SOCIAL MEDIA ROW:GOVT IS IN DOUBT BOX.
There are sections which are openly or covertly supporting government's efforts to tame social media platforms. In this background we have to understand a few basic things. First, we should understand that social media are platforms and not authors. It's the people who write on these platforms. No social media expressly share any post by itself. What it does is that it provides a common platform where different people come , share their views in forms of texts, videos, audios and then go. So if a government tries to rope any social media platform, it's basically trying to scuffle the voice of people.
Second , social media platforms own virtual spaces by paying taxes in return, and since they own some space they have every right to accept, reject, object, label and to do any like activity with posts shared on their platforms. Here if there can be any dispute, that dispute can be between the owner of the virtual space, i.e. social media platform and the owner of the intellectual property shared there, i.e. the person who owns the posts shared on the platform. Government has no business here to intervene in the dispute. This is absolutely a property dispute between two private parties.
Third, the government is trying to break into in the name of national security and peace. Here there emerge two things. The government is trying to invoke traceability clause by demanding the information about the message sender. One among many questions is why the govt is doing so. The government argues that this will help in tracing the culprit whose message had provoked disturbance. This argument of disturbance in the name of fake news and loss of public tranquility is not acceptable as the government is posing as the sole arbitrator who decides which is real and which is fake. Here government is completely ignoring the citizen's right to comprehend something as fake. What will happen if government claims something as fake but a private citizen perceives it as real. There are many grey areas besides straightforward real and fake and what's about this?
Other aspect is status of private chatting between two entities. Can there be a law which compels us to reveal contents any private chat before anybody else? This question has moral repercussions for the system of justice as well.
Fourth, if a social media platform labels some private individual's post as doubtful or manipulated , or something else why the government is posing seriously? Of course if a government post is labelled like this the government can ask , that not as an authority , but just as the private owner of the post. Here we must remember that no social media is sending an offer to share a particular post on the platform. If sharing is voluntary then how the post sharer is capable to ask any question. You say something to me, I take it as fake . This is not only an issue of fact. It's also an issue of perception.
These are some questions which are not related to technical aspects. These are just some moral questions among many others which are putting government in the doubt box.