Online regulations by FB, Twitter
Most of the social and Internet firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google try to protect the rights of its users to express their views. Facebook, Twitter and Google regularly publish reports giving details about number of request received from the government to remove content. This, besides bringing transparency, also put pressure on governments as requests to remove data put them in a bad light. Earlier this month, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself felt the need to write about online regulations. He wrote on his Facebook account that governments sometimes order the company to remove content they believe is illegal but that doesn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standards.
“We fight to protect our community from unnecessary or overreaching government intervention. We push back to make sure we only comply with government demands when they’re lawful and necessary,” said Zuckerberg. He said that if Facebook has to block something prohibited in one country, it generally try to leave it unblocked for the rest of the world so that limitations on sharing and voice are minimised. “We also work to expose how governments restrict what people share, and that’s why we publish the Global Government Requests Report,” he said. However, he said that if Facebook ignored a lawful government order “and then we were blocked, all of these people’s voices would be muted, and whatever content the government believed was illegal would be blocked anyway.”
Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo, who was in India when the Supreme Court quashed the IT Act’s Section 66A, said that the micro-blogging site will ensure that its users’ “voices” are defended, even as it would make it harder for any “abuse” to take place. However, he said that accounts of terror groups like ISIS are against law and service terms of Twitter and “we will continue to make it harder (for those who abuse). We have made it a lot easier to report abuse. “According to Twitter’s Transparency Report, the social network during July-December 2014 received 41 account information requests from the Indian government and information was provided in
22 per cent cases.