Govt tells Twitter, YouTube to take down perfume ads after row breaks out

Swati Maliwal, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, wrote to information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur on Saturday requesting that they be taken down.

Twitter and YouTube must immediately take down two advertisements of a perfume company for promoting sexual violence against women and violating gender safety rules, the information and broadcasting ministry has directed, said officials familiar with the matter.

Both videos violated guidelines of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), said the body which lays down the code for self-regulation in advertising on TV.

The videos were detrimental to the acceptable portrayal of women, and violated the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, said on official who did not want to be named. Users cannot “host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store,update or share any information which is insulting or harassing on the basis of gender,” the rules say.

Swati Maliwal, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, wrote to information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur on Saturday, detailing the dialogue in the advertisements, and requesting that they be taken down. HT has seen the letter.

“This advertisement is clearly promoting sexual violence against women and girls and encouraging a rapist mentality amongst men. The advertisement is cringe worthy and should not be allowed to be played on mass media,” Maliwal wrote about one of the ad films.

Both advertisements should be taken off the air, she demanded, and sought robust systems to ensure check and balances “to make sure that such filthy advertisements that promote rape culture are never played again on mass media”.

“One of the ways to ensure that companies refrain from playing such dirty tactics for cheap publicity would be to impose heavy penalty on this particular company for its anti-women advertisement,” Maliwal wrote. “I am of the view that this step of the Government will create a strong deterrence and discourage other companies from creating similar cringeworthy, misogynistic advertisements.”

Both videos violated guidelines of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), said the body which lays down the code for self-regulation in advertising on TV. It has directed the perfume company to suspend the advertisements immediately.

“The ad is in serious breach of the ASCI Code and is against public interest,” ASCI tweeted about one of the advertisements. “We have taken immediate action and notified the advertiser to suspend the ad, pending investigation,” it added.