What Is The Right Way Of Regulating Social Media?

Besides tech solutions, policy discussions involving the public can help fight fake news

The Supreme Court recently stressed the need to find a balance between the right to online privacy and the right of the state to detect people who use the web to spread panic and commit crimes. Are current regulations and the nature of Internet platforms tuned to find this balance? In a conversation moderated by Srinivasan Ramani, Arun Mohan Sukumar and Raman Chima take stock of the issues involved and offer some suggestions. Excerpts:

Arun, in the last few years there has been an explosion in the use of messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Concomitantly, there has been an increase in fake news and rumourmongering leading to lynchings. Are the steps taken by WhatsApp to combat this enough or should it do more?

Arun Mohan Sukumar: When you ask us what are the steps, we should also ask whether these are the steps that we should take in the first place. I think many would agree that some of these problems have nothing to do with the platforms themselves and cannot be resolved by technological solutions.

Fake news is not something that has been catalysed in the digital age alone; it has been a long-standing problem. We have had very little success in trying to persuade people not to believe certain stuff. And I’m not entirely sure whether the solution to this problem necessarily lies in technology.

WhatsApp, to its credit, tried to limit forwards to five people and the norm has been tested. It has been piloted in other parts of the world as well. WhatsApp is looking at India not just as a booming market but also as a place where it can pilot some of these solutions and test them out in other emerging markets as well.