For many decades India has not figured out how to deal with traditional media. Governments of the day tend to display a ‘naïve realism’, unable to appreciate views other than their own, and a thin skin. That is why our 30-year-old experiment with an independent State-funded media — Prasar Bharati — has not led to the creation of a BBC or NPR, but broadcast entities that are no more independent than they were, say, in the bad old 1970s.
Consequently, it is not surprising that the government struggles to come to terms with another form of media, one that offers instant gratification and provides unimaginable reach, potentially to each of the 1.4 billion Indians. The government may have shown less finesse than governments of the past, but then social media is a wholly-different, quickly evolving (and at times devolving) beast.
Right from the get-go — and this includes the data privacy Bill still being debated by a parliamentary panel — the government has sought to appropriate the strength and data of social media. In its latest action, the social media rules set in February, it sought to take virtual ‘control’ of the platforms, without quite understanding the unique nature of each or the combined strength of Big Tech. It could have also adopted a different approach while trying to break encryption on messaging platforms , like where other western democracies have continued engagement with Big Tech, and set redress mechanisms fully controlled by government with little scope for judicial oversight.
Time is ripe to fix things.
This seven-year-old government got a handle on the economy after six attempts. There is no reason it can’t come to grips with tech sooner. Arming the government with enormous powers is a double-edged sword for any party in power. The next government might just enjoy the fruits, leaving the then Opposition (which could be the current ruling party) shouting from the side lines. History bears this out, especially with regard to control of Doordarshan and All India Radio.
Consequently, the first thing the government ought to recognise is this: a government cannot be at the centre of social media management. If this had been the case in the United States, for example, former US President Donald Trump would have taken over Facebook, Twitter and Google, when they banned him for the riots on Capitol Hill, and perhaps even claimed a second term. That he could not likely saved the oldest modern democracy in the world. The largest democracy in the world would do well to pre-empt such an occurrence.
While a total lack of control over Big Tech might seem like a recipe for chaos, a wiser course of action would be to set up an independent regulator for social media with parliamentary oversight, rather than government control. Obviously, it cannot be anything like the Prasar Bharati because a majority of appointments to it are controlled by the government.
Once the decision on who regulates social media is out of the way, the rest of the puzzle is not particularly difficult to solve. Current disputes mostly relate to freedom of speech, fake news, fair access, platform bans, privacy, which involves both encryption and data mining, and an established grievance redress process.
Most of the issues mentioned above have established juridical principles and can be enforced with a suitable mechanism set by the regulator, rather than by the platforms. Some like fake news and encryption require closer and continued engagement with Big Tech — fake news, because social media require near-immediate detection and regulation and cannot wait days and weeks for traditional justice’s wheels to roll, and encryption because it is still debated around the world.
Any regulation would also need to consider how fast the platforms are evolving, not to mention newer platforms that could emerge. Technologies are rapidly advancing too. Consider just artificial intelligence and deepfake, each of which poses unique and unforeseen challenges. Constant oversight, and a fast-evolving set of rules, would be necessary, but that would be in the purview of the independent regulator.
On its current path, the government’s approach to social media most closely resembles that of Russia’s. Russia, for example, already has established fines for varied “violations,” such as non-removal of “objectionable” content. It has already punished Twitter by deliberately slowing down user access to the microblogging site. On the other hand, India has introduced a rule that criminalises certain ‘violations’. Russia might get away with its bad boy behaviour; India cannot (must not) because it is a liberal democracy, and ought to remain so.
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