Social media companies will have to follow Indian laws or face strict action, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in Parliament on Thursday, adding that the government is working on new rules for companies to like Twitter and Facebook are more responsive to instructions and responsible for the laws of India.
Prasad said the government was in favor of freedom of speech and expression, but warned that abuse of social media platforms for damages such as fake news and electoral manipulation will not be tolerated.
“We respect social networks. We also respect criticism. But we will not tolerate the misuse of social media to generate fake news. Today, from here in Parliament, I kindly remind companies, be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or WhatsApp or whatever, that they are free to work in India, do business, but they must respect the Indian Constitution, they must respect Indian law. “, He said.
The minister also made a comparison between the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and the January 26 violence in the Red Fort, saying that “certain microblogging platforms” took action in the first case but crawled during the incident. in India. “This double standard will not work here,” he warned.
The minister’s comments come after days of tensions between the government and Twitter over the deletion of more than 1,300 accounts or posts in connection with the farmers’ protest and violence that occurred on January 26. The social media company only partially complied with the order, saying the instructions were not in accordance with Indian law.
“When a company becomes a platform, the rules are established to evaluate what is wrong and what is right. But that does not mean that the laws of India will not apply to them, ”said Prasad, after telling Parliament that his ministry and the ministry of information and broadcasting were working on new guidelines.
The government, in response to a question without an asterisk in Rajya Sabha, also stated that the rules of the IT Act 2000 are in the process of being amended. “These Rules are being amended to make social media platforms more responsive and accountable to the laws of India. These Rules will also make digital media platforms adhere to the Code of Ethics. “
According to officials familiar with the matter, the guidelines are likely to be finalized soon to ensure that social media platforms “take responsibility” and are held accountable for content shared on them. As intermediaries, companies are not obliged to face actions for publications made by users.
“Current guidelines state that if the government asks the middleman to drop the charges, then it has to force him,” said an official familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named.
“The new guidelines are likely to strengthen procedures so that companies cannot claim to be intermediaries and escape liability,” the official added. “They cannot use the excuse that their permits have to come from a center in some other part of the world. Such delays are not acceptable. “
The official added that the ministry is continually working to update the rules and keep them in line with the times.
Legal experts said the dispute between Twitter and the government is more a matter of rule of law than freedom of expression. “We have a constitutional right to freedom of expression, but there are also restrictions that can be established under article 19 (2). Section 69 (A) of the IT Act gives the government the right to block such content and rules have been created. Whether that is right or wrong is a different matter, but the government has the legal power to do it, ”said NS Nappinai, Supreme Court defender and founder of Cyber Saathi.
“There is no option for a company, either under the law or under the rules, not to comply with the order. In this case, Twitter had to comply with or challenge the instructions in a court of law, “he said, adding that the company’s actions open it to criminal proceedings.
The broker guidelines, initially released in 2018, are expected to introduce a number of changes, including allowing the government to track illegal content, proactively identifying and removing or disabling public access to illegal information or content, and making it mandatory for any intermediary with more than five million users in India to be an entity to be mandatorily incorporated in India.
“Rule 3 (2) prohibits intermediaries from harboring or publishing information that, among other things, may be ‘extremely harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, pedophile, libelous, invasive of another person’s privacy, hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating to or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or in any other illegal way in any way, ‘”says the draft guidelines hosted on the Meity website.
Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook function like media companies, essentially making money from ads, but refusing to take responsibility for content. But legal experts have said that the nature of the laws gives the government wide powers and there is little transparency around removing content online, leaving room for various interpretations.
Apar Gupta, a trustee of the Internet Freedom Foundation, said the government held public consultations on the draft guidelines. “The changes, if they have been made, are not known,” Gupta said. “This also comes on the heels of a pending case before the Supreme Court. The draft, if implemented in its current form, will result in an attack on freedom of expression. Automated deletions, for example for an illegality filter, will bypass the context of the post and result in a larger content deletion. This will harm free speech and conversation on social media. “
Twitter disclosures to Lumen’s database also showed that one of the accounts the company blocked at the government’s request was that of Rajya Sabha member Sukhram Singh Yadav, deepening questions about the government’s prerogative and the conduct of Twitter, which previously said it had not. took action against the accounts of journalists, activists and politicians.
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The government respects social media, but it cannot violate the law or the Constitution of India, the minister said. Double standards will not be allowed, RS Prasad said in Parliament, referring to Twitter’s action after the violence at the US Capitol.
Twitter was told that it was not actually aligning itself with “freedom of expression”, but with those who seek to abuse that freedom and provoke disturbances of public order.
By hindustantimes.com | Written by Kanishka Sarkar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
UPDATED FEBRUARY 11, 2021 10:02 AM IST
Shortly after the blog was posted, the information and technology ministry took to the domestic social media platform Koo, which is becoming popular by the day, to express disappointment at the “unusual” post.
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