Facebook India
Information technology and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday warned social media platforms such as Facebook of “stringent action” in case of any attempt to sway the country’s electoral process. The government is considering a new regulatory framework for online content, including on social media and websites, Union minister for information and broadcasting Smriti Irani said on 17 March at the News18 Rising India Summit , conceding that the law is not clear about online news and broadcast content.
“We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information. We have announced that we are planning to introduce improvements to our settings and give people more prominent controls ,” an India-based Facebook spokesperson said in response to an emailed query from HT. “We have a lot of work to do to regain people’s trust and are working hard to tackle past abuse, prevent future abuse and will continue to engage with the Election Commission of India and relevant stakeholders to answer any questions they may have.”
The absence of a data protection law and a competition watchdog to oversee Internet companies are key shortcomings, said Sunil Abraham, founder of the think tank Centre for Internet and Society.
“Evil is a function of power. As internet giants get bigger and bigger, they’ll become more and more evil. In fact, in jurisdictions like India, where we don’t have a data protection law and a sufficiently agile competition commission to take on these Internet giants, they can do whatever they want to..,” said Abraham.
Internet networks have helped undermine the business model for real news and replace it with a vibrant fake news model, in the process cornering the lion’s share of the digital advertising revenue, said Abraham . Facebook and Google dominate the ₹9,490 crore digital advertising market in India.
“Since they don’t see themselves as a media company, their primary objective is to maximize the amount of time their users spend on the platform,” he said, adding that social media networks aren’t concerned whether the content they present is the truth or lies
“It would be laziness on our part to just blame Facebook and then feel morally superior. We have to regulate them using competition law and a data protection law so that they behave themselves on our jurisdiction,” Abraham said.
The legal framework for Indian social media users is limited. Section 43 (A) of the IT Act operates merely as a data security law applicable only to someone whose privacy has been infringed and can demonstrate that he/she has suffered a financial loss in the process. infraction against conservative social values.
India registered 251 honour killings in 2015 against 28 in 2014, recording a big spike in murders carried out by people professing to be acting in defence of their family’s reputation, the government told Parliament in 2015. Vinod Saroj. Both appeared set to vote for SP’s Jaya Bachchan, prompting party chief Akhilesh Yadav to thank Raja Bhaiya and post a picture with him on Twitter. There was also speculation that BSP legislator Anil Singh had voted for the BJP. Keeping it ambiguous, Anil Singh said that he had cast his vote and showed it to BSP agent Lalji Verma and the rest could be known from him.
Despite the claims of cross-voting the BSP leader exuded confidence that all the nine surplus MLAs of the SP as well as seven of the Congress and one of the RLD have voted in favour of his party candidate. There are 11 candidates for 10 Rajya Sabha seats and 37 first preference votes are required for victory in each seat.