What does Social Media Guidelines say?

Recently Indian government has released guidelines for the usage of social media by common man. Facebook, Twitter like social media platforms are included in these guidelines.

Minister Ravishankar Prasad has announced that people have reached the government with their problems like their morphed pictures are being used on the social media websites, and also many have uploaded the fake news. People are also using social media to spread hate and terrorism.

In India alone around 53 crores people are using Whatsapp and almost similar number of people using Facebook. Though Twitter share of use by people is comparatively lesser but still it is also widely used by many people.

Social media guidelines

1. It is required for social media platform sites to create grievance redressal mechanism.
2. Complaint would be registered within 24 hours.
3. Social media platforms should remove the content within 24 hours if there is a complaint of hut of dignity especially women.
4. Social media platforms would have to disclose the name of the original user who had started any such violation.
5. Every social media company should have one address of India.
6. Every social media company should do user verification.

There are many points in the latest social media guidelines but not confirmed and clear so far. For them to understand better we need to wait for some time more. Also, lets see what social media platforms have to say in their favour!!

Cyber Experts on Social Media Guidelines?

Cyber experts have mixed views on these guidelines. According to a popular newspaper, Cyber expert Manan Shah praises these guidelines. He says these would be useful only in case of any criminal activities. Government would have proper control on the online criminal activities.

As per the new guidelines the data center would be in India itself so taking out data in future when required would be very convenient. At present most of the data centers of these online platforms are out of India. So, sometimes it takes a lot of time in fetching the data when that is required during some investigations.

But as per the new guidelines, within 72 hours the police would have the complete data which would help in resolving the cyber crime quickly.

Why people afraid of new Social Media Guidelines?

Many users are taking these guidelines as the interference with their fundamental right to express. At present, people just upload anything or any content for the sake of fun also but with the implementation of these guidelines, users would have to remove any content or part of the content which could impose a threat to the Indian Law and Order.

But this is still not clear who would decide and to what extent would the guidelines be created. for example, in one of the recent case when police detained an activist for violating online guidelines, the court objected the police itself. So, there are many things which we need to understand for this social media law.