Do business, make money but follow Indian laws: Govt amid Twitter row

Amid an ongoing face-off with microblogging platform Twitter, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad told Parliament on Thursday that strict action would be taken if social media was misused to spread fake news and fuel violence.

Specifically naming Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn in the Rajya Sabha, the Union Minister said, “You have millions of followers in India, you are free to do business and make money, but you will have to follow the Indian Constitution.”

The minister was speaking during Question Hour on the misuse of social media platforms. “We respect social media a lot, it has empowered common people. Social media has a big role in Digital India programme. However, if social media is misused to spread fake news, violence then action will be taken,” he said.

While cautioning the micro-blogging platform to pay heed to the law of the land, Prasad replied in Rajya Sabha: “There is freedom of speech but Article 19A says that this is subject to reasonable restrictions.”

“We respect social media a lot, it has empowered common people. Social media has a big role in the Digital India program. However, if social media is misused to spread fake news, violence then action will be taken,” he added. In response to the “‘legal requests” from the Central government, Twitter on Wednesday informed that it has taken multiple enforcement actions—including permanent suspension of over 500 accounts for clear violations of Twitter’s rules. However, the Central government has also conveyed to Twitter officials that the manner in which the social media giant officially allows fake, unverified, and automated bot accounts to be operated on its platform, raises doubts about its commitment to transparency and healthy conversation on the platform.

A meeting between the Secretary of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Twitter officials took place in view of the order issued by the Centre directing Twitter to remove tweets and accounts using hashtag related to “farmer genocide” and accounts supported by Khalistan sympathisers and backed by Pakistan and blog post issued by Twitter.

This came after some of the protesting farmers did not follow the prearranged route on Republic Day for their tractor rally and broke barricades to enter Delhi. They also clashed with police and vandalised property in several parts of the national capital.

Farmers have been protesting at the different borders of the national capital since November 26 last year against the three newly enacted farm laws: Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; the Farmers Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.