It was Senator Dan Crenshaw from the United States who said, “There are 2 ways of looking at the situation. You can either get to the truth. Or if you hate Donald Trump and believe that it is wrong just because Donald Trump is doing it, then you’ve already made your decision and there’s no point discussing it further”.
Similarly, if you have already decided that the government is wrong just because you hate this government Then you’re just wasting your time reading this. But if you believe in facts and objective analysis, keep reading.
Twitter has become so boring without Donald Trump. Come on, hate him or like him, he was fun. They banned the best comedian from Twitter. You banned your company’s best-selling product, you idiots! So Trump was banned, and I’d been following the news on that and I got to hear about section 230 a lot. Section 230. What is section 230 let me explain?
Now, if I phone someone and say, “Bitch I’ll kill you!”. I gave them a death threat and I could get in legal trouble. But you know who will NOT get in trouble? Samsung. I used their phone, but they won’t be held responsible.
Like if I use a Toyota car to drive over and kill someone, Toyota won’t be held responsible. Similarly, the telephone service provider will not be held responsible. Because they are just the service provider, they are a neutral carrier. They had nothing to do with the crime. They cannot check every conversation that’s going on. It’s not their job.
But imagine if the service provider started believing that it was their job. Interfering in conversations and adding their own opinions. Imagine two girls are having a conversation, discussing whether one of them should date a certain boy. And suddenly a voice from the telephone company butts in and says, “No, no, Don’t date him girl, he cheated on his ex-girlfriend. He beat her up, he’s a violent alcoholic. He’s not the right one for you”. Not only is it extremely creepy and inappropriate, but this also means that now the telephone service provider is responsible for their words.
So you think the guy is not okay, you are saying bad things about him. Are you sure this information is correct? Where did you get it from? A reliable source? Because if it’s just rumours, then you are probably giving out wrong information, destroying the guy’s reputation and preventing two people from getting into a relationship, your words could be causing real world damage. How about the telephone company just STFU and stay out of this? Just do your job, your job is to be a neutral service provider. Don’t get involved in things that don’t concern you.
And this rule also applies to social media platforms. Under American law, under section 230 specifically, social media is legally viewed as an intermediary, a neutral platform. If I send a death threat to someone on Facebook, Facebook will not be held accountable, the sender of the message will be held accountable. So you see, Facebook has immunity. Twitter also has immunity. Because they are a platform, not a publisher. There is a legal distinction between the two.
But if social media companies start adding their own opinion to posts and tweets, say that this is manipulated by the media or this claim is disputed. They lose the privilege of a platform. They will now be viewed as a publisher. Meaning they lose the legal immunity that a platform enjoys.
And as we all know well, these social media companies started doing such things. And this has consequences. First of all, is not their job, I don’t why they had to take this headache onto themselves.
But the thing is, under the guise of fact-checking; It is common knowledge that they are being very biased and one-sided about this. They are using this to suppress the voices of people that they do not agree with. Now you might argue that this is for good and they are a private company, they can do what they want. No, they can’t for two reasons.
- That was NOT in the terms and conditions, this is not what we signed up for. If they want to take a certain side, fine, but they should have been straightforward about what they are from the beginning. They pretended to be neutral, but they’re not.
- Yeah, you might cheer them on, because you also oppose the political party and ideology that they oppose and are trying to suppress. Sounds like fun until you step out of line until you say something they don’t agree with and they ban your account and cancel you.
See, cancel culture has been described as poison gas. You used it against your enemies, it seems to be working. But then the wind changes direction. So what Twitter is doing, is not only unethical, apparently also illegal. They said they were a platform, but are operating as a publisher. So no, you do not enjoy legal immunity anymore.
Twitter would not have been in this mess if they’d just shut up and did their job. But no, they started taking sides, they became arbiters, they started moral policing. Listen to this exchange between Senator Ted Cruz and Jack Dorsey.
Twitter brought this upon themselves. And they are very one-sided about this, they have started abusing their power. They ban one side for “Hate Speech” and the other side gets to say whatever the heck they want. There was that infamous photo of Jack posing with Barkha Dutt and Divya Kandukuri and some other who’s who of the Indian liberal garbage bin. With a placard that says, “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy.” Is that not hate speech? The United Nations stipulates that individuals should be held accountable for crimes, you cannot blame an entire race or community or a group of people.
So yeah, in the legal tussle going on between the Republicans and Big Tech in the U.S., I got to learn about section 230 and the immunity provided therein.
Now in India, the equivalent law is section 79 of the Information Technology Act 2000. One significant incident took place in 2004 that demonstrates the need for such a law. Before Flipkart and Amazon, we had an e-commerce portal called Baazi.com. All this technology was very new and around the same time, there was the infamous Delhi Public School scandalous video circulating. These days, we see a lot worse than that on Instagram, but back then it was a huge scandal. Someone put up the same video for sale on Baazi.com and guess what, their CEO was arrested. This would be unimaginable today, just think of the outrage if the CEO of Flipkart were arrested because some random seller was selling illegal products through their account.
We need such immunity and protection, otherwise E-commerce would be impossible. And under Indian law the companies that come under intermediary category are: Telecom companies, Network Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, Web Hosting Services, E-commerce websites like Flipkart/Amazon, Search Engines, online payment services like Paytm and Gpay, auction sites like eBay and of course social media platforms.
But what if the CEO knows about illegal activities happening on his platform and allowed it and did nothing to ban it?
That is exactly what the government has tried to address with a new set of reforms in February 2021. These rules apply to any platform that has more than 5 million, i.e. 50 lakh active users. You can read about the rules from here. “The information Technology – Intermediary guidelines and Digital Media ethics code.”
Here, without going into too much detail, I’ll just give you the gist of it. You and I can report a Social media post or a Tweet that we don’t like, and it may or may not be removed. But the government cannot be content with this feature, they need more. Considering how impactful Twitter is, you have to consider the risk of false information and inflammatory tweets that can incite violence. And so the government legally requires Twitter to have dedicated employees just for this. If the government feels that a post is inflammatory and is a threat to national security, they will give Twitter 36 hours to take down the tweet. Please note, this order has to be given by the government, a government agency, or a court order and the platform has 36 hours to comply. And the government needs a dedicated contact point that will respond to such takedown requests.
And so therefore, under the new rules, these social media companies are required to appoint:
- A resident grievance officer.
- A chief compliance officer.
- A nodal contact person.
Now, these rules were issued in February 2021, and Twitter and Facebook were given three months to comply and they haven’t done anything yet. The deadline was May 26th. The India-born micro-blogging platform Koo has complied and done the needful. But Twitter and Facebook haven’t complied with the law, which… Okay, I’ll insert my opinion here now.
The law seems fair and reasonable. Because, let’s face it… these social media giants are becoming too cocky, they are drunk on power and they’re using their power to meddle in a country’s politics, to try and influence the outcome of elections. Like recently there was some toolkit controversy and any tweet by a significant Twitter user that talked about the toolkit was flagged as “Manipulated Media”. If Twitter stood neutral on this topic, they could have tagged it as “Disputed Content” or something similar in nature. I did not follow the news about this Congress toolkit thing, I don’t know how true it is, but one thing is for sure. I DO NOT trust Twitter. Twitter cannot be the arbitrator of truth. That is why the government has Twitter and Facebook in the dock.
Update: As of 17th June 2021 the Indian Government taken action against Twitter and the tech giant has lost its intermediary status in India.
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