News: Govt urges social networking sites to clean up

#Social Media

Govt urges social networking sites to clean up

In line with many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly edgy about the power of social media. So much so that the government has urged social network companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google to remove offensive material, unleashing a storm of criticism from Internet users in the world's largest democracy complaining of censorship. Kapil Sibbal, Union Minister for Telecom & IT, met executives from Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and asked them to screen content.

In line with many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly edgy about the power of social media. So much so that the government has urged social network companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google to remove offensive material, unleashing a storm of criticism from Internet users in the world's largest democracy complaining of censorship. Kapil Sibbal, Union Minister for Telecom & IT, met executives from Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and asked them to screen content.

India's bloggers and Twitter users scorned the minister's proposals, saying a prefiltering system would limit free expression and was impossible to implement. Cyber security experts argue there is no technology currently that determines whether content is 'defamatory' or 'offensive'.

Source: The Times of India

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Topics: #Social Media, #Updates

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