New Delhi: The Indian government will not allow social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to host “objectionable” content and will take steps to screen and remove these, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said on Tuesday.
Sibal said this a day after representatives from Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Microsoft declined to remove offensive content.
Sibal said some of the content available on these sites could hurt the religious sentiments of a large section of communities in India. “Religious sentiments of many communities and of any reasonable person is being hurt because of content which is on the sites,” he told reporters here.
The minister said he had first met with officials of Facebook, Twitter and Orkut on September 5 to discuss the concerns of the government over objectionable pictures being posted on their sites by users.
The pictures, which were shown off the record, depicted Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a bad light, while some others were insulting to various religions.
“Nobody minds satirical image of any public personality but if you show a certain form of me... this is not acceptable. Even individuals should be protected,” said Sibal. The minister said these firms were hesitant to even share information relating to terrorist activities.
“They will have to give us data, then there will be actions taken. We will ask them to give information. Allow us time to deal with it. But one thing is sure we will not allow this kind of content,” Sibal said.
The minister said he did not want to speak to the press on this issue but was forced to do so after the New York Times reported that the government was trying to censor these sites, which was not true. “This is far from the truth. If someone does not wants to remove this kind of incendiary material then the government has to do something about it,” said Sibal.
SourceAhmedabad Mirror
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