Time’s Up For Big Tech Immunity

Context: New IT rules subject social media to long-overdue regulation and writ jurisdiction of the courts.

Need for regulation of social media:

• Enhanced pervasiveness: While we have transformed from the industrial age to the age of the internet, social media has acted as a direct product of the globalised internet.
  • It has effectively become a public square in which the most important conversations on politics and society are discussed.
  • The function of social media is clearly a public function at the lowest and as a public utility at the high end, therefore, automatically subject to regulation and the writ jurisdiction of the courts.
• Extensive freedom of speech:
  • Social media companies enjoy an immunity — they are not considered responsible for the contents posted on them, on the ground that social media is merely a platform.
  • The rules also attempt to create a soft-touch self-regulatory mechanism, which is unique as it is not extended to newspapers, magazines or even websites.
  • However, if a social media company can choose not to publish the posts of the President of the United States, it obviously has complete editorial control.
  • Further, the courts have always held that commercial or political speech is subject to restrictions, and Constitution doesn’t recognise a hierarchy of rights depending on the medium through which the freedom of speech is exercised.

Conclusion: History says when limited companies (East India Company) start interfering in governance policies, it grows into economic exploitation and political intervention on a grand scale. India had one such experience from which we are recovering only now.