Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The Centre on Thursday announced sweeping regulations for social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, online streaming or over-the-top (OTT) services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram to protect users’ interest and curb fake news and other harmful content.
The rules make social media firms responsible for the content on their platforms. They will have to deploy automated tools to remove objectionable data. In the case of a government or court order, they must take down the flagged item within 36 hours.
The regulations require messaging platforms to enable the ‘traceability’ feature so that senders of mischievous messages could be identified. But this might compromise end-to-end encryption. If a social media platform decides on its own to remove a user’s content, it must inform the customer in advance and state the reasons.