On Thursday, February 25th, the central government released new
social media guidelines for online platforms and social media to curb
misuse of content to protect us against false news and other social
media hazards. IT industry body NASSCOM said in a statement “The
call is for responsible freedom and to explain that no information or
data is key for a diverse democracy like India to curb the widespread
of issue of fake news”
Merits of some of these new guidelines are that these insure videos
related to rapes, hate comments, and death threats to be taken down
within 24 hours.
Now, how does it curb our freedom of speech?
The demerits of most of the guidelines are really serious- they will prevent the public to state their opinions about the government on online platforms hence curbing the freedom of speech which is very crucial in a democracy like India. "These rules are a clear illustration of a desire of the government to control the online conversation. And this is coming at the cost of increasing political control, chilling our voices online and hurting individual privacy," Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, told DW. The new guidelines also allow authorities to take down content from Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, etc. which the government thinks is inappropriate.
Twitter recently blocked hundreds of accounts which belonged to activists, journalists etc. (who were in support of the farmers) because of the governments notice but they stopped as the users started questioning them about their freedom to express and their fundamental rights. The government then gave the company a noncompliance notice and threatened its officials with a fine and imprisonment of up to seven years for violating the order.
This clearly shows that government is trying to control our thoughts
over certain topics which the government thinks are against them.
The government should reconsider some of these guidelines related
to people stating their opinions on digital platforms about how the
government functions as right to speech is our fundamental right.
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