AfterDawn: News

India seeks content screening on social networks

Unnamed executives reveal Indian requests.

According to New York Times' sources, the Indian government has asked several major Internet companies to pre-screen content posted by users, and to remove content it deems disparaging or defamatory.



Staff from the Indian units of Google, Microsoft and Facebook are meeting with Indian telecommunications minister, Kapil Sibal, to discuss the issue.

Several weeks ago, Mr Sibal reportedly called legal representatives from ISPs and Facebook into his office in New Delhi. He showed them a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party?s president, Sonia Gandhi, saying it was unacceptable and asking them to find a way to monitor what is posted.

He also told them that he expected them to use human staff to screen content and not rely on filters.

NYTimes sources said that top executives from the firms involved would inform the minister that what he is seeking is not possible, even just due to the sheer amount of content that is posted by users.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 5 Dec 2011 17:27

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• 2 comments

• Zoo_Look

  With the amount of traffic social networking and Google generate, if they DO use humans instead of filters, they will probably be situated in India anyway.
  
  This can only be good news to everyone in the UK who rings customer services for anything, as everyone in India will be reviewing content for the Indian government, so companies here will be forced to look at other countries to employ customer service call centre staff. At least there will be a chance someone will actually speak English!
  

  9.12.2011 08:03 #1

• pmshah

  There was a video clip on U-Tube revealing some allegedly shady acts of Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law. This was simply not available through ANY Indian ISP.
  
  Apparently he went from being a roadside scrap dealer, a frowned upon trade in India, to a multi billionaire, practically over night, having become a FACILITATOR !.
  
  There is a whole lot of lampooning of Sonia Gandhi, the Indian prime minister Mr. Manmohan Singh and their cohorts. I believe Kapil Sibal has objections to that. He does not realise the fact that apart from social networking web sites there is a whole lot of emailing campaign going on which include selcted and CHOICE such renditions.

  20.12.2011 10:01 #2