India seeks to set-up a self regulatory body to have a greater say on social media censorship decisions, a federal minister said.
The government said it will aim to establish an appeals panel to challenge moderation decisions from the likes of Meta, Twitter and Google.
the current system of in-house grievance redressal at tech companies was “broken”, India’s Minister of State for IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Saturday.
The statement comes in the same week that Elon Musk was officially handed the keys to Twitter, with promises that the platform will become more reluctant to censor content.
India’s Demands
Decisions about social media content have been a particularly thorny issue in India.
Twitter has faced a backlash in the past after it blocked accounts of influential Indians, including politicians, citing violation of its policies.
It also locked horns with the Indian government last year when it declined to comply fully with orders to take down accounts the government said spread misinformation.
Tech Team-Up
New Delhi said in June it could scrap the proposal if the companies themselves banded together to form a self-regulatory body.
But they failed to reach a consensus. Google was opposed to external reviews, while Meta and Twitter favoured self-regulation fearing government overreach.
The new government panel “is a signal to them (social media firms) that they need to up their game,” Chandrasekhar said.
Meta, Twitter and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
- Reuters, with additional editing from Alfie Habershon
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