Apar GuptaIn the polarised environment that we now inhabit, there are few public agreements. One of these rare instances is an agreement that social media is broken. For many commentators, this is an area that needs urgent government intervention. But the form and shape of this intervention becomes again an issue of adversarial contest and controversy. This issue is fundamental to how today’s information ecology operates as large Silicon Valley platforms have become gatekeepers of social behaviours and the tremendous power they hold is anti-democratic.
Archives for the month February 2021
MeitY specifies 50 lakh registered users as threshold for Significant Social Media Intermediaries
The Ministry of Information and Technology (MeitY) has issued a notification dated 25th February 2021 that specifies fifty lakh registered users in India as the threshold for a social media intermediary to be considered a significant social media intermediary.
MeitY releases Intermediary Guidelines, 2021
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has released Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules of 2021.
Shutting Down Digital Square
The growing digitisation of Indian society is reflective in the ongoing protests by farmers. Battles are being waged every day in gram sabhas and protest sites as well on social media. Each day on Twitter, a new hashtag trends for and against the farm laws, or farm leaders, or the promoters of leading Indian conglomerates, leaders of Opposition and even the Prime Minister. This conversation is public, chaotic but also democratic. In this adversarial contest, a recent government direction was issued to the social media platform, ordering it to shut down user accounts connected with these protests. This direction presents a clear breach of fundamental rights but also reveals a complex relationship between the government and large platforms on the understanding of the Constitution of India.