{"id":779,"date":"2021-03-05T02:32:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T02:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/?p=779"},"modified":"2021-03-05T02:32:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T02:32:54","slug":"checking-of-growing-monopolies-of-the-social-media-giants-a-must","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/checking-of-growing-monopolies-of-the-social-media-giants-a-must\/","title":{"rendered":"Checking of growing monopolies of the social media giants, a must!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apurav Anurag\u00a0
National Institute of Fashion Technology, Patna<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government of India had recently asked Twitter for emergency blocking of the provocative hashtag \u201c#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide\u201d and some users amid the farmer\u2019s protest. Twitter initially complied with the government\u2019s notice but later restored most of the user\u2019s accounts. The IT ministry warned Twitter to invoke article 69A of the IT Act, which attracts a 7-year jail term and financial penalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my opinion, the reluctance of twitter to fully comply with the government\u2019s notice must not be taken on a lighter note. First, there can hardly be any justification of the hashtag \u201c#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide\u201d to be a free speech. No country has described freedom of speech and expression as an absolute right in their constitution. Similarly, the Indian constitution also mentions \u201creasonable restrictions\u201d to the freedom of speech and expressions if it affects public order, decency, morality etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, when Twitter blocked Donald Trump\u2019s account, it justified that the tweets by him were likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts on Capitol Hill. Going by its above justification, it is quite strange that Twitter didn\u2019t find the hashtag \u201c#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide\u201d as provocative, especially when the Republic Day mayhem had taken place just a week before. A 2018 study by MIT<\/a> scholars highlights that fake news is 70 percent more likely to be retweeted and travels six times faster than the truthful information on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, the possibility of misinformation campaign against the farm laws by the external players cannot be ruled out. Whether it was an abrogation of article 370, deadly Galwan Valley clashes or the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, the role of fake Twitter handlers to promote an anti-India narrative has been well documented. Moreover, social media companies also lack a robust mechanism to tackle the \u201cfake news\u201d circulating on their platforms.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, the social media companies themselves don\u2019t follow a consistent policy, and there is a considerable gap between their speech and action. Recently, WhatsApp updated its privacy policy, according to which it would share the private data of the users with Facebook. Interestingly, it applied only to India and not Europe. In 2019, Twitter was alleged to discriminate against SC, ST and OBC<\/a> activists in suspending and verifying their accounts. In 2017, Snapchat\u2019s CEO Evan Spiegel commented that he doesn\u2019t wish to expand his company into “poor countries”<\/a> like India. Still, just two years later, its parent company Snap Inc opened its first office in India and also added language support such as Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi and Marathi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, a few tech companies regulate the freedom of speech and expression of millions of users worldwide<\/strong>. The current structure itself looks highly undemocratic and centralized. Moreover, the Cambridge Analytica data scandal is a reminder that these companies are not immune to unethical conducts. India is not the only country where the tech companies are at loggerheads. In 2020, The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) had sued Google<\/a>, alleging that it abused its dominant position, which harmed its competitors and customers. The ongoing tussle between Facebook and the government of Australia over new legislation is a lesson for other countries as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

History gives us a lesson that monopolies must be dealt with caution. The East India Company initially started as a trading company in India. After it attained a monopolistic position in the trade, it started meddling in Indian politics and ultimately captured a large Indian subcontinent. The revolt of 1857 was a massive setback for the company, but it was too late. Hence, the growing monopolies of social media companies must be checked. The companies must respect the laws and sovereignty of the land they operate. Else it would set a wrong precedent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apurav Anurag\u00a0National Institute of Fashion Technology, Patna The government of India had recently asked Twitter for emergency blocking of the provocative hashtag \u201c#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide\u201d and some users amid the farmer\u2019s protest. Twitter initially complied with the government\u2019s notice but later restored most of the user\u2019s accounts. The IT ministry warned Twitter to invoke article 69A of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[252,251],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-tech","tag-apurav","tag-giant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":781,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions\/781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}