India Draws The Boundary Line For Social Media Companies

The government has unveiled guidelines to regulate social media, OTT and digital media.

Just In

On Thursday, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY) announced its draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, for social media as well as OTT(Over-The-Top) platforms and digital media.

These rules will come in effect from the date of their publication in the gazette, except for the additional due diligence for significant social media intermediaries, which will come into effect three months after the publication of these rules.

Points To Be Noted

Of all the key points mentioned in the guidelines, we have picked the ones which are highly crucial. Those are as follows:

• The Indian government wants social media firms to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer, Nodal Contact Person and Resident Grievance Officer. All these officers have to be residents of India.
• The guidelines also ask for tracking of the ‘first originator’ of a message and apply to a significant social media intermediary.
• The rules also state that an appropriate mechanism should be offered to users who wish to verify their accounts voluntarily.
• The rules also ask for a grievance redressal system for OTT platforms and digital news media portals.
• The government wants OTT platforms should classify their films and content themselves based on age.
• For publishers of news on digital media, the government wants a three-level grievance redressal mechanism, including self-regulation by the publishers; self-regulation by the self-regulating bodies of the publishers and oversight mechanism.

From The Lens

All these guidelines sound like the government is trying to control the heinous things that go around social media. The move to track the ‘first originator’ of a message will help the government in matters related to security and sovereignty of the country, public order or regard to rape or any other sexually explicit material. However, tracking the origin of a particular message means that WhatsApp has to break its encryption and find the source. This means that, if WhatsApp complies with these rules, it will not be encrypted end-to-end any more.

In another note, MeITY minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that they haven’t framed any law. He was quoted by Indian Express, saying, We have framed these rules under the existing IT Act,” and added, “We are trusting the platforms to follow these regulations.”

So, this looks like the government is not enforcing the guidelines on the social media platforms but asking them to regulate themselves so that malicious content and misinformation can be removed quickly. We have to see how platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Netflix and several others do their best to regulate themselves in the future.

Head to moneyguru’s Insight section to stay updated on all major financial news updates of the day