BJP’s national youth wing president L.S. Tejasvi Surya, MP from Bengaluru South, came down heavily on Twitter for suspending the account of Donald Trump, President, U.S., over alleged incitement to violence on the platform, on Saturday. He said this must be a “wake up call for all who don’t yet understand the threat to our democracies by unregulated big tech companies.”
Arguing against moderation of content violative of community standards, which he termed “censorship by big tech companies”, Mr. Surya batted for suitable changes in Indian laws to prevent any “meddling of content” by social media platforms, which he said violated Constitutional guarantees to citizens.
“If they can do this to POTUS [President of the USA], they can do this to anyone,” he said in a tweet. “Freedom of Expression is sacrosanct. It cannot be curtailed whimsically by private big tech companies without accountability,” he added.
His tweets drew sharply polarised reactions from the Twitterati. While many argued that hate speech, fake news and incitement to violence could not be termed “freedom of expression”, right-wing Twitter handles cried foul that their views were being censored on social media platforms and some urged Mr. Surya to introduce a private member’s bill in the Parliament to regulate social media platforms.
Mr. Surya batting for Mr. Trump and against any “censorship” on social media platforms comes close on the heels of another social media giant Facebook finding itself in a spot over alleged bias towards the ruling party in its content moderation.
Mr. Surya said he had earlier written to the government to review the IT Intermediary Guidelines “on account of being violative of Freedom of Expression guaranteed under the Constitution”.
Social media platforms are defined as intermediaries under the Indian Law. “Intermediaries aren’t like media platforms. They’re exempt from liability via Sec 79 of IT Act, which bars them from meddling with content. However, the Intermediary Guidelines are in contrast to the Act, by giving them power to censor free speech without State oversight and beyond constitutional limits,” he said.
“Dissent is fundamental to democracy and the government welcomes it. But only constitutional authorities can decide on its reasonability,” he said. “Citizens decide what their opinions are & are free to express themselves. Facebook and Twitter serve as platforms of expression and shouldn’t curtail people's will,” he tweeted.
