‘Safe harbour won’t cover CSAM violations’: Centre tells Meta

Key points

• The issue comes against the backdrop of increased administration scrutiny of Meta’s platforms over concerns surrounding unlawful content, user safety…
• The government additionally told Meta that its content moderation systems need to be more sensitive to India’s linguistic and cultural…
• In July, the government issued a notice to Meta over advertisements on Instagram allegedly promoting or facilitating access to CSAM…
• The government will continue to monitor worries related to unlawful content, platform accountability, user safety and emerging technologies, the sources…

While stressing that the administration has acted within the existing legal and statutory framework, government sources remarked, the Centre has told Meta that safe harbour protection will not be available to individuals or entities involved in violations related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

The government additionally told Meta that its content moderation systems need to be more sensitive to India’s linguistic and cultural context, rather than relying solely on global standards, the sources remarked.

According to the sources, discussions with Meta officials have indicated that the business has become more cautious about CSAM-related content and is taking steps to identify and remove unlawful material.

The government has maintained that its objective is not to censor or suppress content, but to ensure that social media platforms do not facilitate circumstances that could adversely affect India’s social fabric.

What happened

“Safe harbour will not be available to individuals or persons involved in CSAM-related violations,” the sources said, adding that the Centre’s actions have remained within the existing legal framework.

The government has additionally stressed that cultural and social contexts vary across countries and that reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech are constitutionally permitted in India.

The issue comes against the backdrop of increased administration scrutiny of Meta’s platforms over concerns surrounding unlawful content, user safety and platform accountability.

In July, the government issued a notice to Meta over advertisements on Instagram allegedly promoting or facilitating access to CSAM and directed the platform to disable the content and provide a detailed explanation. The Centre later stated it was examining Meta’s response before deciding on further action.

The details

When the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued notices to X, YouTube and Telegram over CSAM and warned that intermediaries could lose safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act if they failed to act swiftly, the Centre’s position follows similar action in October 2023.

On AI-generated content, government sources stated synthetically generated material must be clearly labelled so that users can distinguish between synthetic and authentic content.

The government will continue to monitor worries related to unlawful content, platform accountability, user safety and emerging technologies, the sources said.

(With inputs from ANI)