BENGALURU: In light of last month’s riots in Delhi in which over 50 people lost their lives, former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue K N Govindacharya has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in Delhi high court seeking a direction from the court to ask social media platforms to disclose details of their designated officers so that the public can flag hate speech and fake news/videos and these can be taken down in time. The court has listed the matter for a hearing, likely to be this week.

The PIL, reviewed by TOI, also seeks a direction from the court for social media platforms to take ‘immediate’ action on such content during events like Delhi riots, in which the latest death toll is 53, besides property damages. This comes in the wake of reports that the home ministry pulled up online platforms earlier this month for not taking down objectionable content fast enough during Delhi violence and warning them of legal action.

The designated officers of the social media firms mentioned here are different from a grievance officer, one of the lawyers involved in the PIL said.

“On many occasions, social media companies have censored or taken down the content, against which many users have grievances, but they are left with no remedy to approach appropriate authority. Similarly, there is hateful content that is not taken down, which in turn causes more crimes and leaves everyone hapless,” the PIL said by adding that such objectionable content is a big source of revenue for social media companies. Govindacharya has made the home ministry, IT ministry, and finance ministry a part of the PIL.

A Twitter India spokesperson declined to comment on the matter while Facebook India did not respond to TOI’s query. Without commenting directly, a YouTube India spokesperson said, “Over the last year, we’ve worked to better surface credible news sources on YouTube. We’ve changed our search and discovery algorithms to surface credible content, built new features that clearly label and prominently surface news sources on our homepage and search pages, and introduced information panels to help give users more sources where they can fact check information for themselves.”



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