New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has recommended setting up a regulator to oversee Twitter and Facebook as they should be seen as publishers, according to people with knowledge with the matter, effectively reducing the legal protection from user content posted on their social media platforms.
The high-level committee made those recommendations as it reviewed the personal data protection bill introduced in 2019 that seeks to protect users’ privacy and enforce strict controls on how Western companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc. collect, process and store data.The panel is asking for tighter rules because current laws treating these social media platforms as intermediaries hasn’t done enough in terms of regulation. Also, the current provisions in the personal data protection bill is too broad, said the two people who are not authorized to speak to the media.The people said a mechanism may be devised for social media platforms to be held accountable for content also coming from unverified accounts.If these recommendations are included in the revised bill and get passed in parliament, it could have a far-reaching impact on the operations of public and private companies in the largest social media market globally.Such a move echoes similar sentiments beyond India. Lawmakers from Washington to Brussels have contemplated action to hold social media companies like Facebook and Google accountable for the enormous content generated daily on their platforms, a view that gained momentum during the pandemic.In India, these companies have so far enjoyed “safe harbor” status and can’t be held liable for user-generated content on their platform so long as they follow the Intermediary Guidelines issued earlier this year. This has included setting up offices in India, appointing compliance officials and adhering to the government’s requests to take down certain types of content that it deems as harmful.
