Officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information technology (MeitY) told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology at a meeting of on Monday that the Prime Minister's office did not contact the Ministry about hacking of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter account.
The MeitY officials, according to sources, claimed that they got to know about it from news reports on Monday morning. The PMO, they said, was directly in touch with Twitter to resolve the issue.
The members quizzed MeitY officials on the number of fake news and child pornography and terrorism related posts on Facebook and other social media platforms. According to the sources, MeitY officials informed the standing committee that half a million posts of child pornography and another 55,000 posts related to terrorism made its way to Facebook in October itself.
“While they maintain a log of number of objectionable posts that are pulled down, the Ministry officials failed to inform us on the action taken against those who put up such objectionable posts,” said a member who attended the meeting.
“It is a worrying trend that most of these posts are made by anonymous persons and no action is taken against them.”
Anonymity
The committee members predominantly shared the view that social media users should not be anonymous. However, many felt that it would be tricky too for a private firm to have personal information of its users.
