Don't abuse poll process, tech giants warned

New Delhi: Union minister for law and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, speaking at an international conference in Argentina, warned that social media platforms will not be allowed to abuse the electoral process and that India would take all the steps required to deter and punish all those who seek to vitiate this process.

Mr Prasad also suggested that a part of revenue that is generated by digital platforms could be reinvested in the host markets to create more infrastructures and generate more job opportunities for people there.

Speaking at the plenary of the G-20 digital economy ministerial meeting in Salata, Argentina, Mr Prasad said that India had taken serious note of the reported misuse of data by social media platforms, an official statement released here said.

Mr Prasad said such platforms would never be allowed to abuse our election processes by extraneous means. He said the purity of the democratic process should never be compromised and India will take all the steps needed to deter and punish those who seek to vitiate this process.

The minister’s statement comes amid allegations that Cambridge Analytica, the UK-based analytics and marketing firm that had worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, had allegedly procured Facebook data harvested from millions of users to target American voters.

Mr Prasad articulated India’s concerns about data protection and individual privacy and informed the meeting that India had already put in place stringent measures backed by laws passed by Parliament. He said privacy could not inhibit innovation, nor could privacy become the shield for corrupt people or terrorists. “We need data to improve business but the data must be anonymous, objective, and taken with consent,” he added.

He that India believed in Internet access for all, adding that the Internet was one of the finest creations of the human mind, but it could not be the monopoly of a few. He also said that while cyberspace was truly global, it must be linked with local ideas, local culture and local views. He said the largest and the most dynamic markets for digital services were in Asia, Latin America and Africa, with India having one of the largest footprints of several popular social media and other digital platforms. It was only fair and just that the revenue and profits generated from these platforms be equitably reinvested in the largest markets to create more infrastructure and more job opportunities for people there, he added.