How objective will a govt-named panel be?

Regulation of social media content is a contentious issue because the line between free speech and regulation is thin and uncertain and the tools with which it is sought to be done are not easily agreed upon. The stringent amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Act notified by the Union government, giving itself wide-ranging powers to control the internet, are strong on regulation and weak on protecting free speech. The most important feature of the proposed framework for regulation is the appointment of “grievance appellate committees” which will allow users to complain about inaction by companies such as Meta and Twitter over their complaints about content. They can overturn the content moderation decisions made by the social media platforms. The members of the three-member committees will be appointed by the government, and so they cannot be called independent committees.

Social media companies are expected to exercise caution and regulation over their content. But their internal mechanism for this is found to either over-regulate or not to regulate at all. There are commercial pressures on them. So, the idea of external regulation has gained traction. The European Union has decided to legislate a Digital Services Act which will create an independent regulator and will impose greater penalties on social media companies if they do not act on illegal content or on complaints. In India, the problem is that the government itself is interested in controlling the content through regulation and the regulatory mechanism would be used for that. The government has selectively ignored hate speech offline and on social media and has acted only against those whose social media postings are not to its liking. Given that the government has already demonstrated this, there can be little doubt as to how content regulation committees appointed by it will act. This will have major implications for social media messaging which has political consequences.

The amendments will mandate social media organisations to make “reasonable efforts” to prevent transmission of information which is fake or misleading. They will be obligated to ensure that they are not used to spread fake news or for other wrong purposes. The basic problem is, who will determine what is fake or misleading, especially in a highly polarised environment as in India today and when political parties, including the ruling party, have themselves built up large ‘social media celld establishments that are known to put out misleading information? Besides, issues of the legal extent of the government’s control over the actions of private companies, especially multinational ones that operate in multiple legal jurisdictions, are involved. Social media needs regulation but without hurting the free speech rights of citizens. The amendments to the IT Act do not satisfy this requirement.