Supreme Court Issues Notice in Plea Seeling to Hold Major Social Media Platforms Responsible for Hate Speech

Today, a bench of Chief Justice of India SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian. issued a notice to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in a petition seeking to hold social media giant such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter responsible for spreading hate speech.

The petition urges the Supreme Court of India to order the Central government to constitute a mechanism that will automatically remove all the hate speech and fake news immediately.

“A registered account is sufficient to start a channel, which provides a platform of uploading videos in the social media such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc, It means that anyone can float anything in the social media, there is no restriction or censor for their contents and there are no regulations at all by the government,” the petition states.

This petition was filed after some tweets were posted by one Armin Navab, who has allegedly used derogatory terms against Hindu goddesses.

Seeking a motion to curb such derogatory and hate speech on social media platforms, the petition says,

"...Freedom of expression is a complex right, this is because freedom of expression is not absolute and carries with it special duties and responsibilities, therefore, it may be subject to certain restrictions provided by law...Social media’s reach is much wider than that of the traditional media. Freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) of the Constitution goes hand-in-hand with reasonable restrictions that may be imposed under Article 19(2)."

The plea has now been tagged with another pending petition, seeking formulation of an independent media tribunal to try violation of program code cases independent of any government interference.