Social media giants might face ban in India: Blatantly ignored the guidelines issued by the government

As the news got fired up in the evening of 25th may that social media companies like Facebook and twitter might face a block/ban in the Republic of India as they failed to comply the intermediary guidelines issued by the government of India on Feb 25th the memes circulating round these platforms shows that people of India are now ready and are accepting that this is very much a possibility.

What were the guidelines?

Three months back the govt of India issued guideline to these tech giants including all the OTT platforms that they need to ensure that if content floating on there platforms is by any way or the other damaging the sovereignty & unity of the country and create any kind of damage to the peace between the societies, that particular content should be removed from the platform within 36 hours of first notice and also a complain mechanism should be established.

Steps taken by companies

Unfortunately, not even a single company took any step to follow up the guidelines issued by the government of India which indicates that everything is completely stagnant from the part of social media companies, not even a single statement from any company is issued towards the govt amid the pandemic explaining that they won’t be able to comply with the guidelines also not even seeking for expansion of the deadlines.

The danger

The important question that arises as of now is how Indian govt will put a dent on the ego of big social media companies? The social media companies including all the OTT platforms can loose there privileges under the Section 79 of the IT Act, which states that an intermediary/social media companies will not be liable for any kind of third party information provided on their platform which literally mean that social media is not responsible for the information circulating on their platform. You and me could write anything on the platform and social media do not hold itself responsible. Now, the govt of India could scrap Section 79.

What does this mean?

If any individual or news broadcaster are publishing any kind of fake information on the platform, hurting the sentiments of people, spreading news that could lead to communal disharmony then the people cannot sue the social media for this. Now, the media giants are on there on, as the privilege to this might be scrapped from there bag of immunity and they are now accountable for the same. This means that from 26th May they can/might be criminally charged for the any such information circulating on their platforms.

U.S. social media giants are competing with elected governments

This is a very famous quote by the president of Russia ‘Vladimir Putin’. These social media companies have grown a massive user base in the market of India and generates a ton of revenue from this profitable democracy. Even amid this, they have not shown any inclination to comply to the rules, regulations and domestic laws. Social media platforms categorically refuses to be transparent to their fact checking mechanism and criteria to label tweets as we have seen very recently.

Since we have seen in past that the impact of social media campaigns has a very significant impact on the reality, this becomes very important for someone to be set accountable as in this case the “social media”. But another very important question that arises from here is what will happen to Article (19)(1)(a) of Indian Constitution which guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression. The simple answer is the article/law came into functioning before the social media came into existence, it was protected back then, it will be protected now as well.

@arya_aakash_jawla