A bench comprising of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta allowed one month to the social media websites to come up with a foolproof mechanism to prevent uploading of objectionable content.
The Apex Court of India on Friday raised serious concern over the irresponsible behavior of big search engine giants and social media networking sites like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Yahoo in promoting objectionable material leading to the lynching of people and warned imposing of Rs. 5,00,000 per day on them if they do not meet a requirement to develop a foolproof mechanism in order to prevent uploading of such material.
A bench comprising of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta granted one month to the social media websites to make it sure that a foolproof mechanism is developed to prevent uploading of objectionable materials which includes child pornography, gang rapes and so on on the social media sites.
As per its statement, it will impose a fine of Rs. 5,00,000 per day on Google, Facebook, Microsoft and WhatsApp until they design a mechanism that prevents such materials and gave one month to all such companies to fulfill their request for time.
“What type of attitude you (social media sites) are all adopting? There is so much objectionable material on the social media sites. People are being lynched across the country, people are dying at various places, but you seem to be not bothered.”
“You are saying that as long as it does not happen to me, it is ok. When it happens to me, then we will look into it,” the anguished bench told the advocates representing social media sites.
The Supreme Court was hearing a PIL filed by NGO Prajwala requesting the court to direct web search engines and social networking sites not to allow uploading of the offensive video on their platforms.
The Non-Governmental Organization has maintained that despite several assurances by the search engines and social media sites, child pornography faces no barriers and continues to be available over the internet medium.
The court, as of now, posted the matter for August 27 for further hearing of the case.
There have been several cases of mob lynching and riots due to the use of social media without any control mechanism. There must be a solution soon to solve all such cases.
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