The consequences of India banning Social Media giants..!

On 25th February 2021, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India gave 3 months of deadline to all major social media and other content streaming channels, to comply with the new set of guidelines. 

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Youtube, Netflix or any platform with more than 5 Million registered users are subjected to follow these guidelines with immediate effect.

These set of rules that government decided to imposed are briefly described as below:

i. These platforms need to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer, Nodal contact person and a Grievance Officer residing in India, so that these platforms can be reached out whenever required.

ii. The platforms are required to remove any flagged content like nudity, abusing or any inappropriate content within 24 hours of complaining.

iii. They need to publish a monthly compliance report disclosing the details of all the complaints registered and the action taken against them respectively.

iv. They have to be able to detect the original poster or the source of content that is being distributed. Although they don’t have to reveal the contents in private messaging. But this definitely sounds impossible for end-to-end encrypted platforms like Whatsapp. Although Whatsapp has already filed a lawsuit towards the new guidelines that goes against the right to privacy amongst Indian people.

v. Five Million registered users is a threshold for a platform to be considered as ‘Intermediary’ by Indian Government. This Intermediary status can be lost if any platform fails to comply with these new guidelines. Which means these platforms will be responsible for any content posted by anyone on their platform, and will be liable to the penalties.

However, many major platforms have asked for 6 months, and other platforms are waiting for the action to be taken in their headquarters overseas, to comply with the new set of guidelines. Although Koo, an Indian social media platform is the only intermediary that has complied with these guidelines so far.

Now the question arises, what would happen if these platforms fail to comply with the new set of guidelines set by the Government?

Imagine, all of a sudden, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Youtube, Netflix are ceased to access. As we all know, these platforms have been a major source of being connected with one another, while we couldn’t move outside due to lockdowns. It is a major discourse of concern, like what would actually happen if these platforms are banned in India.

First of all, we will be deprived from the major sources of entertainment and networking, at the time when we need them the most(during a pandemic). This will definitely increase the cases of depression and anxiety among many of us. But this is just the least significant aftermath of this list, to start with.

We might lose our several contacts which we made through the help of these platforms. Which means huge losses in business as well as personal relationships.

Once we’re restricted from using these platforms, major social media agencies whose business is totally dependent upon these platforms will face a huge loss. Moreover, their existing contracts will also suffer a lot after this forceful implementation, which will eventually seek objections from overseas clients and build pressure from some of the leading countries of the world.

As we know, the IT industry is major and one of the only surviving industries in pandemic times will also face huge losses, which will definitely downgrade the already drowning Economy of India.

Many influencers and content creators whose income is totally dependent upon these platforms will hit the rock bottom of their careers. It will all go back to the days where we’ll only be able to depend upon the known publishing organisations like magazines for any source of information. It will be next to impossible to interact with the prominent figures like we did with mere tweets, and transparency of these connections will be largely disoriented.

Advertising on these social media channels is way cheaper than advertising anywhere else. Hence, the business that many small scale to large scale industries generate from advertising on these platforms will see a major downfall caused by the obvious reasons. Let us already start praying for our Economy then. 

Besides that, the Center Government was expected to issue a set of Frequently Asked Questions in order to explain how these guidelines are to be implemented. This FAQ list has not been released yet, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology obviously needs more time to evaluate the nuances which are being challenged on the grounds of these “Guidelines”. 
And guess what? The central Government will never want to look like a joke in the Courts, if these platforms dragged them there on the basis of unconstitutional guidelines being imposed.

Moreover, all of these major giants like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc belongs to the leading country of the World i.e. United States. Do you think our government should sabotage our relationship with the supreme leaders on the grounds of these Guidelines?

We have already seen many blunders lately procured by our Government for which we’re already paying the price. This “India banning Social Media Platforms” might also get inscribed on the list of biggest blunders we have encountered so far.