ASHWINI VAISHNAW: Social media cos must compensate traditional news outlets fairly for content: Vaishnaw

Social media intermediaries must adequately and fairly compensate traditional news organisations for the content shared and read on social media platforms, union electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

Speaking on the occasion of the celebration of National Press Day on Saturday, Vaishnaw said that the pattern of news consumption had shifted from digital platforms of conventional news outlets to social media platforms leading to revenue losses for news organisations.

“The investment done in creating a team of journalists, training them, having editorial processes, having methods to check the veracity of news, taking the responsibility for the content, all those investments are huge in terms of time and money,” Vaishnaw said, adding that they were becoming irrelevant due to the unequal edge that social media platforms had vis-à-vis the conventional media.

Another challenge, Vaishnaw said, was the peril of fake news and misinformation which is shared on social media platforms. The concept of safe harbour, the union minister said, was no longer relevant and therefore must be debated.

Several instances of rioting, disturbances in peace, acts of terrorism and even interference in the democratic processes of countries all over the globe occurred through social media as the intermediaries “shied away from the responsibility for the content”, he said.

“With our diverse society, we have to be extra careful. Therefore, when the circumstances are different, should not there be different metrics for the platforms,” Vaishnaw said.

Apart from these two challenges, the algorithmic bias of the platforms which tend to prioritise content which evokes strong reactions from its users and the impact of artificial intelligence on the intellectual property rights of users are also major challenges faced by the Indian internet users today, he said.