Stringent Norms for Social Media

In News

• The Government of India is working to bring in more stringent norms for social media platforms. 

About

• Aim: These norms are aimed at increasing accountability for the content, which may lead to dilution of safe harbour rules that protects intermediaries from being held liable for third-party content on their platforms.
• Work in progress: The work is going on and the government will soon initiate discussions with industry and stakeholders on the new framework.
• Global practice: 
  • In countries like Europe, East Asia, many states of the U.S. each and every place is moving towards more accountability for social media. 
  • Whatever is being read, someone is accountable for what is written. 
  • Accountability is applicable in the analogue world, like with papers and magazines. 
  • Many countries are moving to newer legislations where there is no concept of a “complete safe harbour”.
• New IT Rules: 
  • The new IT rules laws came into effect last year.
  • They have served a purpose, but social media is moving forward so we need newer laws to keep pace with this.

Safe Harbour Provisions

• Safe harbour is a provision in Article 79 of the IT Act, 2000. 
• It refers to the understanding that an intermediary is merely a content hosting platform for the users and third parties. It has no immediate control over the content posted on its platform by the user.
• The government has pointed out that the intermediaries, not in compliance with the rules, would lose the ‘Safe Harbour protection’ provided to them. 
• Since the intermediary is not a publisher of the content, therefore it cannot be held liable for such content. This is akin to not punishing the highway operator for a collision of cars on the highway.

Social Media

• Meaning: 
  • Broadly, social media can be defined as any web or mobile-based platform that enables an individual or agency to communicate interactively and enables the exchange of user-generated content.
  • However, social media in recent times has become synonymous with Social Networking sites.
• Characteristics: 
  • Connectedness: 
    • This attribute showcases the media’s ability to connect and reconnect like-minded people or people interested in the same topics and domains. 
    • Through this media, 24*7 connectedness is possible through a variety of media and access devices including PCs, Laptops, mobile phones etc. 
  • Collaboration: 
    • The connections achieved in this media, enable people to collaborate and create knowledge. Such collaborations can be either open or closed. 
    • E.g. Wikipedia– is an example of open collaboration; GovLoop– is an example of closed collaboration.
  • Community: 
    • Connectedness and collaboration helps create and sustain communities. 
  • Virtual connections with friends and relatives: 
    • Social media websites turn out to be the platform for virtual meetings. 
    • People, who are miles away from each other, can get in touch virtually with each other through such website enabled chat engines.  
  • Free web space: 
    • Social media websites provide the users or the so-called audience with free web space to upload their personalised content.  
  • Timestamp: 
    • Each and every post on social media has a timestamp indicating if the post is either fresh or stale. 
    • Depending on the freshness of the post, the responder may either choose to respond or not to respond.

Impact of Social Media

• Enhanced Outreach: 
  • Social media has emerged as a powerful platform for forming an opinion as well as generating mass support. 
  • In India, Facebook alone has over 40 million users. Even a microblogging site Twitter has about 16 million users. These sites offer an opportunity to reach out to this audience with a keystroke. 
• Real-Time Engagement: 
  • Social Media releases the shackles of time and place for engagement. 
  • They can connect policymakers to stakeholders in real-time. 
  • In the recent Libyan crisis, the Ministry of External Affairs used social media platforms such as Twitter to assist in locating and evacuating Indian Citizens from Libya.
• Individual Interaction: 
  • Social Media platform offers the ability to connect with each and every individual. 
  • Such interaction also enables the marginalised to participate in discussions and present their point of view, thereby improving the political position of marginalised or vulnerable groups. 
  • It is specifically useful when seeking feedback on services rendered.
• Managing Perceptions: 
  • Leveraging these platforms can help the government to counter unverified facts and frivolous misleading rumours and present the facts to enable informed opinion-making. 

Challenges of Social Media

• Privacy & Security: 
  • The primary challenge posed by social media is privacy. Many people restrain themselves from taking part in a dialogue with a fear of losing their privacy.
  • Social media sites pose an equal threat to the security of personal information and other concerned data. 
  • Hacking of the websites is the most common feature; with hacking there is an imminent threat to the audience of social media. 
• Access for those with disabilities: 
  • There is a need for the formulation and implementation of such guidelines to remove the barriers for differently abled people.  
• Commercial Advertising on social media: 
  • Advertising on social media should follow the formalities of censor; and porn content in advertisements should be avoided on the websites, intended for the very purpose of social networking. 
  • This is one of the vital challenges posed by social media in the contemporary web world.  
• Vague Terms of agreements: 
  • Most of the social media sites allow the audience to create an account, after accepting terms of agreement, which are often vague. 
  • The terms of the agreement can be interpreted in multiple ways. It indirectly causes an invasion of privacy. 
• Deception: 
  • The identity of the individual who joins the social networking sites may either be original or fake. 
  • Social media turns out to be an easy way of deceiving people using technology.

Way Ahead

• The legal structure needs to have cyber security as a key element. 
• Accountability on social media and protection of personal data are also important to regulate the misuse of social media platforms.

Source: TH