Kapil Sibal, India’s telecommunications minister is meeting Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, according to the New York Times to help the country censor information from the internet to its users.
The reason for the censor being imposed is that someone wrote a comment that was negative in a way, on Sonia Gandhi’s page. In April a law was also passed that made it mandatory for web companies to take down objectionable material of the site within 36 hours of publishing if asked by the state.
The government is asking companies and social media sites like Facebook and Google to prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online.
With a combined user base of over 400 million users, these four companies provide search and social media experiences to users and it is also reported that The Indian government also plans to set up its own unit to monitor information posted on Web sites and social media sites.
Do you think this pre-content screening is a violation of human speech?
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