A total of 6,775 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) have been blocked in 2022 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, according to a response tabled in the Indian Parliament. The reply added that the URLs included webpages, websites, content and accounts on social media platforms. The ministry also informed that the committee which deliberates upon blocking conducted 53 meetings during the course of 2022. The response also claimed that the Indian government “does not interfere or control social media intermediaries”. It continued that the state does not “cast any fetters freedom of expression on their users”. The question was asked by Ajay Nishad in the Lok Sabha which is the lower house of the Indian Parliament. Why it matters: The response is significant because it offers some insight into the extent to which the government wields its power to block content online. Moreover, it is a startling statement by the government which has been notorious for banning content online without any transparency. It must be noted that the government’s efforts to regulate the internet in the last few years have faced severe flak for throttling constitutional freedoms. Breaking down the figures: A response tabled by MeitY in the Rajya Sabha revealed* that most number of blocked URLs (3417) were found on Twitter followed by Facebook (1743) in 2022. Furthermore, YouTube had 809 links blocked on the platform whereas Instagram had 355 links in total. [caption id="attachment_178804" align="alignnone" width="880"] Source: Indian…
