‘India prefers self-regulatory body for social media’
INDIA continues to favour a selfregulatory body for social media content disputes, a central minister said, despite a lack of consensus among Big Tech firms to form a joint appeals panel.
The government last Friday (28) said it would set up an appeals panel amid concerns users had no recourse if they objected to moderation decisions of firms such as Meta META.O, Twitter TWTR.N or Google GOOGL.O.
The move is seen as the latest attempt of prime minister Narendra Modi’s administration to regulate Big Tech firms through policy changes that have often irked companies complaining about compliance burden.
News of the panel came after New Delhi said in June it could scrap the proposal if the companies themselves banded together to form a self-regulatory body. But they failed to reach a consensus – Google was opposed to external reviews, while Meta and Twitter favoured self-regulation fearing government overreach.
India’s minister of state for IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said he could still consider industry selfregulation as government-led reviews “is not something we want to spend a lot of time doing”.
He added, however, that such a body “cannot be a cozy club of industry people” and should have consumer and government representation.
Meta, Twitter and Google did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
During a press briefing last Saturday (29), Chandrasekhar said the current system of inhouse grievance redressal at tech companies was “broken”.
Twitter has faced a backlash in the past after it blocked accounts of some influential Indians, including politicians, citing violation of its policies.
It also locked horns with the Indian government last year when it declined to comply fully with orders to take down accounts the government said spread misinformation.
The government panel “is a signal to them (social media firms) they need to up their game,” Chandrasekhar said.