Report by Sakshi Suman:
The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to government and Twitter and sought for their responses on a PIL filed by BJP leader Vineet Goenka. The petitioner had demanded a mechanism to investigate ‘anti-India’ and ‘anti-national’ posts on social media platforms, especially Twitter and framing of law to regulate these platforms.
A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notices to the Centre and others on the plea and tagged it with a pending petition .
The petitioner said in his petition that hundreds of fake Twitter and Facebook accounts are running in the name of many famous people. These fake Twitter handles and Facebook accounts use real photos of famous citizens. This is the reason that ordinary people are not able to distinguish it and believe the message issued from these accounts. The petition said that hate is spread through fake accounts by sharing fake news and inflammatory messages.
The petition states that there are currently around 3.5 crore Twitter handles and 35 crore facebook accounts. Experts believe that about 10 percent of these twitter handles and Facebook accounts are fake.