Extreme clarity is needed on the Internet if India is not to become another China with regard to censoring content. The game app TikTok has been banned by a Madras high court order and removed temporarily at least from the Google Playstore and Apple’s iOS app store after a missive from the Union government. The handling of the Chinese app with a billion followers is, however, not the only one that is leading to raising of eyebrows. PUBG gamers have been arrested and harassed while a number of sites like Reddit and Telegram have been getting blocked for no apparent reason. Such arbitrary measures to control the Net is bound to fail as there are any number of proxy sites, VPN, apk links besides copycat games that enable the same kind of use that can be addictive for children not made conversant with the perils of excessive online time.
There are any number of video-sharing apps or even WhatsApp to share content, including pornography, which may be considered pernicious and yet is the most downloaded content. What is worrisome in the circumstances is that India is going down the road of hard censorship. Whenever concerns have been raised — as against PUBG and TikTok — the companies are coming forward now to appoint welfare officers to try and address addiction issues. The point is not about the freedom of speech and expression being breached in any of these orders so much as the need to find a way to deflect young people away from harmful content. There is no reason to suspect any site would defy government bans. Needing their India presence for sheer numbers, they will comply with local laws and court orders. The question to be addressed is how the menace of addictive content can be contained without building an Indian firewall to match China’s.
