"It is important to deconstruct such moral policing of the youth in this country..."

Social media companies release Indian transparency reports

Earlier this month Google, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram (the latter two owned by Facebook) released India-specific transparency reports, as per the nation’s controversial “Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021” aka the 2021 IT Rules (Social media platforms operating in India are required to publish monthly compliance reports, as per Rule 4(1)(d) of the 2021 IT Rules, since the latter came into effect on May 26th of this year).

India’s Internet Freedom Foundation has highlighted key findings from each of the reports - including what the reports don’t go into - and discusses what tech companies should be declaring possible government pressure and censorship. Some of the more interesting/concerning findings:

Millions of take-downs by Facebook:

The Facebook Group (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) collectively removed millions of items that were of a spam, violent, nudity/sexual activity and suicide/self-harm nature, over a one-month period (May 15th - June 15th 2021). IFF noted that the combined Facebook and Instagram compliance report1,

did not disclose the number of complaints received through the grievance officer route, nor the action taken on it. The report primarily focused on the proactive monitoring undertaken by Facebook and Instagram.

According to IFF,

Facebook proactively removed 25 million items of spam, 2.5 million items of violent content, 1.8 million items relating to nudity and sexual activity and almost 600,000 items related to suicide and self-harm just in the one month between May 15 and June 15, 2021. Facebook’s proactive removal rate for these items was 99%, but only 37% for bullying and harassment, where it only proactively removed 118,000 items of content.

Instagram on the other hand proactively removed almost 700,000 items relating to self-harm, 670,000 items of violent content, 490,000 items relating to nudity and sexual activity. Similar to Facebook, Instagram’s proactive removal rate for these items was 99%, but only 43% for bullying and harassment, where it only proactively removed 108,000 items of content.

WhatsApp wasn’t lazy2 when it came to removals either, banning down two million accounts in the May 15th and June 15th - 95% of which, according to the company, were “due to the unauthorised use of automatic or bulk messaging”, Scroll India reported.

Google: Indian Police made a lot of take-down requests

As mentioned above, Google had to provide mandatory compliance reports along with the other tech companies. Their mandatory report reported on actions taken by the company on user complaints via Grievance Officers, but does not list information regarding government take-down demands. According to IFF, this is because Google had earlier argued to the Dehli High Court that as “Google.com is a search engine, and not a social media intermediary, the report likely primarily relates to YouTube.” Google did release another report3, however, concerning government take-down demands that, according to IFF, showed that,

it received almost 1000 removal orders from the government between July and December, 2020, relating to a total of nearly 7000 items of content. A breakdown of these requests showed that nearly 3/4ths of such orders came from the police. 95% of the content items ordered for removal were by the police and the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY). While the most number of complaints related to defamation (313 out of 990), the most content items flagged were for reasons of “national security” (2256 out of 7023).

IFF also noted that,

Google has taken the conservative, but misplaced view that Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 prohibits Google from disclosing any details about take-down requests from the Government. However, this is not correct, as there is no confidentiality requirement under S69A.

Twitter: India beats out USA for most government requests in 2020

Unsurprisingly, given the Indian government’s ongoing hostility with Twitter, the company’s transparency report highlighted that India made the most account information requests between July 2020 and December 2020, beating out the US and Japan. According to the report,

India submitted the most government information requests during this reporting period, accounting for 25% of the global volume, and 15% of the global accounts specified

and

The second highest volume of requests originated from the United States, comprising 22% of global information requests and 60% of the global accounts specified.

The head of Twitter’s global legal policy department, Vijaya Gadde, also noted that “Sometimes the requests are incomplete, broad in scope or the accounts have been deleted, in such a situation Twitter can challenge the requests.”

According IFF and to Twitter’s report, however, the company is also one of those approached that has not reportedly followed the Indian government’s compliance requirements. The IFF wrote that,

Twitter’s reports relate to the period between July and December, 2020, whereas to be in compliance with the 2021 IT Rules, Twitter is required to release a monthly report for each month. Which means that Twitter was required to release a report disclosing their May/June 2021 activities.

This non-compliance has not been without consequences, furthermore. The Indian government declared in court that the company’s “safe harbour” liability protection - which ensures that social media platforms are not held legally responsible for what users share or do online - was to be rescinded. A few days later, Twitter had to employ a “resident grievance officer” - which the other social media giants have already done - in order to be able to continue to operate in India.

Pakistan bans, unbans, TikTok. Again.

As we’ve mentioned before, the Pakistani government had banned TikTok on grounds that it was “obscene, immoral”, only to unban the video-sharing platform shortly after. True to form, however, late June 2021 saw another Pakistani high court - this time the Sindh High Court - order TikTok to be banned, after a petition was filed by a citizen who was “aggrevied” by the “immorality and obscenity.” According to Dawn News,

The court in its order stated that TikTok had not abided by "the constant undertakings and assurances" given by it before various courts and the PTA to block accounts spreading vulgarity.

The platform also failed to respect the law and basic injunctions of Islam as well as the culture of Pakistan and "recently started a social media campaign whereby they are celebrating 'LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Pride Month", the order added.

Earlier this month, however, the Sindh High Court ordered the unbanning of TikTok, with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority saying that the video-sharing platform was already taking steps to deal with the issues reportedly at fault.

So thrice banned, thrice unbanned. As the Pakistani journalist Hasan Zaidi said on Twitter back in March after the last ban,

Usama Khilji, director of the Pakistan digital rights advocacy organisation Bolo Bhi, wrote for Dawn News this past week about the Pakistani state’s obsession with moral policing, and the “unease that both the powers that be and society at large feel when young people express their creative talents on social media by acting, singing, lip-syncing, dancing, or commenting on various issues.”

It is important to deconstruct such moral policing of the youth in this country, and consider factors that motivate the act of banning entire platforms, something that needs to be banned by law itself

Khilji writes, tackling several talking points used against TikTok one by one. I’ve quoted the first two below, but I recommend reading the rest, here.

First is the blatant elitism against TikTok in Pakistan, because it is used by a cross-section of society, especially sections that have not been prominent or present on the traditionally elite-dominated social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter and Facebook to some extent. When people from small towns, villages and lower socioeconomic backgrounds — groups that form the majority but are grossly under-represented in mainstream media and other social media — have gained a voice and creative control, the elite-dominated media and social media discourse tends to ‘cringe’ and look down upon the entire application. I have heard several in the creative industry comment on how marketing on TikTok may damage their ‘brand image’ because of the ‘type of people that use it’.

The truth is that TikTok is a platform that is most user-friendly and its video-based interface does not demand literacy for one to set up an account and create content with the potential to go viral. For the first time, people from small towns and villages are able to amass a large following by, in some cases, simply showcasing their lifestyle, sharing pearls of wisdom uttered by their elders, and traditional culture such as dance, music and songs that are under-represented in the mainstream. TikTok is also providing a platform to languages and cultures that are missing from the Urdu-dominated media — and until now social media — in Pakistan.

Second is the patriarchal wish to objectify, silence and control women. Because TikTok enables women to showcase their talent on the application, the patriarchy considers that beyond the remit of the chaadar chaardiwari that it would be happiest to see women confined to. Hence, many gasps are elicited by virtue of seeing women only smile, sing, act or perform on TikTok, and the intersectional curse of being a woman from a non-elite background from a rural area or small town makes it all the more unacceptable for the elitist patriarchy.

Assessing Pakistan’s potential media watchdog body?

In late May 2021, the government of Pakistan put forth a proposal to merge its current multitude of media regulatory bodies into one central and unified entity, to be called the Pakistan Media Development Authority (PDMA). As quoted by Dawn News,

This will be a new statutory institution established to regulate films, electronic, print and digital media in Pakistan in the age of meta data, digital and social media, and internet-based content and advertisements.

According to a joint-press release put out by Pakistan’s media bodies, however,

The concept is an attempt to tighten federal government hold over the media through one draconian authority ignoring the fact that print, digital and electronic media are separate entities each with their own defined features and respective regulatory laws. The move appears as an extension of now defunct Press and Publications Ordinance 1963 (PPO) of Ayub Khan-era to all media platforms with regimental provisions to take over the independent and free media. This has no place in a democratically-elected dispensation.

This not the first time that Pakistan’s media regulatory bodies have been accused of working more like Comstockian bulldogs rather than civilian watchdogs. As for the creation of a new media regulatory body, there have been noises made going back to 2018, as I wrote back then as well.

Should the newly-elected government led by Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party - which has itself criticized the media regulatory body whilst in opposition - follow through and dismantle PEMRA, it is unclear and important to ascertain whether its successor would take a more progressive and enlightened approach, or continue to promote an arch-conservative ideology that has more in common with Saudi Arabia.

The policies of the Government of Pakistan since then have, alas, borne more of the latter than the former, which has seen Imran Khan show up on RSF’s “Press freedom predators” 2021 list, along with India’s Modi, Bangladesh’s Hasina, and Hungary’s Orban, among others.

What could the proposed PDMA spell for digital freedom of expression in Pakistan? Fizza Batool, writing for the nonpartisan Stimson Centre’s South Asian Voices portal, examined the PDMA’s pitfalls and ramifications. She writes that,

While the state maintains that it seeks to avoid bureaucratic red tape and reduce regulation costs by converging the “fractured” media regulatory system in Pakistan, there are two main problems in the current draft of the PMDA ordinance. First, it includes several proposals antithetical to the democratic norms of freedom of the press. Second, while the proposed authority intends to regulate digital and social media more austerely, the proposal does not answer technical questions on how this could be achieved. To sufficiently address these two concerns, the government should present this bill to the parliament. Discussion in the parliament is not only important to satisfy democratic norms but also essential to achieve a balance between the needs of the government for better media regulation and the demands of the opposition for improved freedom of the press. It also brings more transparency to the discussion on the technical and normative issues surrounding centralized regulation.

In regards to freedom of the press, Batool wrote that for the last few years,

Pakistan’s rank in the global freedom of press index has constantly declined, owing to growing cases of abduction and assault on journalists. Recent high-profile cases—such as the abduction of Matiullah Jan in July 2020, the attack on Absar Alam in April 2021, and the assault of Asad Ali Toor in his house—resulted in harsh international censure. Global human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International shared concerns regarding worsening freedom of the press in Pakistan. As all three journalists were strongly critical of the government, the journalist community alleged that these attacks are an effort by the state to intimidate dissenters. The suspension of renowned journalist Hamid Mir by Geo News Network after his scathing criticism against the political establishment further strengthened the media’s mistrust of the government. As the proposed ordinance prohibits any content defaming “the Head of State, or members of the armed forces, or legislative or judicial organs of the state,” local journalists believe this is a continuation of the government’s attempt to build a censorship regime. As the plan for such a regulatory authority is still in the works, the government must address these concerns to avoid any further damage to Pakistan’s global democratic standing.

As I wrote in 2018,

Legislation such as the PECA, and bodies such as the PTA and eventual PMRA among others will and have exacerbated the erosion of safe spaces for freedom of expression online in social media and general digital spaces in Pakistan, and make it more dangerous for activists to discuss and organise online.

With the PDMA as it potentially stands, it looks like that spaces for digital freedom of expression will shrink even further.