On Thursday Facebook and Twitter executives appeared before parliamentary committee where they were asked stringent questions over why they blocked the account of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in November.
The meeting was scheduled for safeguarding citizens’ rights, security for women in digital world and also preventing the misuse of social media and digital news platforms.
However, according to the sources in the meeting the executives were asked about the blocking of Amit Shah’s Twitter account and who gave them the right to do so. The twitter executive answered that there was a copyright issue over the picture posted from Mr Shah’s account.
In November when Amit Shah’s account got blocked then Twitter had explained it as an “inadvertent error” under its copyright policies, but the decision was reversed immediately as the account was fully functional, a spokesperson of Twitter had said.
With huge controversy over hate speech and hateful content being removed in US, in India some members majorly from ruling government questioned on removal of content from social media when there is no law against such activity in India. However, both Twitter and Facebook clarified it by saying that they too have strong rules regarding content and removal of content if it incite violence.
Recently Facebook and Facebook owned Whatsapp also faced backlash over its new privacy policy on which Facebook has issued clarification saying, that the two platforms Facebook and Whatsapp will not be integrated and no personal data will be seen or shared.
The other key issued discussed in the meeting included privacy, monetization and misinformation of data. On which the committee said that these will be taken in note while considering the data privacy policy.
