social media: Govt urges Parliament standing committee on IT to take up social media content vulgarity issue

The government has urged the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology to take up the issue of vulgarity on social media platforms “as a priority”, the minister for information and broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

Responding to a question in the Lok Sabha, Vaishnaw said that the democratic institutions and traditional forms of the press that once relied on editorial checks to ensure accountability and correctness of content had diminished over time with the emergence of social media.

“The cultural sensitivities of India vastly differ from those of the regions where these platforms were created. This makes it imperative for India to make existing laws more stricter and he urged everyone to come to a consensus on this matter,” Vaishnaw said in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

In March this year, the MIB blocked 18 over-the-top content streaming platforms for publishing obscene and vulgar content, the union minister said, adding that the Information Technology Rules of 2021 cast obligation on social media intermediaries such as YouTube, Facebook among others to make reasonable efforts not to host or display any such vulgar content.

The issue of social media intermediaries being held responsible for the content shared on their platforms has been raised by several stakeholders, including the government.

Earlier this month, Vaishnaw said that governments across the world must re-look at the blanket protections offered to social media intermediaries for the content on their platforms.

Responding to another question in the lower house of the Parliament, the minister of state for electronics and information technology Jitin Prasada said that the government had constituted an advisory group on artificial intelligence for India-specific regulatory AI framework. The advisory group has members from academia, industry, government and will work “with an objective to address all issues related to development of responsible AI framework for safe and trusted development and deployment of AI,” Prasada said in his response to the lower house of the Parliament.