Indian officials have had heated discussions with Google, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) about not proactively removing fake news from their platforms. It is the government’s latest spat with Big Tech.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) officials strongly criticized the companies. They claimed that their inaction on fake news forced the Indian government to order content takedowns. This drew international criticism that authorities were suppressing free expression.
The conversation was tense and heated. It signaled a new low in ties between American tech titans and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.
The officials did not issue a request to the companies. The government has tightened regulations in the technology sector. However, it wants companies to do more in terms of content moderation.
The meeting was held in response to the I&B ministry’s use of “emergency powers” in December and January to order the blocking of 55 channels on Google’s YouTube platform, as well as some Twitter and Facebook accounts.
The I&B ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting, also attended by ShareChat and Koo, two Indian content-sharing platforms with millions of users in the country.
According to Twitter’s transparency reports, the Indian government makes one of the most requests to remove content from its platform. According to the technology website Comparitech, India made 97,631 content removal requests in 2020; the second-most globally after Russia, mainly to Facebook and Google.
Strained Ties
During the meeting, senior tech executives told the officials that they take adequate measures to remove or reduce the spread of misinformation on their platform. Moreover, they added that they act on legally-valid content removal requests.
The officials instructed Google to review its internal guidelines for automatically removing fake content.
Officials also expressed disappointment that major social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, were not detecting and removing such content on their own.
