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Centre closely monitoring fake videos being uploaded online
After a meeting between home ministry officials and social media company representatives on Tuesday, a senior official said there is a possibility that the social media companies could be asked to attend a meeting with senior IT and home ministry officials.
The Union government is closely monitoring social media platforms and has asked social media companies to give an impetus to placing safeguards against misuse, two senior government functionaries aware of the developments said on Wednesday.
IT ministry officials said that the Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules 2018, which was to be notified by the Centre early this year on the direction of the Supreme Court, is going to be notified soon. It is likely to insist on greater culpability of social media sites, who might be asked to take “suo motu” cognisance of messages on their platform.
After a meeting between home ministry officials and social media company representatives on Tuesday, a senior official said there is a possibility that the social media companies could be asked to attend a meeting with senior IT and home ministry officials.
“We have already spoken about the need to have stringent regulations in place to check possible misuse of social media platforms. This was before the Delhi incident (of violence that erupted in north-east Delhi). Now a close watch is being kept and the home ministry is handling the issue of fake videos and provocative content being circulated,” said a senior functionary from the IT ministry.
After the meeting, an official present said that the government was satisfied with the work on misinformation by messaging companies and help that law enforcement agencies have received from them.
Delhi Police reports — that pointed out that several WhatsApp groups that came into existence just before or during the riots to share inciting videos and messages — was also taken up at the meeting, the first official said.
A second official said both the IT and home ministry had earlier issued instructions to the social media platforms to have in place a “robust mechanism” to deal with posts that “could potentially create law and order problems.”
“The government has taken a stern view of the social media platforms taking time to review posts that could trigger violence and communal disharmony,” the second official said.
Ahead of the general elections, social media intermediary members of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) adopted a Voluntary Code of Ethics, which included establishing a high priority communication channel with the nodal officers designated by Election Commission of India. Besides this, platforms also agreed to take down any “objectionable content” within 24 hours of being notified.
Twitter India, in a written response, told HT that it was committed to working with governments around the world, including in India, to encourage healthy behaviour on the service.
“We appreciate the importance of the work being undertaken by the Union ministry of home affairs and we thank them for their inclusive engagement. We have no further details to share at this time,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
Gurshabad Grover of The Center for Internet Society said that the risk of an obligation on the part of a social media site could be huge.
“Social media sites could rely on automated bots for finding out illegal content, which could pose problems to user privacy. For instance, when Tumblr used bots to weed out porn, even permitted content ran foul of the bot. The definition of an user, of what a social media site is becomes crucial at this point,” said Grover.
