The Supreme Court of India issued a notice to the Central government and micro-blogging site Twitter while hearing a plea seeking a mechanism to check content on Twitter spreading hate through false news and instigative content through fake accounts.
An apex-court bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde issued the notice on a plea by BJP leader Vinit Goenka. SC tagged the matter along with similar pending petitions seeking social media regulation. The plea was filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey and argued that as per experts around 10 per cent of accounts on Facebook and Twitter handles are bogus or duplicate.
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Currently, there are around 5 million Twitter handles in India and around 350 million Facebook accounts.
The petition argued that these bogus Twitters handles and fake Facebook accounts have been created in the name of prominent public figures and high dignitaries including the President of India, Prime Minister of India, Vice President of India, Chief Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and Chief Justice of India including the judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts.
Goenka said that the common man relies upon the messages posted from these Twitter handles and Facebook accounts as they use real photos of constitutional authorities and eminent citizens.
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The petitioner further added that such fake news is the root cause of many riots including the violence in Delhi on Republic day this year. Moreover, bogus accounts are used to promote communalism agenda which is a threat to the nation’s unity. The plea also argued that the political parties use fake social media accounts for self-promotion and to tarnish the image of opponents during elections.
The plea sought the apex court to issue direction to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Ministry of Law & Justice, Central government and Twitter India to formulate a mechanism against the social media accounts in order to curb the hatred, fake, instigative and other bogus news which violate the law of the country.
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The plea also sought directions to make a legal framework to initiate action against Twitter and its representatives in India for willfully abetting and promoting anti India tweets and penalizing them.
The SC notice comes in a day after the IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad categorically warned the social media platforms to abide by the laws of the country if they want to continue doing business in India. Twitter had earlier refused to block accounts of certain media entities and journalists citing freedom of expression rights.
