Social Media Sites To Remove Fake Accounts Within 24 Hours, Under New IT Rules
The government has asked Social Media Sites to remove fake accounts within 24 hours of being reported. This is part of the new IT rules directing several changes to social media sites operating in India. This provision is not only for celebrities and businesses but also for the general public. This new change will likely affect top social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram the most.
That’s in part due to these websites being filled with fake accounts. Accounts like these use real and morphed images to impersonate other people or businesses. The IT ministry’s diktat comes under the grievance redressal mechanism prescribed for social media platforms, which mandates the firms to remove any offensive or inappropriate content.
Fake accounts and new IT rules
Even though there is a verified tick icon available on most of these platforms, fake accounts persist on the internet. This is partly due to the lack of internet literacy among most social media users in India. Compared to the original account, sometimes, these fake accounts have a similar fan following. This helps these miscreants to fool the normal public and use these accounts to spread misinformation.
Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will have to address these issues and implement a plan to ban such accounts within 24 hours effectively. On these platforms, there are also many fan-made celebrity accounts. Such fan accounts can also be removed immediately if the person in question complains to the platform. However, that would be pretty rare, so users shouldn’t worry about missing out on daily celebrity updates.
