister’s party, received a YouTube “Silver Creator” plaque for reaching 100,000 followers before he went on the run for allegedly kidnapping and killing two Muslim men (he has since been arrested). By the time YouTube terminated his channel for violating their harassment policies, Manesar had more than 200,000 subscribers. “YouTube seems to be blind,” said Gupta, the lawyer. “It is permitting blatant forms of Islamophobia that leads to violence.”

As the 2024 elections near, the government is cracking down further on platforms like YouTube. An amendment to the IT law gives the government the power to demand that platforms remove anything it considers to be “fake, false or misleading” information about its work. The amendment is currently on pause as it is being challenged in the High Court of Bombay, but should it be approved, internet freedom advocates say, it would give the government absolute power over its own narrative. The Editors Guild of India said the move goes against “principles of natural justice.”

“What matters is if the content goes viral and makes the government uncomfortable.”

In November, the government also proposed a broadcasting bill to regulate online content. The bill leans heavily on the country’s decades-old program code, which was introduced in 1994, when India experienced its first content flood with the cable TV boom. Among other things, the code prohibits cable TV programs that “criticise, malign or slander any individual in person or certain groups.”

Meghnad, who is a public policy analyst as well as a YouTuber, told Rest of World the language of the bill has been kept deliberately vague to allow the government to target critics irrespective of platform. “Anyone talking about current affairs will be counted as a broadcaster,” he said — even if they are only making an Instagram reel or running a WhatsApp group.

But, as the Monu Manesar episode demonstrated, the government is selective about who it targets. “If you are pro-government, they’ll let you have free rein,” Meghnad said. Over the summer, several prominent members of the cabinet, who only rarely engage with the media, made themselves available to a handful of popular YouTube personalities. One, Ranveer Allahbadia, has 6.6 million followers on his channel BeerBiceps, where he usually posts fitness videos and discusses far-out theories (in one video, he spends about an hour and a half talking to a man who claimed to have seen a yeti in the Himalayas).

Among the high-profile names that sat across from Allahbadia was Modi’s minister for external affairs, S Jaishankar, who in May had dismissed India’s declining position in the World Press Freedom Index as “a mind game.” The pair had a friendly chat for about 40 minutes, covering Jaishankar’s thoughts on a variety of issues — from quantum computers to geopolitics. “I’m 100% sure that your sixth sense plays a role in the geopolitical sense,” Allahbadia said at one point, to an approving nod from Jaishankar. “Is there a spiritual aspect?” The video currently has 8.2 million views.

Working without the legal or financial protection of a TV network, journalists like Ravish Kumar are fearful for their future.

Back in Kumar’s home office, the reluctant YouTuber pondered the fragility of his position. “The government has already come for YouTube,” he said. “What if YouTube gets shut down?”

The idea seemed too gut-wrenching to engage with, certainly in the middle of his day with a video yet to be recorded. “If it shuts down my channel, I’ll start another,” he declared.

He got up to walk the few steps to his former dining room, where his cameraperson was waiting for him. He straightened his shoulders and rearranged his face to match the tone of his script. “Rolling,” he said, wearily.

Later, when Kumar walked me to my car, I realized the heavy curtains in his apartment all but blocked out the view; only now did I see the sun was descending. Once known for his on-the-ground reporting, Kumar had been forced to cloister himself away inside.

Kumar said he still receives death threats as a result of his work. When he was at NDTV, the Delhi police had assigned him with personal security. Now, he was alone. When he steps out, he told me, people often greet him, but his eyes tend to turn towards those who hang back, just watching. “The news gets around so quickly on WhatsApp,” he said. “Any minute a mob can gather.”

He shook his head with disbelief. “Elections are approaching,” he said, “and I can’t go out.”

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Sonia Faleiro's most recent book "The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing" was published in 2021.

3 Minutes With

Why African startups must invest in tech policy conversations

Oswald Osaretin Guobadia discusses the biggest challenge startups face when dealing with government policies and regulators.

By David I. Adeleke

19 December 2023

Oswald Osaretin Guobadia is the managing partner at DigitA, a digital advisory firm in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2022, Guobadia helped create the Nigeria Startup Act while working as the president’s senior special assistant on digital transformation.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What’s the biggest challenge startups face when dealing with government policies and regulations?

One of the valuable lessons is that getting things done in government is indeed possible. It’s really about having that drive to pull the different entities together and to show why the objective is in everyone’s best interests. With this kind of approach, you will get things done. A lot of things in government tend to happen in silos, and that’s the biggest problem.

What’s the most valuable lesson you learned working on the Nigeria Startup Act?

There’s apathy and a lack of trust between the private sector and the public sector. You could announce a gold rush from the government and most citizens wouldn’t believe it or pay attention. I think the place to start is paying attention — to learn about the things that are happening, embrace them, and find ways to participate. Once we start doing that, we’ll get a sense of how we can help mold forward-thinking policies that help our businesses.

What excites you the most about tech innovation in Nigeria in the next five years?

The potential is amazing. We have young people that can be trained. We have real problems that can be addressed using digital technology innovation. We have a massive market to release those ideas into for testing.

Our markets test ideas for us and make them better for global release. Here’s where a tiered approach will work. First, you sell to your city of maybe 2 million people. Then you sell to the whole country of 200 million people. Then you sell to the whole continent of 1.3 billion. And then you can sell to over 8 billion people in the world. That’s the growth potential for every African business.

David I. Adeleke is the Africa Editor at Rest of World.

18 Dec, 2023

- How different languages laugh online

Bento 🍱

How different languages laugh online

Laughter is universal, but lol is not.

Brendan Conroy for Rest of World

By Amy Thorpe and Ravi Hiranand

18 December 2023

What’s the difference between haha and jaja? What about kkkk or hhhh?

It’s a trick question: They mean the same thing. They’re all ways to express laughter, as interpreted by different cultures in different languages.

In person, laughter is universal. No matter what language you speak, almost anyone can understand the meaning of a mischievous giggle, sarcastic snort, or an infectious belly laugh. But it isn’t quite as simple when it comes to writing it down, especially in the era of social media and messaging apps.

Most English speakers are familiar with the nuances of when to say haha, lol, or lmao — each conveying a different weight to laughter. Other languages have their own specific terminology, some of which may not be immediately obvious even when translated.

Take Japanese, for instance. “Warau” is one way to express laughter. Some shortened that to just the first sound of the word, “w.” Others then noticed that “www” looked like blades of grass, leading people to start using the Japanese word for grass (草) to represent laughter. That continual evolution is why, if you want to write about laughing hard in Japanese, you could type 大草原: “giant grass field.”

Or there’s “askfhsjkd,” used in Turkish. No acronyms or wordplay here — keyboard spam is actually a popular way to indicate amusement among young Turkish speakers, as if they’ve been overcome by laughter and are unable to type complete words.

These are just a small fraction of the many ways people around the world represent laughter, from a little Nepali giggle — khit khit — to an explosion of laughter in Nigerian Pidgin: lwkmd, or “laugh wan kill me die.” We know the world can always use a little more laughter, so we’ve rounded up dozens of our favorite examples of how people from all over laugh online.

awdjyt

Antiguan and Barbudan Creole

Abbreviation of “a wah di joke yah tarl,” used when shocked or amused

ههههه

Arabic

هه sounds like “ha,” making this a close equivalent to “haha”

7777

Arabic

7 looks like ح which sounds similar to “ha.” Used rarely these days

হা হা

Bengali

“Haha” written in Bengali

kkkk

Brazilian

An expression meant to imitate the sound of a laugh

rsrsrs

Brazilian

Repeated abbreviation of the Portuguese word for laughter, “riso”

рофл

Bulgarian

Cyrillic version of a now-somewhat-vintage expression: “rofl”

ဟားဟား

Burmese

“Haha” written in Burmese

ဟီးဟီး

Burmese

The Burmese version of “hehe”

笑L死

Cantonese

“Laugh to death,” but with the Cantonese curse word “L” included

h6h6h6

Estonian

An ironic laugh written in Estonian, where the number 6 is pronounced “oh”

mdr

French

An acronym for “mort de rire,” meaning “dead from laughter”

ptdr

French

An abbreviation of “pété de rire,” or “exploded from laughter”

hahahatie

Gambian

English An alternative way of writing “hahaha” in Gambian English

:დდდ

Georgian

Equivalent to :DDD in Georgian

κλαίω

Greek

Meaning “I cry,” as in “Iʼm crying with laughter”

χαχαχα

Greek

“Hahaha” written in Greek

Λoλ

Greek

“Lol” written in Greek

jajaja

Guaraní

The letter “j” is pronounced the same as “h” in English, making this “hahaha”

olawdo

Guyanese Creole

Similar to Trinidadian Creole’s “ohlawdoi”

חחח

Hebrew “Hahaha” written in Hebrew script

לול

Hebrew

לול is a way of saying “lol” in Hebrew

למאו

Hebrew

למאו can be taken to mean “lmao” in Hebrew

हाहा

Hindi

“Haha” written in the Devanagari script, common in India and Nepal

laul

Hindi

Laul, lulwa, and lawl are ironic ways of saying “lol” in North Indian slang

wkwkwk

Bahasa Indonesia

Known as “duck laugh,” popular with Indonesia’s online gaming community

goa

Irish

An abbreviation of “gáire ós árd,” meaning “lol” in the Irish language

abmtag

Irish

Short for the Irish “ag briseadh mo thóin ag gáire,” meaning “lmao”

sto male

Italian

Meaning “I’m sick” from laughter

volo

Italian

Meaning “I fly,” as in “you made me laugh so hard I’m flying away”

muoio

Italian

Meaning “I’m dead” from laughter

dwl

Jamaican Creole

Short for “dead wid laugh”

笑

Japanese

The first part of the Japanese word for “laughter,” which is 笑い or “warau”

www

Japanese

A repetition of the “w” sound in the first part of the word for laughter, “warau”

草

Japanese

Meaning grass, because “www” looks like blades of grass

大草原

Japanese

Taking it another step further: “giant grass field,” used to express harder laughter

ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Korean

ㅋ in Korean is pronounced “k,” so this reads as “kkkk”

ㅎㅎㅎ

Korean

Used similarly to “hehe” in English, itʼs not as popular as ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

ຮາຮາຮາ

Lao

“Hahaha” written in Lao

555

Lao

5 is pronounced “ha” in Lao, making this “hahaha”

ha3

Malay

A shorter — if outdated — way of saying “hahaha”

ഹഹ

Malayalam

“Haha” written in Malayalam

2333

Mandarin

Refers to a popular forumʼs laughing emoticon, numbered 233

哈哈哈

Mandarin

哈 is pronounced “ha”

hhh

Mandarin

Abbreviation of the romanized version of 哈哈哈 (“hahaha”)

笑死

Mandarin

Means “laugh to death” and pronounced “xiaosi”

xs

Mandarin

A shortened, romanized version of “xiaosi” or “laugh to death”

ktk

Maori

Short for “kaha te katakata,” meaning “to laugh with power” and used similarly to “lol”

khit khit khit

Nepali

Used to represent giggling, though not as common as “haha”

lwkm

Nigerian Pidgin Short for “laugh wan kill me”

lwkmd

Nigerian Pidgin Taking it a step further: “laugh wan kill me die”

kkk

Oromo

Used to imitate laughing

خخخخخخ

Persian

خ is pronounced “kha,” making this sound similar to “khakhakha”

لول

Persian لول (and لال) are ways of saying “lol”

ਹਾਹਾ

Punjabi

“Haha” written in Punjabi

xaxaxa

Russian

“Hahaha” written in the Cyrillic script, used in several Slavic languages

лол

Russian

Cyrillic version of “lol,” found in multiple Slavic languages

)))

Russian

In certain Slavic languages, one parenthesis is a smile, so ))) can represent laughter

හූ

Sinhala

Laughter written in Sinhala, pronounced “hu”

hhhh

Somali

Used in Somali, Kinyarwanda, and other languages to imitate laughing

memeo

Spanish

Meaning “I pee,” as in “Iʼm peeing from laughter”

jajaja

Spanish

The letter “j” is pronounced the same as “h” in English, making this “hahaha”

asg

Swedish

Less commonly used, an abbreviation for “asgarv,” meaning “uproarious laughter”

ⵀⵀⵀⵀ

Tamazight

Translated into English, this can be read as “hhhh”

555

Thai

555 is pronounced “hahaha” in Thai

ways

Trinidadian Creole

Can mean surprise, excitement, or just laughing for a long time

ohlawdoi

Trinidadian Creole

“Oh lord” in Trinidadian Creole, with the suffix “oi” added. Like “ways” in meaning

asdfghjkl

Turkish

Keyboard spam, as if the speaker is overcome by laughter and can’t type coherently

гггг

Ukrainian

An older Cyrillic expression representing the sound of a laugh

ہا ہا ہا

Urdu

“Hahaha” written in Urdu

rbt

Wolof

Somewhat rare, an abbreviation of “ree ba tas,” used to say “laughing until tiredness”

kkkk

Zulu

Used in Zulu, Xhosa, Shona, Oromo, and other languages to express laughter

Enjoyed this story? Support our award-winning journalism by making a donation.

Amy Thorpe is a journalist and photographer based in France.

Ravi Hiranand is a Deputy Editor at Rest of World.

Design & Product: Joanne Lee, Anna Rasshivkina

15 Dec, 2023

- Global gig worker slang, explained

Bento 🍱

Global gig worker slang, explained

Shapar and amagundane are two types of platform workers their peers can’t stand.

By Zuha Siddiqui, Laís Martins, Lam Le and Kimberly Mutandiro

Muhammad Fadli for Rest of World

By Zuha Siddiqui, Laís Martins, Lam Le and Kimberly Mutandiro

15 December 2023

On the inDrive Driver Unity Facebook group, drivers across Pakistan gather to share their daily challenges and struggles, from troubleshooting app-related glitches to comparing car fuel averages. Occasionally, they even curse other drivers — the smart alecs, whom they call shapar. “They’re shameless people,” Tariq Saeed, an inDrive driver from Karachi, wrote in a post last month. “Maybe you are a shapar yourself,” someone called Hamza responded. “All you do is cry.”

There are 435 million gig workers globally, according to the World Bank. But despite their large numbers, they’re part of an increasingly isolated ecosystem. Rest of World’s reporting on gig workers shows that they band together in close-knit communities on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram groups — with a distinct vocabulary.

These 10 words, sourced from gig workers around the world, describe specific tasks associated with food delivery and ride-hailing. They also help bring a sense of lightness and some banter to work that’s inherently precarious.

Shapar 🇵🇰

Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Among Pakistani ride-hailing workers, a shapar is understood to be someone who betrays the pack by not bargaining with customers.

Bid-based models have been leaving drivers worse off in Pakistan. Having to bargain with customers for rides has made their work more laborious and hypercompetitive, sometimes forcing them to accept the lowest fares, they told Rest of World. A driver who does not negotiate for a higher price or picks up a ride at the fare the customer offers is disliked within the community, and is often called a shapar. In Urdu, the word translates to “wing” or “the strongest feather in a wing,” but is also used ironically to describe someone sly, a suck-up, or a teacher’s pet.

Khep 🇧🇩

Frustrated with Uber and Pathao charging hefty commissions, gig drivers in Bangladesh decided to khep, or bypass platforms altogether.

Khep means “side hustle” in Bengali, but thanks to its adoption by Bangladesh’s ride-hailing community, the word is now commonly associated with ride-sharing drivers going off-platform.

“We’d rather khep than work on the apps. All the effort is from [the drivers’] end anyway,” Jisan, a Pathao bike-taxi driver, told Rest of World. “The motorcycles are ours, the bills for petrol are ours, it’s our hard work. Platforms only help by getting us on the apps, and even for that, they’re charging a commission.”

Bololô 🇧🇷

Juancho Torres/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

For Brazilian gig workers, bololô has come to mean a rallying cry and a call to protest, bringing together delivery drivers in a show of solidarity.

A Brazilian Portuguese word for the sound of a motorbike’s exhaust while it’s being revved up, bololô is now used to protest physical or verbal assaults from rude customers. Delivery workers across the country have been organizing bololôs — noisy protests made up of horns, fireworks, and revving engines.

“It’s the only alternative these workers have found of being seen and of showing what happens to them,” Abel Santos, vice president of the Federal District Association for App Workers and Motorcyclists, told Rest of World.

Amagundane 🇿🇦

The word amagundane is used by gig workers in the Cape Province of South Africa to describe sellouts who refuse to unionize or participate in protests. It literally translates to “rats” in Zulu.

Amagundane are also partly blamed for the fact that driver unions are struggling in Africa’s major countries because they refuse to ride with the rest of the pack. Typically, amagundane drivers are ostracized: They are removed from drivers’ groups on social media platforms or simply get ghosted by their peers. They are also denied the privileges that other drivers have access to, such as being warned about places to avoid amid deadly robberies targeting drivers in South Africa.

Bom hang 🇻🇳

Linh Pham for Rest of World

In the gig worker lexicon, bom hang refers to the act of ghosting delivery drivers and online shops.

“Bom” means “bomb” and “hang” translates to “package” in Vietnamese. Getting bom hang-ed is especially hard on food delivery workers because they lose out not just on the delivery fee, but also on the money they pay restaurants to pick up the food — which the customer is supposed to reimburse with cash. In countries like Vietnam, where cash-on-delivery is the norm, nearly 15% deliveries fail.

“This morning, I just got bom hang — a salted chicken. I’m pissed,” one driver shared in a Facebook group for gig workers in Hanoi last month. He said he had tried to get in touch with the customer for 30 minutes before realizing there was no point. “Here’s her number,” the post read. “Her name is Ngan.”

Bacup 🇿🇦

Ever heard cops on true-crime shows calling for backup? When South African gig workers type the word’s local variation, bacup, in their WhatsApp groups, it is usually the last resort.

Bacup is usually construed as a sign that the gig worker is in trouble and in urgent need of others to come to their rescue.

Crime is at an all-time high in South Africa — the country ranks third in the 2023 crime index by the California-based organization World Population Review. Gig drivers in South Africa have lost trust in law enforcement, which is viewed as too slow to respond when drivers call for help during attacks.

Gacor and gagu 🇮🇩

Muhammad Fadli for Rest of World

In Indonesia, some drivers are gacor, while others are gagu — driver accounts that very easily get rides and those that rarely get traction via the algorithm, respectively.

In Bahasa Indonesia, gacor literally translates to “easy to get”, and “gagu” means “muted.” In ride-hailing lingo, however, the terms refer to the lack of transparency in how app algorithms allocate rides.

No one really knows why some Gojek drivers are gagu while some others are gacor. They liken working for the platform to playing a kind of game — albeit one that’s far from entertaining, which requires them to meet ever more challenging targets, and changes its rules without consultation or warning.

Captain 🇵🇰

We’ve heard of airline and ship captains, but when ride-hailing app Careem came to Pakistan in March 2016, it began calling its drivers “captains.”

Careem refers to its drivers as captains across its app and website. The word has now been adopted by the rest of the country’s ride-hailing sector.

New companies in the market — from the Silicon Valley-headquartered inDrive to Yango from the Netherlands — and their drivers have begun using the term. “We think it’s a little more respectful than just being called a driver,” Muhammad Umer, an inDrive worker from Islamabad, told Rest of World.

Amandla 🇿🇦

KC Nwakalor for Rest of World

Amandla is a popular chant used by gig drivers in South Africa, as a sign of unity in the face of adversity.

The word translates to “power” in Zulu. It rose to popularity during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, when crowds used it as a rallying cry during President Nelson Mandela’s speeches. Now, gig workers use “amandla” as a war cry when they go on strike, usually accompanied with a raised fist.

Drivers’ unions in South Africa have organized several strikes in recent years, in an attempt to hold companies such as Uber and Bolt accountable. While gig workers are still a long way from achieving the results they want, the amandla chant has become an important symbol of resilience in their struggle.

Rappitenderos 🇨🇴

In Colombia, workers associated with food delivery platform Rappi have started to band together and call themselves rappitenderos.

The word is a combination of Rappi and the Spanish word tenderos, which means those who work in customer service or customer-facing jobs. “Rappitenderos” has now been co-opted by the company itself, to refer to its delivery workers.

“I think this song will be an anthem for rappitenderos for ages to come,” said 27-year-old Julio Barrera, referring to his hit, “Soy Rappi.” He is part of a microculture of delivery workers in Spanish-speaking Latin America who have begun penning songs that speak to their struggles with angry customers, long wait times to pick up the order, traffic jams, and technical difficulties.

Zuha Siddiqui is a Labor x Tech reporting fellow at Rest of World based in Karachi, Pakistan.

Laís Martins is a Labor x Tech reporting fellow at Rest of World based in São Paulo, Brazil.

Lam Le is a Labor x Tech reporting fellow at Rest of World based in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Kimberly Mutandiro is a Labor x Tech reporting fellow at Rest of World based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

14 Dec, 2023

- The slow transformation of Facebook in India

- The phrase that ruled the Indian internet in 2023

Exporter Newsletter

The slow transformation of Facebook in India

As the general election approaches, there are few spaces where the opposition can be safe online

By Russell Brandom

Russell Brandom is the U.S. Tech Editor at Rest of World.

14 December 2023

Rest of World/Getty Images

By Russell Brandom

14 December 2023

India has been tightening its platform laws for years, but with next year’s general election approaching, the sheer number of government takedowns is starting to pile up. In the first six months of 2023, Facebook restricted more than 10,000 items in India, a tenfold jump from the previous six-month period.

We don’t have numbers for the second half of the year yet, but the last time there was a spike this big was in the lead-up to the previous general election in 2019 — which suggests the increase may just be getting started.

With recent changes to India’s IT rules, there are now many more tools for taking down content than there were in 2019, and also fewer safeguards to stop them from being used for partisan warfare. The IT rules allow takedown orders to be sent directly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which can process far more orders and requests. The laws also formed grievance appellate committees, which deal specifically with complaints about social media. According to the public-facing website, more than 300 appeals have been processed by the committees.

I spoke to Apar Gupta, executive director of India’s Internet Freedom Foundation, about the quieter changes he’s noticed as online restrictions have tightened. “The experience of platforms has tremendously changed,” Gupta told me. “A substantial amount of the content questioning the government is just not available in India.”

“If I find anything offensive on the internet, I can make a complaint to Twitter or Facebook, and if I’m dissatisfied with them I can approach the government.”

Gupta also pointed me to a survey from March of this year, which found that more than two-thirds of the respondents in India were scared of legal repercussions for voicing their social and political views online.

“It’s essentially created an institutional apparatus for censorship,” Gupta said. “If I find anything offensive on the internet, I can make a complaint to Twitter or Facebook, and if I’m dissatisfied with them I can approach the government.”

The impact of those new channels goes far beyond the moderation figures. Moderators have adapted to the new enforcement systems, changing standards to reduce friction with the government. Users have learned to avoid posts that might draw moderation actions or send a wave of trolls their way. Soon, they take for granted that online spaces are friendly to the ruling party, and opposition groups no longer bother contesting it.

Like all social networks, Facebook was founded on U.S. ideas of free speech, which are built into the platform at a very deep level. For most Western users, those ideas are still central to what Facebook represents — for better or worse. Now India is diverging from that idea of free speech, and platforms like Facebook are left in a difficult position. Spanning both systems, they’re subject to both sets of rules at once, and expected to uphold conflicting ideas about how much control a platform should have over a citizen’s speech.

Managing that contradiction is fraught at the best of times, but with national elections approaching in both India and the United States, it may soon become impossible.

This essay was originally published in our Exporter newsletter. You can subscribe here.

Russell Brandom is the U.S. Tech Editor at Rest of World.

Ideas

The phrase that ruled the Indian internet in 2023

Looking like a wow.

By Barkha Dutt

Barkha Dutt, an Emmy-nominated journalist from India, is the founding editor of the multimedia platform Mojo Story. She is the author of two books: “This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines” and “Humans of Covid: To Hell and Back.”

14 December 2023

Daniel Zender for Rest of World

By Barkha Dutt

14 December 2023

The Oxford English Dictionary got it wrong.

“Rizz” is not the word of the year.

In India, our vote would be for a phrase: “Looking like a wow.”

This somewhat ungainly, even mildly ungrammatical sentence has been widely popular with movie stars, media moguls, market analysts, and mavericks alike. Actor Deepika Padukone popularized it, and Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, embraced it with rip-roaring laughter.

These four viral words have been impersonated, translated, adapted to reality television, and even set to music.

This week, a top minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet launched an event shouting the words into a microphone as thousands of women chanted them back.

At its heart, this is a story of how technology and social media — otherwise an unequal, hostile, often unsafe space for women — enabled the entrepreneurial passions of a self-made Indian woman.

This is the story of Jasmeen Kaur.

The woman who started the phrase owns and manages a small Delhi store that sells shiny, pearly kurta sets; velvety pant-suits; and shimmering silky fabrics. Married at the young age of 21, Kaur — now in her late forties — began her professional journey with two sewing machines in her living room, and a “Masterji” who sat cross-legged on the floor helping her stitch.

Today, with 1 million followers on Instagram, Kaur is a much sought-after celebrity.

Her fashion line is neither local and artisanal nor high-end and subtle. Instead, the clothes — like the woman who designs them — are in-your-face and unapologetic. They are cut from mass-produced, China-made machine fabrics. They might be considered garish and gauche for some sensibilities.

But that’s precisely why Kaur’s story is so powerful.

She ticks none of the conventional boxes. In many ways, Kaur has used Instagram to turn the idea of who can be an online “influencer” on its head. She’s not posh, manicured, or glamorous. Nor is she edgy, grungy, or satirical. She is entirely unselfconscious and authentic. And her success is a pushback against classist and elitist notions of what is tasteful, high-brow, and trendy.

Kaur models her new arrivals every afternoon on Instagram and Facebook. She has the storyteller’s gift for vivid description, especially in how she presents the color palette: “Laddoo peela” (yellow like a laddoo, an Indian sweet); “kaleji red” (deep red like liver or mutton); “ghiya green” (green like gourd); and so on. She jokes that her love for “laddoo peela” was a bad omen for India during the cricket World Cup (The Australians took the Cup; their gear is bright yellow).

It was during one such live sales pitch that Kaur spontaneously described the clothes she was modeling as “so beautiful, so elegant, just looking like a wow.” She was unaware that her life was about to transform almost immediately.

“They call me the ‘Wow Aunty’ wherever I go,” Kaur told me, chuckling and crying in turn during our conversation. “Yeh Live meri zindagi hai, mein iske zariye dadiyon, chachiyon, didiyon aur maasiyon se roz baat karti hoon. Main roti hoon toh woh rote hain, mein hasti hoon toh woh haste hain” — “This daily Live that I do [on Facebook and Instagram] is my whole life. Through this, I communicate directly with grandmothers, aunts, and sisters. If I cry, they cry; if I laugh, they laugh.”

“This daily Live that I do is my whole life.”

Kaur, a devout Sikh, runs her business from the eponymous Jail Road market in West Delhi — located near South Asia’s largest prison, Tihar. Historically, this part of the city housed refugee colonies for Punjabis who moved from newly formed Pakistan to India during the partition in 1947. Kaur’s father, who died in an accident, ran a small restaurant near the railway station. Her eyes brim with tears when she speaks of him. “I wish he were alive to see what his daughter has made of her life. He would have been so proud of me,” she said.

As a middle-aged Indian who grew up before the country’s fintech and internet boom, Kaur often harks back to a pre-technology era in our conversation. “We used to play stapoo every evening,” she says, referring to a now-extinct Indian version of hopscotch. “Look at these children today — they are constantly on their phones, they never even step out.”

She pauses and laughs uproariously when I remind her how the smartphone has changed her life. “That’s true. Where would I be without my social life?” — a term she constantly uses to refer to social media.

India is Instagram’s biggest market globally, with nearly 230 million users. But it is a platform that remains dominated by men, who make up more than 70% of its user base.

Like elsewhere in the world, Instagram’s “beauty” filters and algorithm-backed subculture of vacuousness have often had a deleterious impact on the self-esteem and mental health of young women in India. Doctors speak of how the self-image of young girls is obsessively benchmarked against the faux notions of beauty that Instagram promotes and thrives on. Some even opt for needless cosmetic surgeries to photograph better.

Kaur offers a refreshing respite from the underbelly of social networks like Instagram. Even the kurtas she sells have sizes that go all the way up to 5XL, bucking beauty cliches.

I ask her what her message to women would be. “Work, work, work,” she says. “I was working even when my daughter Gurmehar was 1 year old.” Today, Gurmehar — now 18 — sometimes features in her mum’s videos. And what’s Kaur’s dream for the future? “Just this, I love what I do,” she says. “Now I must go if you have asked all your questions. My Live is starting in a few minutes.”

Barkha Dutt, an Emmy-nominated journalist from India, is the founding editor of the multimedia platform Mojo Story. She is the author of two books: “This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines” and “Humans of Covid: To Hell and Back.”

Table of Contents

Rest of World: 29 Dec, 2023

29 Dec, 2023

How AI shook the world in 2023

28 Dec, 2023

Our favorite Rest of World photos from 2023

27 Dec, 2023

The best articles we didn’t publish in 2023

26 Dec, 2023

23 Rest of World stories that defined 2023

21 Dec, 2023

Four predictions for 2024

20 Dec, 2023

Anxious and online, Chinese youth embrace spirituality apps

19 Dec, 2023

YouTube is the last bastion of unbiased journalism in India

Why African startups must invest in tech policy conversations

18 Dec, 2023

How different languages laugh online

15 Dec, 2023

Global gig worker slang, explained

14 Dec, 2023

The slow transformation of Facebook in India

The phrase that ruled the Indian internet in 2023