Behave, Centre tells social giants

The Centre on Tuesday said that it expects social media platforms with large user base — the likes of WhatsApp and others — to behave in a responsible manner and take proactive steps to ensure that consumers have complete confidence in them.

The comment comes a day after it was revealed that the telecom department had asked telecom operators and IT companies to find ways to block apps like Whatsapp and Facebook among others in case of national security.

The Centre has in recent months intensified its efforts to crack down on mass message forwards after it found that people were using social media and messaging apps to spread rumours and stoke public anger.

“We are always in touch and anytime we have a concern we are flagging it, to them. We expect all platforms to behave in a responsible manner especially those platforms with large user base,” IT Secretary Ajay P Sawhney said on sidelines of a Trai conference. He was responding to a specific query on outstanding issues with WhatsApp over the spread of rumours and hoaxes on its platform.

The secretary said doing so was critical as users need to have confidence in the platform they are on.

“We believe all major platforms have large presence here. And they will take whatever steps necessary to ensure that users have complete confidence in their platform,” he said.

Mr Sawhney, however, said that there was no particular reference from the IT ministry over blocking any platform, as such.

Whenever an issue crops up, the ministry examines it in accordance with IT Act. “The IT Act provides all kinds of obligations on the platforms and intermediaries,” he said.

WhatsApp has informed the government of its efforts to build a local team on ground, including India head, but has not met a key demand of IT Ministry, that of identifying the message originators, according to sources.

Mr Sawhney said that the ministry is “looking into” WhatsApp’s response.

“We have received their response. They have taken steps to limit forwarding and are trying to ramp up platform. We have also requested various platforms to make sure that flagging of concerns is possible within the platform. These are global platforms. We expect, over a period of time, they will ramp up facilities so if anything is disturbing, then user should be able to flag the concern,” the IT secretary said.