Why social media guidelines?

When the Supreme Court in 2015 struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, citizens didn’t anticipate the return of this zombie, much less for it to happen in under five years. A two-judge Supreme Court bench has recently asked the government to draft guidelines to regulate the social media, a directive to which it might respond with alacrity.

The court is hearing a case for petitions against Facebook filed in the high courts of Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh to be transferred to itself. The issues listed include civil defamation, trolling, fake news, cyber crime and threats to India’s sovereignty and national security. Verily enough, the social media is being used by the Islamic State in a big way to recruit Indians in Kerala. The Madras high court case, though, originates in the alleged bullying of two anti-Jallikattu campaigners.

Fake news factories are now being set up on both sides of the ideological fence. The fact that the data protection law which started getting drafted close on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica data-mining-for-votes controversy is still a work in progress is a comment on the government’s concern for the citizen’s privacy. Numerous FIRs against people for their social media activity over the past year have raised the spectre of a technology-driven but essentially paternalistic “New India” modernity. If old men mistype, will they be taken to court? Why link Aadhaar to the social media when the same has not been done for voter IDs?

A few users abhor the fishbowl but watch the social media to catch the drift of political currents, often sample citizens’ ingenuous, or erudite, commentary. Those days will soon be over for them if India has another draconian law that forces this dubious clampdown.