
New Delhi: On Tuesday, Facebook and Google officials presented their stand before the Parliament Standing Committee on Information Technology on the issue of misuse of social media platforms. Officials of Facebook and Google were summoned by this committee. During this, the committee bluntly told both the companies that the companies will have to follow the new IT rules and the law of the land to the social media companies.
Facebook’s Director of Public Policy in India Shivnath Thukral and General Counsel Namrata Singh spoke before the committee headed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. On behalf of Google, it’s Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy in India Aman Jain and Director (Law) Geetanjali Duggal presented their stand before the committee.
Earlier Facebook representatives had informed the parliamentary committee that their company policy does not allow their executives to attend meetings with physical presence due to COVID protocols. However, committee chairman Tharoor told Facebook that its officials would have to attend the meeting as the parliamentary secretariat does not allow digital meetings.
The Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology will summon representatives from YouTube and other social media entities in the coming weeks. Before the representatives of Facebook and Google were called, Twitter executives made their point before the committee. In the last meeting, several members of the committee clearly told Twitter that the law of the land is supreme, not its policies.

95 lakh videos deleted
“Between January and March 2021, YouTube removed more than 9.5 million videos for violating its Community Guidelines,” a Google official said. 95% of these videos were previously flagged by machines rather than humans. Of those detected by machines, 27.8% were not seen even once and 39% were seen 1-10 times”
He further explained, “During the same quarter, YouTube terminated more than 2.2 million channels for violating its Community Guidelines. in the same period. YouTube removed over 1 billion comments, most of which were spam and were automatically detected.”