CLASH OVER CONTENT

The new amendments to the Information Technology Act are paradoxical. While the industry is pushing for a self-regulatory body, the government actively chose to be a part of the content moderation of social media platforms

- Aditya Singh & Ashit Srivastava

HAVING the ability to control what can be written or discussed by the public is a power that every government craves to some extent. Social media content moderation raises unique questions of free speech as a forum of public discourse; the social media platforms are a unique method of expressing one’s concern on an open platform. However, the uneven application of the content moderation scheme on the social media platforms has been a major concern.

 

The basic concept of censorship is someone in authority deciding what is acceptable viewership for the community, based on some moral and societal guidelines. The advent of social media brings with it the problem of anyone being able to voice an opinion under the garb of anonymity, even to the extent of harming public sentiments. The government of India, in order to tackle such problems in a diverse democracy, such as ours, brought into effect the IT rules 2021 to regulate social media intermediaries. On October 28, 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology MeitY) made amendments to the Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021).

The main reasons given by the government to amend the rules were to protect the rights and interests of citizens from big-tech companies, to provide for a much-needed mechanism to address and deal with the grievances of the public and to make sure that these do not adversely affect nascent Indian start-ups. These amendments have marked a shift in tone for obligating tech giants—from merely informing their users of regulations adhering to the norms to now making reasonable efforts” to prevent the posting and propagation of objectionable content.