MoS IT says social media firms should enable voluntary verification of users
Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated how the government is aware of the danger posed by instances of misinformation, bots, criminality, etc.

Last week, on August 5, the Parliament of India received a memo from the Minister of State for electronics and IT. According to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, social media sites need to allow voluntary verifications of accounts for users, giving them the provision for a displayed verification mark.

Reportedly, this was a response written to the Rajya Sabha, or the Upper House of the parliament. In it, Chandrasekhar stated how the Indian government is well acquainted with the possible risks posed by issues on social media. These problems include the increasing instances of misinformation, bot and fake accounts, criminality, along with general danger of harm to social media users.

He stated how it is essential to make sure of an internet that is secure, certain and accountable for the users of platforms. In order to do so, the government has provided the notice for this to the Information Technology Rules i.e., the Intermediary Guidelines And Digital Media Ethics Code from last year- IT Rules 2021.

The note from Rajeev Chandrasekhar:

In the response, the minister referred to the rule 4(7) of the Information Technology Rules. He stated how the crucial ‘social media intermediaries’ must enable the users to have the provision to conduct voluntary verification of their accounts on the platforms. Further, he noted how after the verification, the pages of these users should get provision of ‘marks of verification’ that are noticeable on their accounts.

Chandrasekhar’s points were answer to a different query altogether regarding the things done by the government to secure the Indian cyberspace from any form of abuse, along with anonymity.

To this, he stated how the new Information Technology regulations perform function of identifying the initial creator of the particular information on SSMI- ‘significant social media intermediary’ mainly function to provide messaging services. Such identification by the Rules aid while someone trying to detect, investigate, prevent, prosecute or punish a certain offence connected to the country’s ‘sovereignty and integrity.’

Further, he went on to specify how even the ‘CERT-In’ has gone come up with a course in accordance to sub section (6) of section 70B of the IT Act, 2000. He went on to note these parts mainly consist of the factors connected to details regarding registrations by customers or subscribers. Mainly, these details are ones given by providers on Virtual Private Server (VPS), Virtual Private Network (VPN), along data centres, and many more.