Guidelines and Ethics Code: Better regulation or Government censorship

With the government deciding issuing guidelines for social media and OTT platform to stop fake news and propaganda on digital platforms, there underlies a series of concerns over the efforts to strangulate the freedom of expression — of both journalists and political activists, writes K Praveen Kumar, News Co-ordinator, ETV Bharat.

Hyderabad (Telangana): Recently the social medial platform Twitter put out an explainer on their official website and it read like this, “Separate to our enforcement under the Twitter rules, over the course of last 10 days, Twitter has been served with several separate blocking orders by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ( MeitY), Government of India, under Section 69 A of the Information Technology Act. Out of these two were emergency blocking orders that we temporarily complied with but subsequently restored access to the content in a manner that we believe was consistent with Indian law.” This note was put out on February 10, 2021, by Twitter and on February 25, the Government of India has promulgated Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

When Union Ministers Ravishankar Prasad and Pakash Javadekar explained about the rules to the media at New Delhi on February 25, Thursday, they had pressed on a need to have a regulatory mechanism for the Digital Media, Social Media and OTT platforms as all other media like Films, Newspapers and Television do have a regulatory mechanism to comply with. When the intent was spelt out as a genuine concern for the need to regulate misinformation, fake news and propaganda on digital platforms, underlie a series of concerns over the efforts to strangulate the freedom of expression, of both journalists and political activists.

Ravishankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, told the media persons that “Dear journalist friends, please understand we have not brought out a new law. Laws are already there in the Information and Technology Act and as per the provisions of the act we have set up the rules.” However, these rules, prescribed under three categories of Social Media, Digital Media and OTT, are likely to have a far-reaching impact on the way the content and information is being disseminated online. The government say that it had only a 'soft touch' approach and is only asking the platforms to 'self-regulate' as per the rules rolled out.

READ:Court's notice to govt on social media hate content

Online news and current affairs platforms

When it comes to the Digital Media, which include news portal and online platform that deals with news and current affairs subjects, they are governed by a Code of Ethics, which are similar to the existing laws and rules that regulate the content published in both newspapers and television media. However, what has been brought in new is the three levels of grievance redressal mechanism out of which final authority to take a call is the concerned Ministry.

The first level of this grievance redressal mechanism has to be set up by the digital media platform and it has to have a grievance redressal officer based i India. When the complainant believes that the complaint redressal was not satisfactory, he can approach the 'Self-regulating body', an independent body, constituted by the digital media platform or their association, headed by either a retired Supreme Court or a retired High Court judge. However, when the complainant is still not satisfied he can approach the 'Oversight Mechanism' set up by the ministry and headed by an officer, not below the rank of Joint Secretary.

When the Government of India formulated these rules, a major importance is being given to the regulation of the Social Media intermediaries and that too for the significant social media intermediaries, which the Government defines as social media 'with users above such threshold as may be notified by the Central Government'.

Though the government has notified the numbers to be considered a 'Significant publisher of news and current affairs content', it is yet to come up with the user base for a social media platform to consider it as a significant social media intermediary. For a digital news platform to be significant, it should either have not less than 5 lakh subscribers and a following of 50 lakh followers on a significant social media intermediary.

READ:Court issues notice on social media privacy policies

Social Media and scrutiny

Social media activities will undergo stricter scrutiny and will be forced to part with information posted, personal information regarding poster of 'disputable' content and other co-operation with the country's law enforcement agencies. 'The words used in the formulation of these rules like 'misuse and abuse' are largely open to interpretations and antigovernmental criticism could be labelled as 'false and untrue and with 'vested interests against the country'.

The social media platforms have been told to step up their due diligence and should immediately remove or block content that are either obscene in nature, threatens the sovereignty of the country, or mocking foreign friendly nations or are violent in nature or disrespecting women, child pornography or hurting religious sentiments. These social media intermediaries are directed to block or remove user accounts on recommendation from the government of law enforcement agencies who find out content that are against the rules posted on the social media handle.

Significant social media intermediaries are directed to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer, who should be an Indian citizen with a valid Indian passport, and a nodal person of contact 24x7 for coordination with law enforcement agencies and officers to ensure compliance.

They should also be appointing a Resident Grievance Officer to effectively address the grievances raised by their users.

Though these steps look innocuous, the attempt of the government to get an upper hand over what should be put out on social media is evident. “When they work in India, they will have to comply with the law of the land and also its culture,” Ravishankar Prasad had explained in the press conference.

READ:India warns against misuse of social media

OTT platforms get a self-regulating 'Censor Board'

Though the GOI said that it does not want to set up a censor board for the film, teleserials and curated content on OTT platforms, it has asked the platforms to bring in 'access control' and certification based on the age groups that should access the programmed. A detailed guideline has been issued for content-based categorization where the certification has to be categorized in to U (for all age groups including children), U/A 7+ ( For content suitable for seven years and above), U/A13+ (For content suitable for children aged 13 above and with parental guidance), U/A16+ (for content suitable for children aged 16 and above with parental guidance and A (Adults only). It also asks OTT platforms to take extreme caution and to avoid subjects that affect the country's sovereignty and integrity, the security of the state, its friendly relationships with foreign countries and hurts its multi-racial, multi-cultural society sentiments.

Will the rules bring in better regulation

When we look at the laws and code of ethics part, we could see that all of these structures are already been enforced in our country through various Acts and rules. Except for the grievance redressal mechanism and making one or more officers of such platforms accountable for what the do in India, nothing new has been brought in as part of these Rules. With these 'self-regulating' code of ethics, Government likes to give these platforms a warning that the officers of the government are watching and if you do not comply with what government want, there can be trouble for the platforms as well. If the platforms take these threats seriously, then there is a greater chance for social media and online media censorship, curtailing the freedom of expression. We will have to wait and see social media giants like Facebook would replicate what they have done in Australia, completely exiting the Australian market following a rift with the government, in India, where there is a lot of money is in play.

READ:Govt's guidelines for social media platforms