A committee formed to look into the issue of child sexual abuse material on social media platforms has recommended that companies follow a uniform benchmark practice in regulating and taking-down such content.
The Rajya Sabha panel headed by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said social media platforms must target encrypted content to identify child sexual abuse content, and explicitly state measures taken by them to curb the formation of groups and pages for the exchange of such material.
ET has reviewed the 21-page report of the committee, which was submitted on Saturday.
The report comes at a time when the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) is in the final stages of notifying amendments to the intermediary guidelines of the IT Act intended to curb misinformation
The report’s recommendation may, however, not go down well with social media companies, which follow their own policies to deal with problematic or illegal content.
The report calls for companies to take down posts depicting child exploitation and ban user accounts reported or flagged, instead of only blocking such content from users reporting such content.
The companies should also mandatorily report child sexual abuse content to Indian authorities, it said.
The companies must also employ Photo DNA technology to target profile pictures of groups with child sexual abuse material or prevent such content from being uploaded at source.
It should also give out warning messages on search engines as well as provide parental filters across platforms, the report recommended.
The report said social media companies must provide information on community guidelines and illegal content to users in multiple languages and show online videos or warning messages at the time of user login stating a zero-tolerance policy towards child sexual abuse content.
The social media platforms should also ban user accounts engaging in automated behaviour, by identifying phone numbers known to be involved in spam messaging as well as through tracking of users who send high volumes of messages soon after registering.
The report suggested that the companies should build industry-wide coalitions similar to Google’s Technology Coalition and provide mentorship to smaller companies working to increase their ability to detect child sexual abuse material on their platforms.
It also recommended that companies should start ‘Trusted Flagger’ programmes across social media platforms with elements such as bulk-flagging tools and prioritized flag reviews for increased actionability.
The companies should conduct programmes and campaigns for increasing awareness on online safety of children, and hosting online safety workshops with planned outreach, it said.
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