While many of us are not aware of the declarations by the Government of India regarding the guidelines given to all social media platforms as well as OTT (Over The Top), a very few of us know that the same bill also covered a major part of Social Media platforms as well. What are these guidelines? Why are they important? Let's have a detailed look at what the government said and what the media is portraying.
What is it all about?
Well the govt after the huge ruckus created by opening scene of Tandav web series on Amazon Prime video and multiple FIR across India took cognizance and did something long overdue on the table of policy makers but they couldn’t find a good reason to have a good look at it, Tandav was the last straw that broke the Camel’s back. The majority community could no longer take it and created noise about it. Meanwhile, when policymakers or the government had a chance to look at this issue with more detail, they took it on themselves to settle the whole issue and address many issues at once, viz the regularization of all online content, be it OTT or social media.
The press conference was telecast live on the PIB channel of YouTube (see the full video here) as well as all the national television channels. Govt put up the reasons and also took a few questions from the journalist fraternity to clear the topic once and for all, that all the social media platform are welcomed in this nation to do business and we also thank them for providing an opportunity to the Indian community to express their views freely through their platforms. But, while we encourage the use of social media in this context, we also need to look/and analyze restrict at its negative usages, we need to fight fake news, fearmongering, hoaxes leading to lynches, etc. Hence, the need of a govt intervention is important and inevitable.
What did the Government say?
The govt in its guidelines clearly stated that we won’t give any policy or pass an act in parliament for the same, the issue was in govts mind right from the banning of Chinese apps on similar fears, we just intend to regularise the interned for better management and clear communication, the govt gave clear guidelines to each section of online service providers, lets look at them bit by bit and understand its implications.
OTT Platforms.
The OTT platforms were suggested to make appropriate arrangements to appoint zonal/nodal officers to resolve any issue about any scene or usage of words in any of its web series on priority, and or time-based order.
For the same, the government suggested making a portal within the application or the website, and making it important to address the grievances filed by the consumer.
Govt also requested the OTT applications to mention the ages for which the particular show/movie is appropriate, and make sure that a short description of the same is displayed. So, as the consumer can make an informed choice (Amazon and many online platforms have this in place.
Since, there is no govt body which can censor or regulate the OTT platforms they were told to self-regulate on this matter and make appropriate actions necessary for the same, While many welcomed the move, many of the directors and writers said that it was a direct attack on their freedom of creativity, but nothing of that sort was taken away in these guidelines, in fact in the whole video Dr. Ravi Shankar Prasad maintained his stance that the govt in not intervening in but it is making appropriate guidelines regarding the same. It is also important to note that the government had no intention to set up a parallel authority to censor or approve the content on the internet; it is still free, but the guidelines suggested having a self-regulatory body.
Social Media Platforms
All the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp were told to comply with the IT rules and disclose any malicious information or fake news published by their users. Presently, these platforms are presented immunity with any kind of legal claims against them as they are termed as moderators in freedom of expression. But if they do not comply with these rules, then they might be stripped of this right, thus stripping off their immunity too.
The govt wanted them to step up and take responsibility and make tools to fight fake news and its aftermath effects, how is this possible? Well, there are various tools and methods which are deployed in many developed nations, like GDPR (general data protection regulation) in EU, all the data produced by these companies must be locally stored, which is already being followed in case of financial apps (RBI's regulations are clear in such matter), a similar data bank can be installed and data can be localized.
While the case of WhatsApp filed in the Delhi HC is a textbook example of an age-old proverb, “ulta chor kotval ko dante,” meaning the thief instead of accepting the charges, reprimands the owner. While the claim that privacy shall be compromised on the face of it may look right and logical, a technical mind would agree to it. There are always some ways where you can follow the rules and still make things possible; they just need the will to do so. In this case, the government suggested allotting a hash value to every individual message and saving it in their database. Let us understand this with an example.
A user R sends a message to User T and the message is “hello, how are you” now there will be an encrypted hash value create for the same just like a message ID with a common pre/suffix to identify the user like 12585##8SS (just an example) here some part of the code can be allotted to the user which shall be common in all the message. When the message is forwarded, the same code is carried with the same hash value signature, meaning no matter how many times this is sent the hash value is the same and if the message turns out to be hoax, a simple search of the message ID will track down the first user or the originator. This idea holds the sacred vow of privacy and does not break the end-to-end encryption, at the same time, helps to fix the liability to the originator. Of course, there is a small challenge in this; if the message is copied rather than simply forwarded, a new hash value will be created, and in such a case, it won’t be very easy to find the first originator.
Twitter and Facebook
When referring to Twitter and Facebook, almost all the social media sites are taken into account, so it pretty much sums up all of them. While the Indian govt had made it abundantly clear that it won’t tolerate the proliferation of fake news and requested all the social media platforms to help curb these norms and comply with the guidelines laid down, or lose the immunity they enjoy legally.
Pretty much same guidelines were laid down for these websites as well, the basic idea to lay these guidelines was to make the platform safer for general public, it was sometimes observed that many unfortunate incidents came to lime light which included harassment of women, digitally morphed images of women to defame them, which was unfortunate and nothing could be done in such a case as there was no proper mechanism in place which could bring the culprits to books.
If it's that good, then why are the companies not complying?
There are many reasons, one being cost-effectiveness. Also, the laws in India are very weak regarding cyberspace, and hence these companies try to exploit these loopholes and the lack of a proper framework of law in such spaces.
What can happen next?
It is highly improbable that the companies will have to pack up and go back as there are no Indian or otherwise alternative to these apps and all the ministries and politicians are already on these popular platforms to connect globally, but in the worse case scenario there shall be non-compliance case registered against them and at most they will have to limit their extra services they provide. Whatever happens but the services won’t be completely discontinued until we come up with a home-grown platform/alternative to these services. Although to compete with Twitter, there is already an Indian alternative app called KOO, which is pretty much Indian styled. The app UI is a bit odd for now, but with recent development and investment of $30 million, we hope it may get better.
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