Government of India directs WhatsApp to withdraw new TOS and privacy policy
WhatsApp’s deadline for accepting their new Terms of Service (TOS) and Privacy Policy was 5 days ago on the May 15th. Now, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has sent a letter to the Facebook-owned company to withdraw the update within 7 days, and failure to do so will prompt lawful measures.
This is the second time the Government of India has directed WhatsApp to roll back its privacy policy update. The first time was back in January, when WhatsApp first introduced the new policy and had to roll it back because of severe backlash from their Indian user base. The company then postponed the deadline to May 15th, 2021, a date which just passed.
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https://www.afinalwarning.com/515499.html (Natural News) Social media giant Facebook blocked posts with a hashtag calling for the resignation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The suppression came amid a second wave of Wuhan coronavirus infections in India that has crippled the country’s healthcare system. Many have criticized Modi’s leadership due to the way he and other officials have responded to the pandemic.
Facebook blocked more than 12,000 posts critical of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party on April 28. Many Indian users noticed that posts with the hashtag #ResignModi were no longer visible, and search results for these returned a “temporarily hidden” message due to the content purportedly “going against Facebook community standards.” The social media site eventually restored the aforementioned post hours later.
Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto via Getty Images This story is part of a group of stories called Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing and changing us.
As the coronavirus pandemic rages in India, claiming thousands of lives, many Indians are turning to social media to demand that the government handle the public health crisis better. And now, the government is silencing these critics in its latest threat to the future of free speech on the internet in the world’s second-most populous country.
In recent weeks, the Indian government has requested that companies like Twitter take down content that it says contains misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. But critics say that India’s political leadership under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is using the premise of misinformation to overreach and suppress criticism of the administration’s handling of the pandemic.
29 Apr 2021
Facebook revealed Thursday that it blocked all posts containing the hashtag #ResignModi in India for several hours Wednesday.
Facebook at first claimed the hashtag, popular among Indians who believe Prime Minister Narendra Modi should resign for handling the coronavirus poorly, was suppressed because it violated community standards. Later on Thursday, Facebook said the hashtag was blocked by “mistake” and would be restored.
This week, the Indian government asked Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to ban posts that spread “fake or misleading information” about the coronavirus surge. Twitter confirmed it complied with the order and deleted some of the tweets indicated by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Facebook did not immediately comment on the order.
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