The lizard walking on the roof of the palace feels that I have maintained the roof.
Such is the view of these Social Media Networking Companies, which are assuming that we have control of the whole world, it will be as we would like.
Twitter was also a victim of similar misconception and wanted to run its own arbitrary in our country.
The Government of India also showed them a mirror in time that they had to take a U turn within three days.
Yes, there were two-three days of restlessness.
Why doesn’t the government take action?
Our laws are not effective.
Many Liberals, in favor of Twitter, Nationalists, in favor of Government were engaged in pulling each other’s leg on social media, but the Government did its work very strategically and the Twitter which considered itself as Global Power also brought to the line.
What is the legal status of these companies in our country?
Which laws are applicable on them and what liability is created.
What else should be done to regulate these companies?
We will talk on this subject today.
Friends, as you know, the dispute that recently took place between Twitter and the Indian government was on the fact that the government wrote Twitter to block certain accounts and Twitter did not want to block them.
All these accounts were running fake news and inflammatory hashtags after the violence and anti-national incident at Red Fort on 26 January. Many of them were being operated from Pakistan.
Twitter was calling it the Freedom of speech.
Now in such a situation it is natural to raise doubts in the mind that,
Whether the Foreign based social media companies are bound to obey the law of our country or not.
How classification of social media companies should be done. Are they just Tech Company, are they in the role of a platform or parallel to a media house.
All these social media companies call themselves technological platforms, they have no role in content creation nor in its editing. Only users contribute the content.
But the reality is that these companies also keep watch on the content, edit or delete it when needed and also do bifurcation through their algorithms, to show what content to whom, decide what has to trend.
In India, according to the IT Act, they register themselves in the form of intermediary, in which they say that they are neither sender of message, nor moderator, nor do they know who the addressee is, and do not modulate or monitor any published content.
This excuse does not stand at all because according to IT Rules 2011, even if they are an intermediary, they have to remove child pornography, hate speech or anti-religious content according to the Due Diligence norms. So how is all this possible without monitoring.
When you monitor the content, also remove, edit and most importantly you use it for your commercial purpose, then you are operating in the form of a publishing house, then the laws made for them are also applicable on you.
The concept of intermediary agency and Due diligence was introduced only after the Baazee.com case in 2005.
The main loopholes they have found are,
The number of content to be posted daily is very large, it cannot be controlled.
Social media companies want to use the data of the users as well, the content should also be shown to the selected viewers according to their algorithms and also run their business, but do not respect the laws of any country.
Social media companies say that they do not have any human intervention in the normal process of business.
It is absolutely wrong because when many Twitter accounts were hacked, in which there was also the account of Elion Musk and many State Heads, then an admin panel was exposed, which makes it clear that human intervention takes place.
There are several ambiguous terms in the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011, which do not have definite legal interpretations, because of which many companies avoid their liabilities.
Nevertheless, there is a provision in the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011 that the intermediaries have to follow the guidelines strictly and also follow other laws in force.
A big problem is that all these big platforms have their servers out of India, then it becomes very difficult for our law enforcement agencies.
It is difficult to take appropriate action due to territorial jurisdiction even if the IP address of the content originator is detected.
They are also covered under provisions of Safe Harbor Protection. In this provision the intermediary is protected from legal liability for such illegal content.
But friends
As per law, if the company somehow conspire, abet, aid or induce, illegal content then liability can be fixed.
If any illegal content is reported by the government agency, then the company has to take action in 36 hours.
Since these companies have monopoly so far, they are neither concerned about the privacy of users nor ready to accept the law of land. These companies make their own rules and they also change depending on the opportunity.
In January 2021, when the violence took place in Capital Hill of America, Twitter suspended 70000 accounts and when violence takes place in Delhi’s Red Fort, twitter shows its concern for Free Speech.
Admittedly, the Cyber law in our country is not as elaborative as that of the European Union’s GDPR, but still not so weak that any company can come and do its own arbitrary. There is the influence of the political will of the government behind all this, but the laws are equally self-sufficient.
The government is using Sec 69A, IT Act 2000 quite well. However some activists of our own country keep opposing it.
Efforts are also being made by the government to break the monopoly. Govt. has started promoting KOO App as an alternative to Twitter. It is an Indian venture.
As n an alternative to WhatsApp, Govt. has designed an app of its own, SANDES. Right now it’s just for the use of govt. officers only but soon Govt. is going to open it for all.
The Intermediary also has to take responsibility for the content as per Vicarious Liability and cannot separate itself from Duty to Care for Users.
Our Judiciary is also getting strict with these companies. Recently, Supreme Court has told Facebook and WhatsApp that you may be a trillion dollar company but the privacy of our common citizens is more valuable.
Now what we expect from the government is that
• Quickly introduce different laws regulating these tech companies, which have definitive regulations by classifying social media platform, news portal, OTT etc. separately.
• Pass PDPR (Personal Data Protection Regulation Bill) quickly
• Data localization work should be done quickly. (Foreign companies should be bound to keep a server in India so that our data stays in India and law enforcement agencies can access it if needed.)
