SC dismisses Facebook plea challenging summons by Delhi Assembly Committee probing 2020 riots

Passersby look at the charred remains of vehicles which were set ablaze by rioters during clashes over the new citizenship law, at Mustafabad area of East Delhi, on February 25, 2020. (PTI)

The Supreme Court of India on July 8 dismissed a plea filed by Facebook India head challenging the summons made by the Delhi Assembly Committee that is probing the February 2020 Delhi riots.

Dismissing the FB plea, the Supreme Court said: “India has ‘unity in diversity', which cannot be disrupted at any cost or under any professed freedom by a giant like Facebook claiming ignorance or lack of any pivotal role.”

“Social media companies extend power and influence over populations across borders; they have large wealth and influence at their command. Such vast powers must come with responsibilities. Thus, entities like Facebook have to remain accountable to those who entrust them with such power,” the SC observed.

The apex court of the country further said: “While FB is enabling free speech, it can’t lose sight of the fact that it has simultaneously become a platform for disruptive messages, voices, and ideologies.”

“Democracies are seeing the effect -- elections and voting stand threatened by social media manipulation, extremist views being peddled into the mainstream.”

To elucidate, the Supreme Court cited the example of the 2016 United States elections and Brexit. Both events saw “obfuscation of facts, abandonment of evidentiary standards in reasoning, and outright lying in the public sphere” on social media. Citizens were being “polarized and paralyzed by such debates, dividing the society vertically”, which could have proven cataclysmic.

In view of the dangers mentioned above, the SC said, it is “difficult to accept the simplistic approach adopted by Facebook -- that it is merely a platform posting third party information and has no role in generating, controlling information”.

In fact, the role played by Facebook is more active and not as innocuous as is often presented when dealing with third-party content, the Court observed.

It added: “This unprecedented degree of influence necessitates safeguards and caution in consonance with democratic values. Platforms and intermediaries must subserve the principal objective as a valuable tool for public good upholding democratic values.”