Action against misinformation circulating on Social media platforms like Whatsapp would be taken by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. with regard to this, a letter was sent by The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to the WhatsApp senior management in which it was said to take a big action against misinformation spreading on its platform in India. Although recently , a rumours of child lifters on social media platforms like WhatsApp has fuelled after that several people have been killed in incidents of mob violence linked to hate crime and rumours about child-lifting and lot of them have suffered by this rumor that is why Government has decided to take action against such kind of rumours on social media platform and will try to stop the mob violence as well.
In order to the recent spate of lynchings an initiative has been taken by the IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and regarding this, a notice has also been given to the Government’s for deep disapproval to WhatsApp and called for necessary remedial measures and immediate action to stem the flow of misinformation.
the letter has been sent to WhatsApp in which there is no deadline for WhatsApp, a senior officer stated.
Regarding this Government also suggested that the social media platform must contain the good messages and liable information and not be avoided the accountability and responsibility particularly when good technological inventions are abused by some miscreants who resort to inflammatory messages that lead to spread of violence.
Accounting to the sources, The Home Ministry called a meeting of Representatives of social media platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. on June 16, an inter-ministerial had taken this decision. this meeting was chaired by Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba where the issue of circulation of false information and fake videos were discussed in detail.
According to the official, The meeting also took stock of terrorist organizations using social media and discussed the ways to stop such kind of rumor. a senior official said that, for last past years, due to mobile violence, many people have been killed in incidents and also added that this is such a big problem that should be tackled by WhatsApp and How they tackle it is up to them.
besides this, WhatsApp spokesperson said that WhatsApp is pretty much care about people’s safety and their ability to freely communicate. and he also added that his team doesn’t want that their services will spread harmful misinformation .Whatsapp owned by Facebook is India’s largest market, with 200 million monthly active users in the country.