Stung by the misinformation campaign thatspread like wildfire through SMS, Facebook,YouTube and Twitter in past weeks, the Indian government now seems to be moving ahead with its initial threat to tighten the noose around social media.
Indicating this, a senior government official has said that Twitter has already been told that legal action may be taken against it as it had failed to cooperate with the Indian government in its efforts to find the source of and curtail the inflammatory messages against north-east citizens.
Other websites, such as Facebook and YouTube have confirmed to the Indian government that the hate content against the people from north-eastern India had originated from Pakistan. However, they have said they cannot take direct action against such sites. But since both Google (parent of YouTube) and Facebook have offices in India, it will be easier for the government sleuths to work with them.
However, India has reportedly faced a tardy response from Twitter, partly because the company doesn't have presence in India. The response from the US company to block 'objectionable content' is reported to be 'poor'.
According to a department of telecom (DoT) official, if there is no firm response from Twitter, the Indian government will do whatever is necessary in order to "address the problem."
India may even seek the help of US Department of Homeland Security in order to curb all such websites that carry the hate content, including doctored pictures and other messages, DoT secretary R Chandrashekhar told a TV news channel.
There are concerns that Twitter may not be able to adhere to the Indian government's guidelines due to the huge number of tweets and retweets that take place. This may be possible only if the site's entire content shared by internet users is filtered and screened for what is objectionable.
Such a move may be self-defeatist for any social media site, industry watchers point out.
Source- TOI Tech Aug 21, 2012, 11.56AM IST
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