Ease of doing business for MSMEs: Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Thursday called for setting up a monitoring mechanism in the country for social media and OTT platforms. CAIT, in a statement, also suggested blocking such platforms for “taking advantage as intermediaries” under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act “in case of a complaint against them is found to be correct.”  

“In the past, these platforms and various companies of different sectors have taken recourse to this provision and shied away from complaints against them,” the confederation added.

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Importantly, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state in the electronics and information technology ministry, had informed Parliament in February this year that while the government currently does not track or monitor apps designed to manipulate social media platforms, it is aware of the risk and danger posed by the use of social media platforms to promote enmity between different groups or misinformation using social media intermediaries. 

In FY22, 6,775 URLs including posts and accounts of various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and others were blocked vis-a-vis 6,096 in 2021 and 9,849 in 2020, as per data shared by Chandrasekhar in separate reply to a question in the Parliament in February.

Moreover, in October 2022, the IT ministry had notified amendments in the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 “against the backdrop of complaints regarding the action/inaction on the part of the intermediaries on user grievances regarding objectionable content or suspension of their accounts,” the ministry had said in a statement. 

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Among changes notified to ensure “accountability of social media and other intermediaries” were establishing Grievance Appellate Committee(s) for users to appeal against the inaction or decisions taken by intermediaries on user complaints, the ministry had noted.

Moreover, the intermediaries will now have a legal obligation to make reasonable efforts to prevent users from uploading certain categories of harmful/unlawful content.

BC Bhartia, National President and Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, CAIT in a statement noted that such social media and OTT platforms “are trying to confuse our youth and also attempting to intoxicate them. Hence, the step taken by the government in this direction is a welcome step.”