{"id":43,"date":"2018-03-14T01:41:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T01:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?post_type=article&p=43"},"modified":"2018-03-14T01:41:42","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T01:41:42","slug":"social-media-giants-work-with-indian-government-to-censor-internet","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/social-media-giants-work-with-indian-government-to-censor-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media giants work with Indian government to censor Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s government, working in conjunction with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Internet technology companies, is intensifying its censorship of selected websites and social media accounts.\r\n\r\nAccording to recent data, 1,329 social media URLs were blocked on the recommendations of a government committee dealing with \u201cobjectionable content\u201d during the first 11 months of 2017. That was an almost 38 percent increase on the 964 URLs blocked or removed for the whole of 201 In 2014, 10 URLs were blocked, followed by 287 in 2015.\r\n\r\nAttempting to justify the censorship, an internal note from India\u2019s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, declared: \u201cWhile social media sites are a good medium to share and exchange information, some miscreants are also using this platform to spread rumours and posting objectionable content thereby causing disturbance in the society.\u201d\r\n\r\nElected in 2014, Modi\u2019s Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led government has implemented pro-investor economic \u201creforms,\u201d including privatising public sector enterprises, slashing subsidies and further opening sectors of the economy to foreign investors.\r\n\r\nTo divert the growing opposition to its big business policies, the Modi government is whipping up Hindu communalism and ultra-right chauvinist elements to be used against the working class in general, and its political opponents in particular. Extreme-right Hindu fundamentalists have been mobilised to intimidate or silence anti-government sentiment among university students.\r\n\r\nThe ministerial note\u2019s reference to \u201ccausing disturbance in the society,\u201d indicates that New Delhi is acutely nervous about the mounting dissent and any exposure of its promotion of Hindu communalism and complicity in the communal violence.\r\n\r\nFacebook and other social media giants are fully cooperating with the government\u2019s censorship demands. According to Facebook\u2019s latest \u201cGovernment Requests Report,\u201d the government made 9,853 requests for data in the first half of 2017, a more than 30 percent increase from the 6,324 requests in the first half of 2016.\r\n\r\nThe company admitted restricting access to 1,228 pieces of content \u201cin response to legal requests from law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency Response Team within the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology\u201d during that time.\r\n\r\nFacebook claimed that \u201cthe majority of content restricted was alleged to violate local laws relating to defamation of religion and hate speech.\u201d But how far Facebook jumps to the government\u2019s political demands is indicated in the following:\r\n