Deepening his thoughts, the Indian IT minister Kapil Sibal announced yesterday that from his end a proposal has been forwarded to the technology companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Twitter for pre-screen user generated content so that community sentiments are not hurt. His concern has been to direct the focus on possible unhealthy situations, which might arise because of the interactions and posts on the social networks.
Sibal said, “It was brought to my notice some of the images and content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google are extremely offensive to the religious sentiments of people of this country,” pointing out that he had shown executives from these companies the material online. “I approached these platforms. I told them to come to me with a solution. This government does not believe in censorship. They came back to me and said we cannot help you,” he added. “We cannot allow intermediaries to throw up their hands and tell us – we cannot do anything about it.”
Another question that arouse noting this point was that do the politicians want the social media platforms to censor whatever they deem objectionable and too offensive for the Internet.
Whatever may be the case, the tech biggies have pushed in simple yet precise replies against the issue, placed by the minister. Facebook responded to say that it can’t help in the effort.
Facebook spokesperson said in a statement, “We will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service.” In short, the social networking giant wants to say that it would be rightly rigid on its terms and has no real plans to change its parameters to include all the content the Indian government has a problem with.
Facebook has been working hard to filter out content that breaks its own rules, but surely cannot customize its filtering to suit the needs of every government.
Google even had its part to say o the issue. It stated, “We work really hard to both follow the law and also give people as much access to information as we can.” The search engine giant continued, “If content is legal, but controversial, we don’t remove it because people’s differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal.”
Whatever may be the outcome, but the minister has already faced criticism for his statements and the response from the common man and the known personalities on Twitter and Facebook has been terribly against the minister’s thoughts.
Some notable tweets are as follows:
Utter nonsense is measured in deSibals? (via @nikhilnarayanan)
Dear Mr Sibal, it is YOU who are accountable to the people; we are NOT accountable to you. Now repeat 100 times. (via @SachinKalbag)
So, $35 tablets will come with censorship filters inbuilt? (via @mehulved)
No Kapil Sibal. You can’t be the Cabinet Minister for Offence. There’s no such thing. (via @rameshsrivats)
Pope Sibal I, in 1440-”What? Gutenberg invented a printing press? I want the Church to read every letter of every page before it’s printed” (via @krishashok)
Kapil Sibal is an idiot. RT while this is still legal. (via @sidin)
Breaking News : Indian govt launches a new firewall called S.I.B.A.L – Social Internet Blocking ALgorithm (via @schmmuck)
More to the list, the following screenshot confirms that people are not liking the statement, noted by Mr. Kapil Sibal.
