{"id":109305,"date":"2021-05-29T10:13:58","date_gmt":"2021-05-29T04:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=109305"},"modified":"2021-05-31T13:32:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T08:02:06","slug":"tussle-between-government-and-social-media-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/tussle-between-government-and-social-media-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Tussle between Government and Social Media companies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Synopsis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/flaws-in-new-it-rules-2021\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new IT rules<\/a> have initiated a tussle between Government and Social Media companies. The government wants compliance while the companies are hesitant to adopt them on the grounds of privacy and freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Background<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fault lines are hardening between the government and social media companies over the adoption of the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WhatsApp has approached the Delhi High Court to challenge the traceability provisions under the new rules.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As per the platform, implementing such a provision would infringe on the users\u2019 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/polity\/fundamental-rights\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fundamental rights<\/a> to privacy and freedom of speech\u201d.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Experts believe that this petition was filed after witnessing inappropriate behavior on the part of the government.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Delhi police had recently visited Twitter\u2019s offices in Delhi and Gurgaon to serve the platform a notice over its flawed way of identifying \u201cmanipulated media\u201d.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Issues in new IT rules<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Firstly<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the government will be performing a dual role of an appellant and arbitrator. This is against the principle of natural justice as a person can\u2019t be made a judge in his own cause.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Secondly<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a blanket demand on traceability may allow the government to wield power in an arbitrary manner for purposes that remain opaque.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further such a demand is unnecessary as the companies have on various occasions complied with the government\u2019s requests on issues pertaining to terror, child abuse, national security, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The provisions of the Indian Penal code are sufficient to ensure companies&#8217; compliance with government requests.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Concerns associated with Social Media Companies<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is<\/span><b> not much clarity over the policy adopted by them<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> before taking down content. Despite their professions of faith in openness, the decision-making processes of these platforms are wrapped in secrecy.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further, they <\/span><b>evade their responsibility as per their convenience<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by invoking the protection granted under Section 79 of the IT Act 2000.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It states that any intermediary shall not be held legally or otherwise liable for the following things. They are, any third-party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted on its platform.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thus, the judiciary should decide the case in the following manner. It should decide in such a way that targeted access is given to the government. And, subject to due process gets cleared by a neutral arbiter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/editorials\/tightrope-walking-big-tech-india-it-rules-whatsapp-twitter-facebook-7333281\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Source<\/b>: indianexpress.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synopsis: The new IT rules have initiated a tussle between Government and Social Media companies. The government wants compliance while the companies are hesitant to adopt them on the grounds of privacy and freedom. Background: The fault lines are hardening between the government and social media companies over the adoption of the Information Technology (Guidelines&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/tussle-between-government-and-social-media-companies\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tussle between Government and Social Media companies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,1351,1310,9],"tags":[1293],"class_list":["post-109305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-daily-news","category-daily-news-updates","category-public","tag-sec_1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704913145},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}