Govt urges social media giants to appoint grievance officers for India

New Delhi, Oct 25: In a bid curb the misuse of social media, which has led to several undesirable incidents like mob lynchings in the past, the Union government on Thursday (October 25) held a meeting with representatives of Facebook, Google, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube and Instagram. During the meeting Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba asked them to nominate India based Grievance Redressal Officers.

The government asked the IT giants to develop a monitoring mechanism to block objectionable contents from getting shared. The government also asked for a process by which prompt sharing of information sought by Law Enforcement Agencies would be possible.

Union Home Secretary, senior officers of MHA, security agencies, MEITY, Department of Telecommunications were also present at the meeting among others.

The government had in August told Whatsapp to set up a local entity and find a tech solution to trace the origin of fake messages on its platform. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, after meeting WhatsApp Head Chris Daniels, had said the Facebook-owned messaging app has contributed significantly to India's digital story but it needs to find solutions to deal with "sinister developments" like mob lynching and revenge porn.

In September, WhatsApp appointed Komal Lahiri as its grievance officer for India amid growing concern over the spread of fake news on social media platforms.

The government has been mounting pressure on WhatsApp to curb the menace of fake news and false information circulated on its app after such messages triggered mob lynchings across the country. It dashed off two notices to WhatsApp, with the second one specifically saying that it would be held abettor in cases of violence triggered by messages on its platform if it did not take necessary steps.