Code of Ethics on Social Media

4th December, 2021 Polity

Context:

Figure 3: No Copyright Infringement Intended

Context:

a Parliamentary panel asked the Government to ensure a code of ethics is followed in the digital media space while preserving the right to freedom of expression.

Ensure Accountability: India is the world’s largest open Internet society and social media companies operate in India, do business and also earn profits. However, they will have to be accountable to the Constitution and laws of India.
Fake News: Persistent spread of fake news has compelled many media platforms to create fact-check mechanisms.
Challenges to Women Dignity: Rampant abuse of social media to share morphed images of women and contents related to revenge porn have often threatened the dignity of women.
Misuse of social media for settling corporate rivalries in blatantly unethical manner has become a major concern for businesses.
Instances of use of abusive language, defamatory and obscene contents and blatant disrespect to religious sentiments through platforms are growing.
Over the years, the increasing instances of misuse of social media by criminals, anti-national elements have brought new challenges for law enforcement agencies. These include inducement for recruitment of terrorists, circulation of obscene content, spread of disharmony, financial frauds, incitement of violence, public order etc.

The Supreme Court in suo-moto writ petition (Prajjawala case) had observed that the Government of India may frame necessary guidelines to eliminate child pornography, rape and gangrape imageries, videos and sites in content hosting platforms and other applications.
The Supreme Court had directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to apprise the timeline in respect of completing the process of notifying the new rules.
The Ad-hoc committee of the Rajya Sabha in its report on 03/02/2020 after studying the alarming issue of pornography on social media and its effect on children and society as a whole and recommended for enabling identification of the first originator of such contents.

Self-Classification of Content: The OTT platforms, called as the publishers of online curated content in the rules, would self-classify the content into five age based categories- U (Universal), U/A 7+, U/A 13+, U/A 16+, and A (Adult).
Publishers of news on digital media would be required to observe Norms of Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council of India and the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act thereby providing a level playing field between the offline (Print, TV) and digital media.
A three-level grievance redressal mechanism has been established under the rules with different levels of self-regulation.

Self-regulation by the Publisher: Publisher shall appoint a Grievance Redressal Officer based in India who shall be responsible for the redressal of grievances received by it. The officer shall take decision on every grievance received by it within 15 days.
Self-Regulatory Body: There may be one or more self-regulatory bodies of publishers. Such a body shall be headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court, a High Court or independent eminent person and have not more than six members.
Oversight Mechanism: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting shall formulate an oversight mechanism. It shall publish a charter for self-regulating bodies, including Codes of Practices. It shall establish an Inter-Departmental Committee for hearing grievances.