Stronger laws are required to deal with obscenity in social media, Union minister of information and broadcasting and electronics and information technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, especially since they (social media platforms) lack the editorial checks of traditional media.
The minister called upon the parliamentary standing committee on communications and information technology to deal with the issue of such content online.
“This is a very important issue that has been raised. In this age of social media, a lot of the older democratic institutions and the press which earlier had editorial checks to confirmed whether what was published was correct or incorrect… there were proper decisions that were taken by the media. Such editorial checks have ceased to exist today. Because the editorial checks don’t exist anymore, today, social media, which is on the one hand a very big medium of freedom of press, it simultaneously has uncontrolled expressions which include many kinds of vulgar content. That is why the existing laws, decidedly, must be strengthened and I would request that a consensus be achieved on this,” Vaishnaw said.
Vaishnaw was responding to first time BJP MP Arun Govil’s question on whether a mechanism existed to check “telecast of vulgar and sex related content through social media platforms illegally”.
Govil, who played Ram in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana, also asked if the government was considering any laws to rein in foreign social media platforms when it comes to such problematic content because “such content wounds our culture and social fabric” and such content “cannot be watched with our families”.
Vaishnaw replied, “The culture of the countries, the geographies from where these social media platforms originate is very different from our culture. And this debate is occurring in almost all nations of the world. That is why I request, honourable chairperson, our parliament’s standing committee to raise this issue, and that there is a consensus within society on this issue, and stronger laws on the issue are brought in.”
The parliamentary committee on communications and IT, led by BJP Lok Sabha MP Nishikant Dubey, selected “emergence of OTT Platforms and related issues” and “social and digital platforms and their regulation” as two of its subjects for the 2024-25 term.
In a written response to Govil, Vaishnaw added that under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, streaming platforms are prohibited from transmitting any illegal content and that they are required to classify content that is appropriate for different ages, along with putting in place age gating mechanisms that prevent children from accessing inappropriate content.
He said in the written response that the government had blocked 18 streaming platforms “for publishing obscene and vulgar content” under the provisions of Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act in March 2024. At the time, the MIB said that it had blocked these platforms along with 19 websites, 10 apps and 57 social media accounts for violating Section 4 of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, Section 292 (sale of obscene books, etc.) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and Sections 67 and 67A of the Information Technology Act.
For social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, Vaishnaw wrote that the IT Rules require them to “make reasonable efforts by itself and to cause the user of their computer resource to not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, etc. knowingly and intentionally any information which is obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another’s privacy, including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, racially or ethnically objectionable, or that is harmful to child”.
Streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and AltBalaji have repeatedly come under government and legal scrutiny for “objectionable” content that is deemed to be unfit for children.