Parliament panel summons Facebook and Twitter officials on Jan 21

New Delhi, Jan 17: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology has summoned representatives of Facebook and Twitter on January 21 on the issue of "safeguarding citizens' rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms.

The official agenda of the meeting circulated to the member MPs read: "Evidence of representatives of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and to hear the views of the representatives of Facebook and Twitter on the subject 'Safeguarding citizens' rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space'.

The summons from the Standing Committee on Information Technology came amid a huge row over data privacy.

WhatsApp announced delaying by three months the implementation of a new privacy policy that has faced massive backlash with tens of millions of its users moving from the platform to rivals like Signal and Telegram.

The policy change was originally scheduled to come into effect on February 8, the Facebook-owned company said.

It has clarified that the update does not affect data sharing with Facebook with regard to personal conversations or other profile information and only addresses business chats in the event a user converses with a company''s customer service platform through WhatsApp.