MeitY asks all social media intermediaries to remove all bomb hoax content, cooperate with probe agencies

In an advisory sent to platforms, the ministry of electronics and information technology has said that all social media companies must follow the due diligence obligations to promptly remove any such “misinformation that affects public order and security of the state”.

“Further, the scale of spread of such hoax bomb threats has been observed to be dangerously unrestrained due to the availability of the option of “forwarding/re-sharing/ re-posting/ re-tweeting” on social media platforms. Such hoax bomb threats are mostly misinformation that is massively disrupting the public order, operations of airlines and security of the airline travellers,” the IT ministry said in its advisory.

Apart from disallowing such content to be present on the platform, all social media intermediaries must also cooperate with any government agency which is authorised to investigate these hoaxes.

The cooperation, the IT ministry said, includes providing any information for the “prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution,” of any offences under relevant laws.

Over the last 10 days over 100 aircraft have received bomb threats which were later found to be hoaxes. These have led to diversions of around 10 aircraft leading to diversions including an Air India aircraft to Chicago being diverted to Canada while a Vistara aircraft to London was forced to divert to Frankfurt.

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Most of these threats were delivered on social media platforms. A common pattern that has emerged is a single anonymous handle posts multiple threats within a few hours and then it is deleted.Following that government has redefined rules on how to treat these threats.

The procedure of acting on a threat is such that if any message or call mentions a flight number, it is considered as a specific threat.

Once it is determined as a specific threat, according to protocols of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the aircraft is required to land at the nearest possible airport, after which it is inspected.

However, due to this new emerging condition where multiple threats are delivered through a single anonymous social media account, security agencies felt that once a particular threat is found to be hoax, similar threats may not be treated as specific and the aircraft can continue towards its destination.