India tightens regulatory grip on Facebook, WhatsApp with new rules
India
announced new rules on Thursday to regulate content on social media, making
Facebook, WhatsApp and others more
accountable to legal requests for swift removal of posts and sharing details on
the originators of messages.
The rules
-- part of an effort by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist government
to tighten the leash on Big Tech -- come after Twitter recently ignored
government orders to drop content related to farmers' protests.
India is
the largest market by users for both Facebook and its messenger service
WhatsApp.
The new
rules issued by the government, called the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital
Media Ethics Code, will be legally enforceable.
They will
require big social media companies to set up a grievance redressal mechanism
and within three months appoint new executives to coordinate with law
enforcement.
Social
media firms should be "more responsible and accountable," Ravi
Shankar Prasad, the minister for information technology, told reporters in
outlining the rules. Read More
Comments
Post a Comment