There is a need to adopt a mixed approach of lobbying along with indigenous technology which can lead towards a more predictable and cleaner Social Media. Social Media platforms
are undoubtedly less accountable as of now and they cannot simply shy away from their obligations to act as mature and value enabling platforms empowering millions to express their thoughts and views to participate in the debates and discussions of their interest.
The move by the government to lay a set of guidelines for them to comply with is very much required. After all, these are just like any other business entities, or for that matter even including non-business organisations, which need to adhere to set rules and regulations in the country they operate.
Many argue that these guidelines will compromise the privacy as well as restrict right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the constitution. However, these do not seem to be very strong arguments. For the privacy part, it is breached when the contents of the message are made public. That is not the requirement here. Even, it would not affect the encryption of the messages. What the law enforcing agencies might require at times is to establish the chain of carriers of a particular message to reach to the originator. Now in any encryption technique, the recipient and the originator are very much known.
That is how the keys are delivered which authenticate the expected path of the message and allow its decryption upon delivery.
If we look at the possible use case of this regulation, the message would already be out in the public, basis which the law enforcing authority would decide to know about its origin to act upon. So, feeling that the guidelines will infringe the privacy is not a correct interpretation.
The second issue is of right to freedom of speech. I am not a legal expert to decode what it means and also explain it in the light of various judgements that concern it. However, if we go into the logic of why the architects of the constitution must have provisioned it, one can clearly feel that the purpose is to give a legal protection to a person to express his or her views without any fear.
So, it means that the person is known, who may be apprehensive of any legal action after making an opinion. Had this been available to anonymous people, then there would have been no concept of threat perception as the identity would have never been revealed. In the prescribed guidelines as well, the government wants that the platform helps in identifying a person who may have posted something that it does not feel right. In no case, right to freedom of speech, logically, means its available to people whose identity is not known. OTT
applications by nature have been disruptive and we have seen this contrast posture always there even since the early days of IP Telephony or VoIP. In case of plain telephony, it’s a regulated and licensed regime and adheres to a certain regulatory setup. Contrary to this, OTT applications also offer similar services, in many cases richer, and do not fall within the purview of any prescribed regulatory regime in most of the countries including India.
So, the challenge here is that both – regular and the OTT channels of communication and messaging require same level monitoring and control to help the law enforcement agencies. Now, when any ordinary citizen doesn’t have any issue in abiding by the laws regarding the legacy telecommunications, why should it be concerned about OTT being brought within the purview of same transparency and monitoring? Digital Diplomacy
As social media keeps on becoming an integral part of our lifestyle and we see more and more people across the globe joining these platforms to express their views and exchange thoughts with others, there will always be the challenge of its misuse. These platforms are very powerful in information dissemination as they mostly have broadcasting capabilities. We have seen in the past in some other countries similar discussions taking place and a need felt of not letting this beast go untamed.
The present posture makes it feel that India is against these platforms. The reality is that most of the governments have certain degree of uneasiness with social media. This is not because they want to curb the right of expression, but to be able to have some level of check on such platforms being hijacked for ulterior motives.
This is a global challenge. To have a long term and amicable resolution of this emerging challenge, there is a need to have a global endeavour to set up the basic framework for social media. We need to have some standardised policies. Again, in the telecom sector for instance, ITU plays a critical role in driving standardisation as well as prescribe a homogenised regulatory framework across different countries. Additionally, we have seen how collective endeavours have worked successfully. GDPR is one such success story where in the entire European block took a stance to get the privacy upheld forcing all to comply with. No one confronted GDPR guidelines even when it meant additional cost to the technology value chain.
This ‘digital diplomacy’ is very much required. Not only in case of social media but going forward we will have many such issues where we might be required to have a global unified viewpoint as each nation gradually moves towards a digital economy. For example, we may soon feel the need of having a global consensus on regulating AI applications, Deep Learning use cases, among others. India, being a frontrunner digital economy, must the lead in this initiative and drive major economies towards ‘digital diplomacy’ and set up some universally applicable guidelines.Tech audits and monitoring by Indian start-ups
The second solution area that the government needs to work upon is to develop technologies that will help implement regulations. No longer, can there be regulatory setup, which can be implemented and monitored without the support of technology. Social media is a classic case. We need real time regulatory mechanism for monitoring and necessary actions to have an effective regulation driving the domain. This cannot be done just by issuing instructions and guidelines. The regulations have to be more actionable, and technology can make that happen.
Our regulators will be required to implement technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) which will assist them in real time regulations as well as manage the ever-increasing scope of the digital. For instance, no regulator can now certify the volume of content being created and it would not also be feasible that user-generated content goes a certification mechanism. But, to safeguard the interests of the country and its citizens, an AI led solution can be implemented which does the ‘digital policing’ for implementation of the regulations. Same holds true for social media and other digital platforms.
Even for that matter, in the physical retail, there are market checks done by consumer affairs departments of various states and union territories to check the quality, adulteration, pricing and other things to serve the interests of consumers. Now, this again cannot be replicable easily over digital marketplaces meaning we again need technology aided regulations.
These are billion-dollar worth of use cases which government can reserve for Indian companies who can develop solutions for them. So, all audits and monitoring solutions that aide the regulators and the governments can be developed indigenously by the promising start-up ecosystem which will uphold the interests of the country and can also be held accountable being local legal entities.
The above two recommendations can lead to a sustainable solution of this rising challenge which otherwise brings the regulator, government, and the digital platforms to a conflicting situation. Social media platforms are very important and empowering. It has become an important part of the 13-14 thousand crore digital advertising industry. These days, even a solopreneur or a SOHO type entity first thinks of social media and a social media executive is among first employees of modern organisations.
It is also helping small time brick and mortal retailers go hybrid where they can setup catalogues on these platforms to engage with potential target base. Beyond this there is very powerful play of social media in dissemination of very critical and important information, even including G2C information. In the present Covid-19 times, it has also played the role of SOS helpline.
Social media is essential to our existence, but at the same time cannot be left untamed for possible misuse as well as abuse. That is where government needs to be empowered through legislations giving some level of control in case of very genuine scenarios where it becomes critical to connect the dots and identify the motive as well as the people involved. For that, we have to adopt a strategy and the above suggested prescription could be a good way of solving it for the long term.
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