The present happenings in Manipur are the wages of continued neglect, and not so benign at that, of a vital region and its people. Had we lavished on the North East even a fraction of the care and resources we do on Kashmir, things would not have come to this pass, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
Twitter has blocked several accounts and tweets after the government asked the microblogging platform to take action against 250 handles and posts for containing 'false and provocative content' related to the ongoing farmers' agitation, according to sources.
Within days of announcing mega investments for building in Hyderabad its second data centre cluster in India, Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday said it is excited about the India market, where cloud adoption offers massive headroom for growth. Pledging its long-term commitment to the India market, AWS, Amazon's cloud computing unit, said it expects global uncertainties to accelerate the decisions by companies to opt for flexible, on-demand cloud infrastructure to pare costs, gain efficiencies and drive business innovation. "Cloud reacts well to uncertainty," Puneet Chandok, president - commercial business, AWS India and South Asia, Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd (AISPL) told PTI.
Twitter on Wednesday said it has suspended over 500 accounts, and blocked access to several others within India as it partly acceded to a government order to curb spread of misinformation and inflammatory content around farmers' protests.
The Delhi high court on Tuesday closed proceedings in a petition alleging non-compliance of new IT Rules by Twitter, saying that 'nothing remained' in view of the central government being satisfied with the micro-blogging platform appointing a chief compliance officer (CCO), resident grievance officer (RGO) and nodal contact person.
These banned clones include Tiktok Lite, Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite, BIGO LIVE Lite and VFY Lite. The order regarding the ban on these apps came on Friday, July 24.
Indian cricket fraternity has also come out in support of the young pacer who had dropped a crucial catch in the 18th over of the match.
The move assumes significance as a series of reports recently citing internal documents showed "a struggle with misinformation, hate speech and celebrations of violence" in India - Facebook's biggest market with over 40 crore users.
"Delhi Police had requested the IT ministry to block two download links and the entire We Transfer website immediately. Following which orders were issued to the website and links suggested by the Delhi Police," an official source told PTI.
Arshdeep Singh has incurred the wrath of social media users since Sunday when he dropped a catch in the closing stages of a tense India-Pakistan match.
The government on Friday tweaked IT rules to pave the way for setting up of grievance appellate panels, which will settle issues that users may have against the way social media platforms initially addressed their complaints regarding content and other matters.
Tiktok and Helo in a joint statement said they have plans to invest $1 billion over the period of next three years to develop technology infrastructure and owns responsibility of local community.
With intense competition in telecom sector, the two companies are rushing to diversify into other revenue streams, prominent among which are cloud services.
More than 6,000 URLs, accounts or websites were blocked in 2021, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.
'The idea is to have a separate and independent consultation on non-personal data, and decide the contours of how it should be regulated, whether as guidelines, rules, or a separate policy,' said a senior official at MeitY.
The exponential number of downloads can be attributed to a call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking people to have the app on their mobiles, combined with the government's push for downloading of the app through other channels, reports Neha Alawadhi.
Political controversies aside, Twitter's business in India is expanding, and creating opportunities for Indians, reports Neha Alawadhi.
"They have apologised for hurting Indian sentiments and have sworn to correct the error by November 30, 2020," she added.
WhatsApp limited the number of times a frequently forwarded message can be sent further to only one chat at a time. This resulted in 70% plunge in viral forwarded messages globally, WhatsApp told GoI.
The web page also enables filing of grievances in relation to the implementation of GST
The government on Saturday issued a notice to Twitter giving it one last chance to 'immediately' comply with the new IT rules and warned that failure to adhere to the norms will lead to the platform losing exemption from liability under the IT Act.
Telecom industry body COAI has approached the information technology ministry for removal of fake and misleading messages from social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter linking spread of COVID-19 to 5G technology. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, said the claims linking 5G with coronavirus are baseless as 5G networks have not yet been installed in the country and even 5G trials are yet to be started by the telecom operators. In a letter dated May 15 to MeitY additional secretary Rajendra Kumar, COAI director general S P Kochhar said: "To safeguard the national interest, we request your good office to kindly instruct all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Watsapp, Twitter, etc, to remove all such posts and misleading campaigns from their platforms on an urgent basis." People have been sharing audio and video messages on social media platforms in which 5G towers are being blamed for rise in casualties across the country even though none of the companies have installed 5G technology anywhere in India.
The government is also trying to curb child abuse and pornography and such platforms act as catalysts in these cases.
The ministry of electronics and information technology is working on creating a software product council, including members from the government, academia and industry that will work on implementing a software products mission.
Facebook had collected certificates from both the firms in 2016-17 that data collected by them using "thisisyourdigitallife" was accounted for and destroyed.
Representatives of Facebook India have been asked to appear on Friday before the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Meenakshi Lekhi, while Twitter officials are required to appear before the panel on October 28, as per the notice issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
The policy proposes a single-window platform for facilitation of the Indian software product industry, to help fast-track legal and regulatory issues over import and export, as well as setting up and winding up enterprises.
Social media platform Twitter is learnt to have written to the government that it is in advanced stages of finalising chief compliance officer as per the new IT rules and additional details will be submitted to the government within a week, according to an official source.
According to CAIT, e-commerce policy should take within its ambit not only foreign players but also domestic ones.
The incident became grist for media attention for people scanning 'cow' along with a Muslim name, regardless of the fact that in Manipur Muslims occupy a specific socio cultural and political positioning with the community having assimilated with the majority Meiteis, says Chitra Ahanthem.
The demand for Tharoor's removal comes days after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology was set to question government officials on the Pegasus spyware issue.
Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat are alarmed by the rising use of the app in smaller towns and hinterland, where it is increasingly being used for spreading hate messages and child pornography.
'Transparency, privacy and security have been the core design principle of Aarogya Setu. Opening the source code to developer community signifies Government of India continuing principal to these commitments'
He said the force, which guards over 6,300 km of India's land border with Pakistan in the west and Bangladesh on the east, is faced by four main challenges on the security front.
'When a person is capable of infecting 50 others, will you think about the privacy of the person or about protecting the lives of people?'
The proposed new norms include deployment of technology-based automated tools or appropriate mechanisms for proactively identifying and removing or disabling public access to unlawful information or content, minister of state for electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
The high court pointed out that only an interim RGO was appointed by Twitter and a wrong impression was given to the court on May 31 as it was not informed that the appointment was on interim basis.
Tharoor put the blame for the logjam in Parliament on BJP and accused the saffron party of reducing the "temple of democracy to a rubber stamp for its agenda or worse, a notice board to announce its unilateral decisions".
The Manipur government's plan to carve out seven new districts in the hill areas has ignited old resentments between Naga and non-Naga ethnic groups, leading to clashes and a month-long economic blockade.
Microblogging site Twitter's explanations to a parliamentary panel on showing Ladakh as part of China are inadequate and the act amounts to criminal offence attracting imprisonment of seven years, committee chairman Meenakshi Lekhi said on Wednesday.
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