Why Social Media sites won't be banned in India?

India has been struggling a lot these days with its new IT rules and complicated laws. Here is a thing that you should know why India won't ban social media sites.

Fake news spreads like fire and could be a big concern for many nations. Sometimes, fake news could be so tempting that people actually start to believe in it.

One such incident happened in the past few days in India when people started to believe on the "news" that India is going to ban the social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Over the last few months the Indian Government has proposed the new IT rules to be followed by several social media sites and if they do not comply with it, then there might be some major repercussions that these tech giants have to face. Even though, there is no report of "banning" these social media sites completely.

The IT rules are not something that could lead to a ban. The IT rules are under Section 79 of India's IT Act, which states that, if you and I use any social media sites for posting any illegal or offensive post against anybody or anything, then nobody could sue the respective companies because they are just the intermediaries.

If the companies do not comply with the rules, it means that they can function in India but if any of these social media sites is sued for some reason then they can not go to the court and argue that they have protection under Section 79.

None of the experts or any official authority has declared that offense to any of these acts would lead to a ban in India. It is completely a piece of fake news.

The WhatsApp Dilemma:

On the 25th of May, WhatsApp filed a case against the Indian Government in the Delhi High Court and Whatsapp has been one of the top opposing ends of all this IT Act chaos.

Why?

Because the IT Act says that in demanding situations, WhatsApp (and other social media sites) has to provide the details of the first originator of any message or post that has been offensive or illegal to the Government.

The search for the first originator is easy in the case of Twitter or Facebook, but in WhatsApp, it is a bit more difficult to disclose the identity of the "first originator" user.

The apps like WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram use an "End-to-end-Encryption", which means that the messages sent between two people are "encrypted" and they can only be "decrypted" when certain technical codes match between the users.

However, it is not an impossible task for WhatsApp to decrypt the messages and find the first originator, but this step is highly against their company's policies. WhatsApp claims that this is a clear breaking of their "Encryption" Policy.

The major dilemma to be noted is that the decryption of messages of any user has to be done in reverse cryptographical order. It means that the decryption can not be specifically done when WhatsApp will receive a legal request but they have to look at the messages from the very beginning. And this is a real threat to privacy.

This procedure can easily be manipulated by several hackers and cybercriminals and with this, WhatsApp hacking would be a lot easier.

Why is this required?

WhatsApp has another argument stating that this is against the Right to Privacy Act passed by the Indian Government in 2017. Though, the govt says that The Right to Privacy Act has said that there can be reasonable restrictions to these rulings and IT rules act as those restrictions.

The test of privacy between WhatsApp and the Government is the first big test of the Right to Privacy in India. WhatsApp is also fighting cases in Brazil, Australia, and UK which are quite similar on their own.

The FIVE EYE, an Intelligence Agency of world governments like the USA, UK, Australia, etc. has issued a statement in 2019, which said that the encryption apps have to set up a back door.

However, many experts believe that this will not end an "end-to-end-privacy" of the users instead they will find a way where the privacy of a user is protected and also, the data of any user will be available for any legal issues.

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