Recently the Central Govt issued revised laws for the Information Technology (IT) Companies, social media platforms like Facebook (FB)Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp(WA), and others. These companies initially showed their reluctance but in the end, slowly they have started towing the line. But there is news that ‘ Content Policies could put FB on a collision course with the Govt’.
Now the news is that FB has ended its practice of exempting politicians from its content moderation policies that prevent the social media platforms’s regular users from engaging in harmful speech, in a major policy reversal.The changes in content moderation policies have gone into effect immediately and are applicable in India as well.
Cyber laws experts said the move could have far-reaching repercussions for FB in India and may impact the company’s relationship with the govt. FB said it will no longer treat content posted by politicians as inherently being of public interest or newsworthy. This means such posts will be moderated like other users, though the company will provide a ‘newsworthiness exemption’ in rare cases, and will update users on these instances. FB announced in 2019 that speech from politicians is inherently of public interest. As per FB’s statement that when we assess content for newsworthiness, FB will not treat content posted by politicians any differently. FB will simply use their mind about newsworthiness balancing test to all content, measuring whether the public interest value of the content outweighs the potential risk of harm by leaving it up.
FB also said that it would fully implement the oversight board’s recommendation to suspend the accounts of high govt officials such as the head of state if their posts repeatedly posed a risk of harm. “ It is incorrect to say we did not moderate political speech previously. We had previously presumed all political speech was in the public interest, though all content was still balanced against safety and harm, and we still removed content that was harmful such as voter suppression and harmful Covid information.”
One of the leading Technology lawyers said that the changes may lead to friction between FB and politicians from the ruling party. “We will have to see how this works out with the intermediary guidelines in place now. While the newsworthiness exemption can be used. If the underlying content is illegal, the content would have to be taken down or else it will not get safe harbor exemption.” This might affect the relationship between FB and the govt, similar to what is happening with Twitter.
The director of Internet Freedom Foundation said that “ the move will lead to a better form of content moderation. But two additional factors need to be considered. The first do is, to do with the actual enforcement of rules and policies which are often done without full transparency and are applied in selective instances. The second is that under international human rights standards, quite often speech made by politicians is regarded to be much more sensitively assessed in terms of moderation required for it than other people.
In my opinion, this move by FB was much needed. Politicians’ speech should not be treated with additional impunity. Why the politician should get away with making a statement that is not even newsworthy or public interest. Politicians just write something against their opponent which may not be true even.
So you may expect fireworks between politicians and FB in near future.
Waiting for your views/comments.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
7th June 2021