New Delhi: On February 25, the Government of India took a revolutionary resolution relating to the misuse of social media and on-line streaming platforms. It requested tech majors corresponding to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to take sure steps to manage their content material. However, even three months later as the deadline nears, the firms appear to have did not adjust to the authorities’s instructions.
Zee News Anchor Aditi Tyagi on Monday (May 24) defined the authorities’s order relating to social media content material regulation and how the overseas tech companies have defied the order.
When the East India Company got here to India in the seventeenth century, it didn’t enslave our nation immediately. Rather, this firm strengthened itself in India for 100 years and after the Battle of Plassey in the yr 1757, made India a slave.
Today 264 years have handed since this warfare, however like the East India Company, many large expertise firms of the world are in search of to do one thing comparable.
Three months in the past, the Government of India issued instructions to test the misuse of social media and on-line streaming platforms that glamorize abuses.
Under this resolution, the authorities had drawn a boundary line between each data, leisure and information reaching you thru the Internet. It was the Lakshman Rekha of the Internet period, which was created to make clear the distinction between proper and fallacious.
The social media companies got three months to execute these directions. The deadline ends tomorrow. But in accordance with the data now we have acquired, none of these firms adopted the directions of the authorities.
The authorities had instructed the firms to create a system to take heed to the grievances of the folks on social media. Under this, these firms had been requested to nominate three officers.
The first officer was the Chief Compliance Officer, who would be certain that the complaints of the folks had been addressed beneath the legislation. No firm has accomplished this besides Koo.
Apart from this, a Nodal Contact Officer was additionally to be appointed, who could be in contact with the investigating businesses and ministries of India. No appointment has been accomplished for this.
The authorities had additionally stated that these firms must appoint a Grievance Officer, who would take steps inside 24 hours on the complaints of their customers and redress the grievance inside 15 days. This order was additionally not complied with.
The firms had been directed to make a month-to-month report, beneath which these firms would inform the authorities what number of complaints they acquired in the month and what motion was taken on them. But even after 90 days, nothing occurred on this both.
The authorities had additional stated that every one expertise firms together with Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter should be certain that no data, images and movies of their customers are misused. If objectionable footage of an individual are shared or nudity is promoted, then such publish will now need to be eliminated inside 24 hours and the account of the particular person sharing such images should be closed.
According to the authorities, inside 90 days, these firms needed to put together a system for such motion, but it surely didn’t occur.
The authorities had stated that if these firms delete a publish or image made by a consumer, then they’ve to offer the concrete purpose to that consumer and they are going to be given full alternative to make clear. For this additionally, these firms needed to make a system in 3 months however they didn’t take any step.
The query is that when the authorities gave these firms three months, why did they not adjust to the orders. Have these expertise firms change into greater than the authorities?
In such a state of affairs, the authorities can take sturdy steps towards these firms.
The safety that these firms get beneath part 79 of the IT Act 2000 might be ended.
Section 79 of the IT Act 2000 ensures that these firms is not going to be accountable if any particular person shares unlawful data on the social media platforms of these firms.
However, in the tips given by the authorities on February 25, it was stated that if these firms don’t take away any content material after the order of the courtroom and the authorities, then beneath Section 79, this proper might be taken away from them.
In India, WhatsApp has 53 crore customers, Youtube 44 crores 80 lakhs, Facebook 41 crores, Instagram 21 crores and Twitter 1 crores 75 lakh customers. In this case, these developments are essential for everybody. People should understand what is going on round them and perceive the true nature of these firms.