Censorship of Networking Sites

FATE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN INDIA

In September 2011, India crossed the landmark of 100 million in terms of number of claimed internet users. But by the end of the year 2011, a total number of claimed internet users crossed more than 121 million due to the continuing internet momentum. Among the claimed internet users, the statistical analysis depicts the UNIQUE USERS in India i.e. who use majorly Social Networking Sites, which is presented in graphical form:

It is evident from the above stated data; Social Networking Sites (SNWs) like Facebook, Orkut, YouTube, Twitter and Google+, which enable hundreds of millions of individual users to publish and share on the worldwide web, are made up of millions of lives.

SNWs were started as online hangouts for activities; such as, to chat with buddies, updates about what you are upto, exchange photos and plan parties etc., but nowadays these sites have become a melting pot of opinions and ideas.

As the opinion and ideas in these SNWs target majorly government, government officials, politicians etc. i.e. by updating user contents which either shows communal hatred, disharmony in society, criticism of the government or disaffection towards government, the government requested the internet search giant, Google India to remove contents from their platform on the basis that it was objectionable for the government.

Keeping all this in view, in last quarter of the year 2011, the government spoke to social networking giants like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook regarding the monitoring mechanisms for the user contents and insisted them to formulate a strategy to check the objectionable materials which are updated on their sites.

But the social networking giants did not respond to the repeated requests of the government to block or remove the inflammatory contents which might “offend Indian sensibilities”. This for the reason that the executives of these social networking...