Who wants to moderate the moderator? Social media platforms are caught up in regulating the content from which they profit. The list of charges against him, ranging from election fraud and enabling hate speech to endangering children and inciting violence, has exposed his failure in moderation. It’s broken, sure, but is the government in the best position to fix it? India’s draft amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediate Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics) Rules have been introduced this week. As the center sees, users should have a way to protest the platform’s decisions, whether on taking posts or blocking them, and if its proposals are adopted – they are up for public review – it will be a The appellate body will appoint the right to reverse those calls. For speedy redressal, the amended IT rules also demand that the grievance officers of key intermediaries respond to user complaints on false posts or content that “threate the integrity of India” (among other things) within the first 15 days. instead of within 72 hours. Also, platform users are expected to have a “reason” for not posting content that crosses the red lines.
These are red flags. State surveillance of restraint can open doors to redundancy and censorship, even if all such fights are likely to be about free speech. For better or for worse, social media is a huge part of our noisy public class online. A state-appointed institution could push us down a slippery slope, seeing which terms are kosher. The record of our political class, beyond party lines, inspires little confidence. A variety of tactics have been employed, from national interests to fake news, to get behind tweets, hashtags, posts and even fictional “toolkits”. There is also something wrong with governments coming to speech moderation. Several IT rules of last year were legally challenged and both Bombay and Madras High Courts stayed provisions that asked digital news companies to follow a three-tier grievance redressal mechanism headed by the government ; These rules were found to violate the right to freedom of expression and were dismissed as an attempt. To “control the media”. Even so, it is also clear that platforms cannot expect to get away with opaque and arbitrary line calls about what is okay and what is not. Given overloading, a large portion of this is being created by algorithms that run in a context vacuum. Victims can certainly go to court, but our judiciary can hardly handle its offline burden of cases.
Could there be a middle ground? Minister of State for IT Rajiv Chandrashekhar has said that the Center is open to the idea of self-regulation by platforms. Globally, Facebook has an oversight board that hasn’t achieved much; By design, it addresses only a fraction of the disputes between users and moderators. But India could have its own pan-industry panel, consisting of eminent Indian jurists and other citizens known for their independence, that would require an arbitration team equipped with the resources and expertise to resolve the rising tide of complaints. take care. If Big Tech offers to set up such a system, it could be the way to go. Authorities around the world are trying to hold Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. responsible for the spread of toxic stuff. But overzealous efforts can harm our privacy; For example, India’s IT regulations last year called for making messages traceable, which would technically require decrypting all chats. A world polarized by social media needs saviors, not politically elected super-censors.