Social Media Governance

How to 'rule' over digital media | Sansad Watch Ep 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCOZSj9524g  Did you know the Indian #government can make certain #laws without parliamentary approval? They can, and they do it all the time, in the form of subordinate legislation, or rules. Most recently, the Narendra Modi government introduced such rules supposedly to “regulate” #digitalmedia platforms. What are these new rules and how will they affect digital news in the country?

The Indian state of Tamil Nadu is rolling out something never attempted before—with the help of a global tech giant.

For the state's 80 million residents:

• It wants to collect their blood samples.

• Check their blood pressure

• Screen them for cancer and kidney diseases

All of it at their doorstep.

And guess who wants to have a foot in the door?

The U.S. tech giant Google.

Google has been working with Tamil Nadu for a few years to create a population health registry (PHR) to aid this plan.

But while the state calls this association 'informal', Google has spent US$3 million in funding organisations building the PHR.

Why has Google gone all the way out? What does it hope to achieve?

And from a citizen's point of view, will the aggregated sensitive data be stored safely? Especially given that India does not have a data protection law yet.

How is a Twitter account blocked on government orders? What is the process to restore it? https://scroll.in/article/1048073/the-near-impossible-task-of-restoring-a-blocked-twitter-handle-in-india 

Scroll spoke to users whose accounts or tweets have been withheld in the last two years on the basis of a legal demand from the government and who have tried to challenge the blocking orders. This is how they hit a wall.

A few users tried to revive accounts withheld on a legal demand from the government. They hit a wall.

If your Twitter account is withheld, you can approach the ministry with your grievances but not as a matter of right. “It is discretionary for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to reject or respond,” said Mishi Choudhary.

by Zafar Aafaq 

01/05/2023

The Minister of State for Information Technology and Electronics has made it clear, the government is the only body with access to factual data to certify any online speech as fake or otherwise. https://thewire.in/tech/it-rules-single-source-of-truth-governance 

This idea of certifying truth with the state becoming the only source of truth is dangerous for any free society. It is also unfortunate the state won’t tell us what these truths are and will only censor our speech instead of educating us with facts. 

Single source of truth is an informational model which ensures data from multiple databases/departments is inter-linked to create a reference database – ‘a master database’ – which is the only accepted true data in the entire organisation. To illustrate – if your land passbook says you have 10 acres of land, but the revenue database says you only have eight acres of land, another government database for welfare says you have 12 acres of land, then eight acres is considered truth no matter the actual on the ground land possession.

Here, the perceived truth by the government is not a fact measurable and quantifiable on the ground.

by Srinivas Kodali

17/04/2023