Sibal meets social website hosts again to curb content

Kapil Sibal, telecom minister in the union government, today met executives of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft for the second time in a fortnight in his bid to make them pre-screen content on social websites.

Sibal had held a similar meeting with the internet service giants on Monday, but later admitted that he could get no commitment from them to monitor content beyond what they are already doing.

Sachin Pilot, minister of state for communications and information technology, and department of telecommunications (DoT) secretary K Chandrashekhar were present at today's meeting in New Delhi.

"The meeting was to discuss how through social media the government can be empowered. Social media platforms are a huge space. It will help the government to be empowered through citizens," Sibal claimed to newspersons later.

Sibal's attempts to hold website hosts accountable for their Indian content has sparked outrage as well as ridicule across the literate and computer-savvy section of the Indian public.

Recent media polls show that well over 80 per cent of respondents resent this 'censorship' attempt. Experts also wonder how the government can expect the likes of Facebook and Google to physically monitor the vast volumes of content they transmit every day.