Cyber safety rules should not become a gag order

After the Supreme Court has given the central government three months till January 15, 2020, to bring in guidelines regulating digital platforms and social media, a relatively free cyber India will now have to grapple with new restrictions. Expectedly, this has once again sparked the debate on the need of citizens’ safety from dangerous content versus the need to safeguard privacy and free speech of social media users.

On one hand, there are images of an unregulated cyber world, which has spawned exploitative child pornography, as also allowed terrorists like ‘Jihadi John’ of the ISIS to live stream his brutal beheadings. On the other hand, in a world where governments have a huge surveillance machinery, further regulation through linking social media accounts to government-monitored networks, will mean an end to individual privacy. Governments across the world use the dark end of the Internet that hosts terrorism and violence, and the prevalence of fake news to justify throttling of free internet.