New Delhi: The Supreme Court Thursday dismissed the plea filed by Facebook India Vice President and MD Ajit Mohan challenging the summons issued by Delhi Assembly's Peace and Harmony committee for failing to appear before it as witness in a matter relating to the north-east Delhi riots last year. A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy termed Mohan's plea as pre-mature and said nothing has happened against him before Delhi Assembly's panel.
The verdict came on the plea filed by Mohan, Facebook India Online Services Pvt Ltd and Facebook Inc who contended that the committee lacks the power to summon or hold petitioners in breach of its privileges for failing to appear and it was exceeding its Constitutional limits. They have challenged last year's September 10 and 18 notices issued by the committee that sought Mohan's presence before the panel which is probing the Delhi riots and Facebook's role in spread of the alleged hate speeches.
Earlier on June 29, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology directed Facebook and Google to comply with new IT rules and follow the rules of the country. Senior officials from Facebook and Google appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Information and Technology (IT) on Tuesday to put forth their views on 'safeguarding citizens rights and prevention of misuse of social and online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space'.
The committee meeting began under the chairmanship of Congress leader Dr Shashi Tharoor. The committee members raised the issues of privacy of personal data and women safety and security of women on Facebook. Facebook officials were grilled by the committee members about the leakage of data and the safety and security of the women. In response, Facebook officials informed the committee that leakage is not from any Facebook platforms but it is happening through other devices. Facebook India Associate General Counsel Namrata Singh and the company's Director of Public Policy Shivnath Thukral attended the meeting and discussed several issues.
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Google officials informed the committee that between January and March 2021, YouTube removed over 9.5 million videos for violating its community guidelines. "95 per cent of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than humans. Of those detected by machines, 27.8 per cent never received a single view, and 39 per cent received between 1 and 10 views. During this same quarter, YouTube terminated over 2.2 million channels for violating its Community Guidelines. In this same period. YouTube removed more than 1 billion comments, the majority of which were spam and were detected automatically," officials told the committee.
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PTI
