UPSC REVISION: SOCIAL MEDIA REGULATION

23 Social Media Regulation

In the past two months, more than 20 people have been killed in attacks by mobs that have been provoked by messages on social media. Several media outlets are urging for some immediate action against WhatsApp without offering any concrete ideas. The government has warned WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook, that it cannot evade “accountability and responsibility”. Meanwhile, WhatsApp has offered an award of $50,000 to anyone who can help stop the spread of fake news on its platform.

2015: T.N. Seema, a Rajya Sabha MP, had asked the Home Ministry to clarify “the mechanism existing with government to deal with the danger of high-tech rumour-mongering kind of Internet-rumour-bombs which may lead to communal tension and fear among the common masses.”

THREATS

1. National security challenges like spread of terrorism, hawala money in form of crypto currency etc.

2. Spreading of fake news and rumors leading to mob lynching as recently seen in Karnataka and Assam.

3. Data snooping and misuse of online data analysis for nefarious purposes like manipulating elections as seen in Cambridge Atlantica case.

4. Online harassment and trolling.

5. Has Resulted in emergence of new forms of crimes like online child grooming, Revenge porn etc.

6. Online frauds and hacking of sensitive data.

It is difficult to overcome these challenges as:

1. Huge and expanding number of users + UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH + EASY-TO-USE CELL PHONES

2. Negative implications on various businesses and activities, schemes of government like Aadhaar, BHIM etc. by frequent internet shutdowns. (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations says that between 2012 and 2017, India lost around ₹20,000 crore due to internet shutdowns.) (In 2017, according to data from the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), India had 70 Internet shutdowns. We’re halfway through 2018 and we have already reached that number. An Internet shutdown is a suspension of the constitutional right to free speech ; a disproportionate act of censorship of all speech in response to the actions of a few.)

3. Ineffectiveness of censorship on content and its impact on freedom of citizens. (In Russia during the Stalinist era, for instance, despite strict state control of information, poems and manuscripts by dissidents were copied by hand and circulated. In apartheid bound South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s diaries were written on toilet paper and circulated. During the Emergency in India , newspapers carried blank columns and subversive obituaries.)

4. Difficulty in prosecution and tracking of crime due to jurisdiction problems and anonymity offered by the internet

5. Lack of digital literacy amongst people.

6. AI is still in early stages of development and cannot be used to regulate the sector.

7. END TO END ENCRYPTION

Way forward:

1. Responsible use of social media must be taught by increasing digital literacy .

2. Joint steps by government and social media platforms must be taken like recent step by Facebook to spread awareness wrt responsible use of social media. (responsibility of WhatsApp should be assessed with appreciation for how the platform actually works. This should not be used as an excuse to break encryption and deprive secure communications to users. There was a legal tussle between Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation over access to the iPhone used by a shooter in the San Bernardino shooting in 2015. These tussles between technology companies and the government do not have any good outcomes for the users.)

3. Strengthen of Cyber security organizations and IT cells of law enforcement agencies.

4. International consensus wrt easier Extradition and prosecution of Cyber criminals.

5. Data protection and privacy must be enhanced.

6. if you encourage, and permit, poisonous discourse , it will find the most convenient vehicle for dissemination, in this instance the internet and social media. Crippling the vehicle solves nothing when the problem lies in the flourishing politics of hatred and divisiveness.

7. LAW ENFORCEMENT CAPACITY + PROSECUTION

8. RESPONISBLE BUSINESS MUST BALANCE SOCIAL RISKS AND SOCIAL NEEDS

STEPS WHATSAPP CAN TAKE:

1.   WhatsApp needs to change its platform to enable messages to be either public or private. Messages between individuals should remain private and not be those that can be forwarded. However, if a message creator wants to enable the forward ability of that message, the chat should be treated as public, and attributed with a unique ID linked to the original creator. This will allow WhatsApp to shut down such a message across its network once it is reported, and identify the creator when a court-directed request is made by law enforcement agencies.

2.   As a range of organisations led by SFLC.in have pointed out, WhatsApp allows people to be added to groups without their knowledge or consent. This is a bug in the platform that causes increased social risk, because socially inflammatory messaging is easily spread by adding people to groups formed for the purpose of incitement.