The Union government on Wednesday said there were no plans to regulate the content on Internet or monitor social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“The government does not regulate content [on WWW] and there is no proposal to formulate any mechanism to regulate the content,” Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot told the Lok Sabha.
In a written reply to a question, Mr. Pilot, however, conceded that morphed photographs of national leaders and other celebrities were uploaded on some social networking sites.
“Social networking sites have emerged as an online medium/platform to enable users to share ideas, activities and express views/opinions on specific topics. Such sites can be accessed by all sections of societies. Most of such sites are hosted outside the country,” he said.
Between April 2010 and November 2011, 57 incidents of misuse of social networking sites in terms of publishing objectionable content pertaining to political leaders, religions, national security and individuals were reported to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), he noted.
