Last Updated on 24/11/2021 by Sanskriti
A parliamentary panel in India has urged that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook be treated as publishers and that a regulatory agency be established to monitor them, possibly exposing the businesses to increased accountability for user-generated content.
While reviewing the 2019 personal data protection bill, The high-level group made the recommendations, which aims to safeguard users’ privacy and impose rigorous rules on how businesses like Alphabet Inc. Google and Amazon.com Inc. gather process and store data. The committee advised that a body be established similar to the Press Council of India to control content.
According to the two sources who were not allowed to speak to the media, the panel is requesting stricter guidelines since present legislation considering these social media sites as intermediaries do not go far enough in terms of control.
“A mechanism may be devised for social media platforms to be held accountable for content coming from unverified accounts,” this was quoted in the report by the officials. They also claimed that the present provisions in the law on personal data protection are overly wide.
According to the sources, the committee proposed that a body be established to regulate the material, similar to the Press Council of India. They suggested that a method be established to hold social media sites accountable for material posted by unverified accounts. The report’s recommendations will be delivered to parliament when it reconvenes on Nov. 29, according to P. P. Chaudhary, a politician from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, who chairs the group. He didn’t want to talk about the report’s details.
If these ideas are included in the new bill and ratified by parliament, it might have a significant influence on how public and private enterprises operate in the world’s largest social media market. Offenses under this law might result in fines of up to 4% of a social media company’s annual global revenue, equivalent to European Union penalties.
Similar emotions exist outside of India as well. From Washington to Brussels, lawmakers have considered taking steps to hold social media firms like Facebook and Google accountable for the massive amounts of information created on their networks on a regular basis, a viewpoint that gained traction during the epidemic.
These firms can’t be held accountable for user-generated content on their platforms in India right now. They are, however, required to obey the Intermediary Guidelines, which were established earlier this year.
This involves establishing offices in India, employing compliance officers, and complying with the government’s requests to remove information that it deems damaging.
