Shiv Sena’s Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha Priyanka Chaturvedi on Friday wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, seeking proper guidelines for social media platforms and an investigation into fake social media accounts that aim to destabilise governments and undermine constitutional institutions.
Ms. Chaturvedi mentioned that investigation by the Mumbai police uncovered 80,000 fake social media accounts that were used to target it over a film actor’s death.
Without mentioning the name of Sushant Singh Rajput, she quoted a study by the University of Michigan about how conspiracy theories about Rajput’s death were pushed through social media platforms.
“In the context of the suicide of an actor in Mumbai, numerous social media accounts were used to spread conspiracy theories and cast aspersions on the efficiency of the Mumbai police. 80,000 fake and illegitimate accounts were created with specific intent to malign the Maharashtra government and the Mumbai police force especially at a time when all efforts were directed to battle COVID-19,” she wrote.
Emphasising need to formulate appropriate guidelines to hold social media companies accountable, she said, “Currently, the legal framework under which these companies operate function on two pillars. One, these companies claim to be intermediaries under Indian law, meaning they are not liable for the content they provide a platform to. This ignores the use of algorithm that adds fuel to the fire...The second pillar is that these companies self regulate through community guidelines. This is meant to absolves the companies from any public oversight...”.
“When the Head of Facebook, Twitter can be called by the US Congress to answer questions and are being investigated in an open forum, then why is that the Indian government is even hesitating to ask them to explain their role in our nation”, she added.
