Highlights:
- Union Law Minister says if someone misuses social media he/she will be punished
- If people use social media to spread fake news and violence, action will be taken
- Yesterday, the central government raised concern over Twitter’s commitment to transparency
One day after the Central Government raises concerns over the commitment to transparency of the US based microblogging platform Twitter, Ravi Shankar, the Union Law Minister, said that action will be taken against those who use social media to spread fake news.
In Rajya Sabha, the Union Law Minister said, ”We respect social media a lot, it has empowered common people. Social media has a big role in the Digital India programme. However, if social media is misused to spread fake news, violence then action will be taken.”
The Modi-led government has clearly conveyed to Twitter officials that the way how the social media giant official allowed the fake, unverified and automated bot accounts to be operated on its platform has raised concerns and doubts about its commitment to transparency as well as the ability to hold a healthy conversation.
The meeting took place after the Centre issued an order directing the US based microblogging platform to remove tweets and accounts who used hashtags related to “farmer genocide” and accounts which were supported by the Khalistan sympathisers and also the accounts which were backed by Pakistan and blog post issued by Twitter.
Also Read: Twitter Responds After Being Asked to Suspend 1,178 Accounts by The Government
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), during a press release, revealed that the Ministry’s Secretary, in a virtual interaction with the officials from Twitter, expressed his deep disappointment in Twitter’s leadership about the manner in which it has unwillingly, grudgingly and with great delay complied with the substantial parts of the order.
He reminded Twitter that in India, the law and the country’s Constitution is paramount. It is expected that all the responsible entities will not just reaffirm but also remain committed to compliance with the law of land, he said.
This came in after, on Wednesday, Twitter took multiple enforcement actions for violations of its rules, in response to the ”legal requests” submitted by the Indian government.
The social media giant, in a statement, said, “Separate to our enforcement under the Twitter Rules, over the course of the last 10 days, Twitter has been served with several separate blocking orders by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act”.
