Twitter, Facebook, Instagram to ban in India 2021?
Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram getting banned in India today?. If these social media platforms fail to accept Indian government guidelines, had given a three-month window to social media companies like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and others to comply with new IT rules.
WHAT ARE THE NEW CONDITIONS AND REQUIREMENTS THAT THE GOVERNMENT SEEKS TO IMPOSE ON SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES?
The Centre’s new Information Technology (IT) rules( Guidelines for intermediaries and digital media ethics code) are said to come into effect on 26th May 2021 and these rules bring social media companies under a three-tier regulatory framework.
WHAT DOES THE LAW SAY?
These are several new conditions and regulatory requirements such as -
- Appointment of Chief Compliance Officer
- Grievance Redressal Officer whose duty will be to acknowledge complaints within 24 hours and resolve them within 15 days.
- 24/7 Coordination with law enforcement agencies.
- Active monitoring of content shared.
According to these new rules, every year these intermediaries will have to send reminders to their users at least once a month that if they do anything illegal, their account will be deleted.
Also, these intermediaries will have to publish a monthly compliance report enumerating the complaints received and on which actions were taken and what was the content of the complaint.
The data retention period has been doubled to 6 months for investigation purposes, in between even if you delete your account, the app will keep your data.
Suppose if there is a widely spread WhatsApp forward, who wrote the forward and where it originated from, this information will have to be given by the social media platforms to the government.
The Government and Court can also ask these companies to track the originator of any message, which leads to the point where the privacy of an individual is breached and other social media apps, where people use these platforms to express their opinions and views, these IT rules are somewhat restricting speech and freedom of expression.
REASONS FOR WHICH GOVERNMENT CAN FORCE SOCIAL MEDIA APPS TO TAKE ACTION, REASON FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW IT RULES -
Some of the reasons are very obvious, like sexual content being posted or child abuse.
Any content that is inciting violence, any content going against any religion. But few reasons are as such, if some content is against the “public order”, Government can issue public order according to anything and these apps will have to agree.
WHY TWITTER WAS ASKED TO BAN FEW ACCOUNTS -
Few months ago, The government has asked Twitter to ban some Twitter accounts in India. Twitter did ban some of them refused to ban others because there wasn’t a legit reason behind banning them. Those were the accounts that were criticising the government and supporting the farmer’s protest. This was the only reason why government wanted these accounts to be banned.
Some experts also believe that the new rules brought by the government now is to force companies like Twitter into taking actions. If now, Twitter disagrees to ban accounts, the government can bring legal actions against Twitter.
WHAT’S THE REAL REASON BEHIND WHATSAPP SUING THE GOVERNMENT?
Whatsapp will have to breach the end-to-end encryption in order to agree with the new IT rules. Whatsapp has filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court on May 25th against the Modi’s Government new digital rule, Whatsapp has filed the complaint saying the laws would compel it to break privacy protection to users. As the Government is firm on its stand of bringing in the laws that impact social media platforms.
WHAT DID THE FACEBOOK SPOKESPERSON SAY ABOUT THE COMPLIANCE WITH NEW RULES?
While on the other hand, Whatsapp Parent Company, Facebook On May 25, said it aims to comply with some of the new IT rules.
Facebook has issued a statement on compliance with the Indian laws. The company says “ We aim to comply with the provisions of the IT rules and continue to discuss a few of these issues which need more engagement with Government of India, according to the IT rules we are working to implement operational processes, improve efficiency. Facebook remains committed to people’s ability to freely and safely express themselves on the social media platform.”
HOW LIKELY ARE SOCIAL MEDIA APPS TO GET BANNED?
Social media companies that do not follow the new rules will lose the protection that “intermediaries” get in the IT act.
Once they lose this protection, under Article 79, they are liable for criminal actions and can be called up into the court, and prosecuted using the applicable laws of our Indian Constitution.
Consequently, Social Media Platforms are likely to get under punitive measures but unlikely to get banned for non-compliance with the new IT rules.
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Origially published at https://www.insighthimachal.com.
