New Delhi: BJP MP Sushil Modi said in Rajya Sabha on Monday that an independent regulatory body should be set up to ensure that tech giants such as Google and Facebook share their advertisement revenue with traditional media outlets in an adequate manner.
He also said that the regulatory body should ensure that such tech giants allocate sufficient funds for content moderation to curb hate speech and fake news. Claiming that the combined digital advertising market share of Facebook and Google in India was about 75 per cent, Modi said that the tech giants earn a higher share than the combined revenue top 10 traditional media houses in the country.
He said that Rs 9,326 crore goes to Facebook and Rs 13,887 crore goes to Google and they add up to Rs 23,213 crore. "They earn a share higher than the combined revenue of the top 10 listed traditional media companies (which stands) at Rs 8,396 crore," Modi said.
"The issue is that these big tech firms are getting rich at the expense of traditional media," he added.
The BJP MP alleged that despite earning huge revenue by displaying the journalistic contents of traditional media organisations on their platform, these tech giants do not pay them adequately.
Accusing Facebook of compromising the safety of 34 crore users in India, its largest user base, Modi said that the social media giant does not flag problematic content such as fake news and hate speech.
He claimed that a cryptocurrency lobby was behind the recent hacking of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter account.
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