India weighs new regulator to oversee social media

New Delhi

AN INDIAN parliamentary panel has recommended treating social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as publishers and setting up a regulatory body to oversee them, potentially opening the companies up to more liability for user-generated content.

The high-level committee made those recommendations as it reviewed the personal data protection bill introduced in 2019 that seeks to protect users' privacy and enforce controls on how companies such as Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com collect, process and store data. It is asking for tighter rules because current laws treating these social media platforms as intermediaries have not done enough in terms of regulation, said the 2 sources. They added that the current provisions in the personal data protection bill is too broad.

They said the committee recommended that the regulator should be set up along the lines of the Press Council of India to regulate the content. A mechanism may be devised for social media platforms to be held accountable for content coming from unverified accounts, they said.

P P Chaudhary, a lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party who heads the panel, said the report's recommendations will be presented in parliament when it comes into session from Nov 29.

If these recommendations are included in the revised bill and get passed in parliament, it could have a far-reaching impact in the world's largest social media market. Offences under this bill can be punishable with fines of up to 4 per cent of social media companies' annual global turnover, similar to penalties in the European Union. Beyond India, lawmakers from Washington to Brussels have contemplated action to hold social media companies such as Facebook and Google accountable for the enormous content generated daily on their platforms - a view that gained momentum during the pandemic.

In India, these companies have so far enjoyed "safe harbour" status and cannot be held liable for user-generated content on their platform so long as they follow the Intermediary Guidelines issued this year. This has included setting up offices in India, appointing compliance officials and adhering to the government's requests to take down certain types of content that it deems harmful.

Google declined to comment, while Twitter and Meta Platforms' Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While India's headlong rush to adopt smartphones has led to an explosion of personal and sensitive information, laws to protect users' privacy have not moved at the same pace, sparking concerns over potential abuses. It took 2 years for the government to come up with data protection legislation after the Supreme Court ruled that privacy is a fundamental individual right.

The parliamentary panel recommended that approximately 24 months be given to implement the provisions of the act, so data-related companies can make the necessary changes. BLOOMBERG