What’s the news: Google voiced serious concerns about the creation of a self-regulatory body (SRB) to handle India’s social media user complaints, reported Reuters. As per unnamed sources of the news agency, the company fears the impact of such a regulatory body on the search engine's content. During a closed-door meeting, an executive from Alphabet Inc's Google elaborated on the worries regarding an SRB that could results in external reviews of decisions. The reviews would force Google to reinstate content that might violate Google's internal policies, said Reuters. Why this matters: In recent months, the Centre has been oscillating between SRBs and the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC). While most think tanks and experts oppose the idea of a GAC, experts also approach the idea of the SRB with apprehension. This uncertainty works in the favour of a government-backed mechanism that will increase its censorship of social media. No consensus among tech giants on SRBs: While the Indian government seems keener for the GAC, officials said the administration was still open to SRBs by the companies. However, the companies have no consensus amongst themselves about the implementation of such a mechanism. According to Reuter’s sources, the Google executive in the meeting worried about how the SRB could “set a dangerous precedent.” Google said in a statement, it had attended a preliminary meeting regarding this and is engaged with the industry and the government to "explore all options" for a "best possible solution." Like Google, Snap Inc and ShareChat – a popular Indian…
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IT Rules 2021: Now Google concerned about SRB mechanism for social media platforms
Google is not in favour of self-regulation mechanism being mooted for content regulation on social media under India’s IT Rules, says Reuters
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