Social media executives may face penalty, jail under upcoming rules

NEW DELHI: The government is set to tighten accountability rules for social media apps such as WhatsApp, with upcoming intermediary guidelines likely to propose penalties and jail terms for executives, especially on traceability and user consent before being added to groups, said people with knowledge of the matter.
“The intermediary guidelines should be out soon after elections and we expect all social media apps to comply with them,” a government official told ET. “In the guidelines, we are writing that encryption should be such that it should support traceability.”
The apps have resisted the government’s efforts to get them to help law enforcement agencies trace the origin of inflammatory messages or those related to illegal activities such as drug use or trafficking, according to the officials.