When the Farmer Bill came into action in February this year (2021), there were many tweets strolling in Twitter which the govt. of India thought to be inciting violence. There was a spat between the govt. and Twitter for the same. Hence, from there, the govt. issued new guidelines for all digital media platforms running in India. Also, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday said concerns have been raised over uncontrolled abuse of social media platforms and spread of fake news.
The Supreme Court gave its jurisdiction that the misuse of social media and OTT (over-the-top) platforms may not be effective as they lack penal provisions and the Centre should frame more stringent rules in order to keep a check and regulate their working.
New Guidelines:
• OTT platform: a three-level grievance redressal mechanism has been established for OTT players (Netflix, Amazon, etc.). Also, they will have to classify their content into 5 age-based levels:U (Universal), U/A 7+, U/A 13+, U/A 16+, and A (Adult).There would be a feature of parental lock which these platforms would have to implement for content U/A 13+ or higher, and reliable age verification mechanisms for content classified as A.
• Social media: all social media categories would be classified under 2 categories- Social media intermediaries and Significant Social media intermediaries (they will have greater obligations). 50 lac registered users have been fixed for defining the threshold of ‘Significant social media intermediary’. They will have to adhere to additional obligations and compliance under the new IT rules. The new IT rules require significant social media intermediaries (SSMIs) such as Google, Facebook, etc. to publish a monthly report on the action taken on user complaints that they have received. This would ensure more transparency between the govt. and these platforms. Aligning with this, the new IT ACT in India has been issued on 25 February, 2021 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
• ‘Code of conduct’ for social media platforms: the social media will have to remove any disputable content flagged by the Indian Govt. or court within 36 hours. Any obscene/ morphed content should be taken down within 24 hours of reporting. The person/group spreading these hatred/abusive content should be reported to the government immediately.
• For Digital news media: just like OTT platforms the digital media would also have to adhere to three-tier grievance redressal mechanism. There are some Code of Conduct for them also. Following Norms of Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council of India and the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act is a must for digital news media.
The IT minister said that social media, digital platforms and OTT players should not play double standards in taking down disputed content/adhering to the norms or reporting the origin of a mischievous tweet/post by someone.
The government decided to restrict any activity on social media which would hamper India's sovereignty and any individual Indian's dignity.
