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Government announces guidelines for regulation of digital content

Government announces guidelines
Young woman using smart phone,Social media concept.

Government has imposed some new rules and regulations for people who used to share digital content over social media platforms. Now onwards the people will not able to anything and everything.

The new rules have been announced by the government to “establish a soft touch progressive institutional mechanism with a level playing field featuring a Code of Ethics and a three-tier grievance redressal framework for news publishers and OTT platforms on the digital media.” The Code of Ethics will be applicable to online news and digital media entities, OTT platforms and digital media.

Government announces guidelines

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar shared details of new rules to regulate social media, while warning that “double standards of social media will not be acceptable.”

  1. Content related to nudity and about any women will have to be removed as soon as possible.

2. If there would be complaints about the dignity about the user and mainly if it is related to women, then they have to remove it.

3. There should not be any mischievous information on the platform. This should be in relation to the sovereignty of India, the security of the state, relations with foreign states, rape etc.

Government announces guidelines

4. In urgent cases, the government will set up an oversight mechanism at its level to deal with a case where immediate action is required.

5. The people used to publish content on digital media will have to follow the journalistic norms of the Press Council of India and the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act.

6. Social media platforms must have a provision for the voluntary verification mechanism of the users.

7. The government said OTT platforms (like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) would have to self-classify the content into five age-based categories – U (Universal), U/A 7+ (years), U/A 13+, U/A 16+, and A (Adult).

8.  Implement parental locks for content classified as U/A 13+ or higher, and reliable age-verification mechanisms for content classified as ‘A’.

Government announces guidelines

9. The will be a grievance redressal system in OTT platforms and digital portals. The OTT platforms will have a self-regulating body, headed by retired Supreme Court or High Court judge or very eminent person in this category

10. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will also publish a charter for self-regulating bodies, including Codes of Practices. It shall establish an Inter-Departmental Committee for hearing grievances.

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Pooja Singh

I'm Pooja Singh, pursuing masters in Mass Communication & Journalism from Tezpur University. writing is my passion and I want to turn it into my profession. I write various types of contents such as entertainment, political, technological etc. Being a media student I have nose for news. Currently, I'm working with Magazine 99 as an intern.

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