Take the latest social media law that has been passed
The government now holds the Tech companies like Twitter, FB, etc. responsible for any misuse of their applications. If an 'unlawful' post has been made and reported against, then the company should act on it and take action on it. Such laws has been also implemented in other countries like Germany, etc.
But we have gone one step further to China/Russia level - the content should be censored, taken down and the company needs to help the authorities in finding the origin of that post. The first account to post it and the details of the account. And if they do not comply, the Indian employees of that company face jail time.
It might seem harmless on the face of it, but they have purposefully left the definition of lawful vague and open ended. This law can be triggered at the whims and fancy of the authorities, if they find any post being made against their party or themselves. Because they are the sole authority to decide what is unlawful or anti national or seditious or anything on those lines. We already saw this earlier this year when GOI pressurised social media platforms to take down posts they considered unlawful, but they were merely criticising the decisions taken by the government.
The other point it - why is this restricted only to social media. What about print and news media? We see fake news and hateful reports being carried out by several news outlets on a regular basis (Sundarshan news channel for instance), and yet they get away with it, and no action is taken against them ever.
This is nothing but another shameless attempt to muzzle free speech of outlets which have the guts to question the government and those in power.
20