Social media platforms will be held liable if they don't “make adequate arrangements” to safeguard against misuse ahead of and during the upcoming Bihar elections, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said while announcing the Bihar elections on Friday. Social media platforms will have to set up “strict protocols” to handle any violations. This suggests that in the absence of such protocols, social media platforms will forfeit their safe harbour protections that shield them from bearing liability for content posted by users. “If such arrangements are not made by them, they would not be allowed to take the pretext of being only the providers of platforms and shall be held responsible if necessary action is not taken by them properly and adequately.” — Sunil Arora, Chief Election Commissioner, Election Commission of India (ECI) The voluntary code of ethics that the industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) had first adopted ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, and later for all general and state elections, has also been adopted for the Bihar elections. Under this code, social media platforms which have signed it have to pre-certify political advertisers and take down violative content on an expedited basis during the silence period. It's unclear when this code will come into affect for the Bihar elections. We have reached to the IAMAI and ECI for details. With the ECI's announcement, the Model Code of Conduct has come into force until the results are declared on November 10. During this period, political…
News
Social media platforms will forfeit safe harbour sans ‘adequate arrangements’ against misuse during Bihar elections: Election Commission
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...