NEW DELHI: The Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on Saturday said the Meta-owned WhatsApp app to immediately fix an incorrect map of India in the New Year celebration livestream link. The Minister reiterated that all social media platforms doing business in India should use the correct maps.
“Dear WhatsApp Rqst, please fix the India map error ASAP. All platforms doing business in India and/or wanting to continue doing business in India should use correct maps,” Chandrasekhar said.
Dear @The WhatsApp – Rqst that u pls fix India map error ASAP.
All platforms doing business in India and/or wishing to continue doing business in India must use the correct maps. @employee @employee https://t.co/aGnblNDctK– Rajeev Chandrasekhar (@Rajeev_GoI) December 31, 2022
Earlier this week, video calling platform founder and CEO Eric Yuan cautioned to “make sure” he used the correct map of the countries in which the company operates or wants to do business.
“You may want to make sure you use the correct maps of the countries where you want/want to do business,” Lewan said.
Zoom CEO later deleted the tweet showing an incorrect map of the country. Chandrasekhar recently spoke about complying with the law, rules and guardrails of all social media platforms in the country.
“I think who is the boss of Twitter is not the most important debate to have. It is about complying with the law, the rules and the protection barriers for all social media platforms that need to be designed and implemented – transparent, real and institutional,” the minister said on Twitter.
The minister was responding to a tweet from Twitter CEO Elon Musk when he launched a poll on the microblogging site asking millions of users “Should I step down as head of Twitter?”
Musk asked in one of the tweets: “Should I step down from the presidency of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”
In October this year, the government notified the rules according to which it will set up appeals committees to address grievances users may have against decisions of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook over hosting controversial content.
Earlier the obligations of the brokers were limited to notifying users of the rules but now with the new rules there will be more specific obligations on the platforms.