Govt assures: Social media platforms will be made accountable to Indian laws

Responding to a question posed by Rajya Sabha MP and BJP national spokesperson Rajeev Chandrasekhar on infringement of Indian laws by social media platforms, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre said that the new rules will also make digital media platforms adhere to Code of Ethics.

The Narendra Modi government is amending rules amended to ensure that social media platforms are more responsive and accountable to Indian laws, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre informed in Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
 

Responding to a question posed by Rajya Sabha MP and BJP national spokesperson Rajeev Chandrasekhar on infringement of Indian laws by social media platforms, Dhotre said that the new rules will also make digital media platforms adhere to Code of Ethics.
 

Rajeev Chandrasekhar had sought to know if the government was taking steps to ensure that algorithms and community guidelines of social media platforms were consistent with Indian laws and that these are equitably applied to all Indian citizens as guaranteed by Article 14 of the Constitution.

Enumerating the steps already taken by the government, Dhotre said that social media and digital media platforms -- for the third-party information hosted on their computer resource -- are intermediaries in the context of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
 

He further said that the social media and digital media platforms are required to follow certain due diligence like the publishing of terms and conditions of their platform and privacy policy. 
 

The minister said that the platforms are also expected to inform the users not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any information that is harmful, objectionable, and unlawful in any way.
 

Citing section 79 of the IT Act, Dhotre said that social media and digital media platforms are required to disable/remove unlawful content relatable to Article 19(2) of the Constitution, on being notified either through court order or by the appropriate government or its agency.

The Centre has been locked in a standoff with micro-blogging site Twitter over blocking of accounts that have allegedly been spreading misinformation about the farm laws and misleading farmers protesting against the legislation.
 

Twitter claimed the actions it had been told to undertake by the government were not consistent with Indian law, and in keeping with its principles of defending speech and freedom of expressing.
 

The micro-blogging site clarified that it had not taken action on some of the accounts as doing so would have violated their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law. 

Responding to the query on recent controversies about alleged bias by certain social media platforms, MoS Dhotre said with the proliferation of the Internet as well as social and digital media, the ability of anyone being able to post any material resulting in huge data being made available on digital media, there is always a possibility that some of such material posted may be attracting conditions as laid down in Article 19(2) of the Constitution.
 

To clarify, Article 19(2) authorises the government to legally impose reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech and expression in the interests of the security, sovereignty and integrity of India.