Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:
(a) whether the Government have any plan to provide an indigenous platform in place of WhatsApp, Facebook and other foreign social media;
(b) if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor;
(c) whether any remedial steps have been taken by the Government to regulate foreign social media platforms; and
(d) if so, the details thereof?
(a) and (b): Government has already taken steps to provide indigenous social media platforms. The details are as follows:
• Sandes (https://www.sandes.gov.in) has been designed and developed as an indigenous solution for instant messaging for use by government and its stake holders. It is hosted at government infrastructure and is made available at leading appstores.
• Lok Samvaad (https://loksamvaad.nic.in) has been developed to provide indigenous public micro blogging platform.
• MyGov (https://www.mygov.in) has been established as Government of India’s Citizen Engagement Platform which collaborates with multiple Government bodies/ Ministries to engage with citizens for policy formulation and seeks the opinion of people on issues/ topics of public interest and welfare. MyGov has adopted multiple engagement methodologies like discussions, tasks, polls, surveys, blogs, talks, pledges, quizzes, and on-ground activities by innovatively using internet, mobile apps, IVRS, SMS and outbound dialling (OBD) technologies.
(c) and (d): As per the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, social media platforms are generally considered as intermediaries. Any intermediaries, irrespective of their country of origin, rendering their online services in India need to follow the IT Act, 2000 and other applicable laws. Government has notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Codes) Rules, 2021 (“IT Rules, 2021”) on 25th February, 2021 to make intermediaries including social media platforms accountable to their users and enhance user safety online.
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