Banish Pernicious Content

When will internet giants like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp come on board to stamp out pernicious content like child pornography and rape videos? The urgency of a comprehensive strategy to deal with this menace has never been greater, given the fact that every other Internet user in India is on WhatsApp or Facebook, while around 3.6 crore Indians are on Twitter. This year itself, there have been some highly publicised cases of child porn rings busted by the CBI. One ring based in Uttar Pradesh had members spread across several countries; another WhatsApp group, in which members used to exchange adult content, was caught when an outraged member approached the police after some members began circulating child porn. How serious is this menace? For starters, India presently happens to be third after US and UK in the list of countries where porn is most viewed. As per data released in January this year by Pornhub, India’s jump from 4th spot in 2016 to 3rd spot in 2017 has been driven by smartphones (up to 86 percent of traffic), along with whopping 129 percent increase in the number of female visitors. No doubt this is a negative outcome of digital revolution in the country, as well as telecom giants competing hard to offer users huge chunks of free data at cut-throat rates. With 80 percent of the data consumed being video, it means that smartphone users in the country are watching more internet videos than television.

How does all this impact children? A recent study by market research firm Velocity MR showed that the threat is most acute in urban areas where children learn to use and navigate the internet between 6 to 10 years of age. They do this primarily with smartphones and can access virtual private networks (VPNs). These VPNs work like secure tunnels which can bypass Indian servers, and therefore attempts by Indian controllers to block explicit material. While parents of children in the 6-10 years age group were mostly found to monitor the youngsters’ internet activity, they were handicapped by unwillingness to talk about sex education matters with their children. This is a common gap in communication between parent and child in our society; with children spending 2-3 hours online daily on average, this gap needs to be addressed by parents to guard against sex predators prowling the Web. Interestingly, most parents in the survey revealed that while they encourage their children to access educational matter in the Net, the nuisance is caused by pop-ups springing up to divert young minds to unwanted content. As for social media, 8 out of every 10 kids in the higher age groups spend 3 hours daily on average.

Social media is not subject to control by Indian authorities, as these are based in other countries. This is not the situation in China where the Communist government has banned most foreign internet players so as to allow Chinese platforms to flourish (and also be monitored). But the credit too goes to the Chinese players for developing highly user-friendly apps. This is why WhatsApp has been replaced by WeChat, Facebook by QQ, Twitter by Weibo, Youtube by Youku and Google by Baidu. Even VPNs to access foreign platforms are being successfully blocked. China is thus reaping dividends from not just being the world’s computer and mobile phone hardware engine, but also for taking a commanding position over the internet. On its part, democratic India has been groping for ways to hold foreign internet players to account, particularly over dissemination of fake news, hate messages, terrorist propaganda, gangrape and child porn material. The government’s position is that these platforms must put in place artificial intelligence mechanisms to detect and delete such objectionable content, trigger alerts for local authorities and cooperate with them to track down those posting such content online.

The matter is also being heard in the Supreme Court ever since it took cognisance on its own of a complaint in 2015 by Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala, as part of which it had submitted two rape videos that had gone viral on social media. Taking serious note of the menace, the apex court has sought a draft standard operating procedure (SoP) next week from internet platforms about the government’s suggestions. WhatsApp’s contention is that its end-to-end encryption technology does not allow removal of content, though it has lately put in place some security measures. This is unlike Facebook and Twitter platforms on which posts can be traced to the creator’s IP address. What is not stated openly is the suspicion these foreign players have that in the name of enforcing the law, the Indian government wants to ‘snoop into people’s inboxes’ by demanding access to encrypted messages. But this is true even in the US where intelligence agencies can collect communications of citizens on national security grounds under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), or compel the likes of Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Apple to part with users’ data. Google itself not long ago used to ‘scan’ users’ e-mails to send them targeted ads, though it now allows third part apps to do so. In comparison, the Indian government is seeking greater responsibility and accountability from foreign social media players so as to prevent misuse. Considering the huge revenues they earn from this country, it is in their interest as stakeholders to do everything possible to prevent anti-socials and criminals from hijacking their platforms.