Karishma Mehrotra
Articles By Karishma Mehrotra
Posts on Kashmir, deities, Tricolour: Facebook flags ‘locally illegal’ content
While the company insists it does not proactively block “locally illegal” content for viewers from specific countries unless their legal team deems a local agency request as “valid”, these unreported India-specific guidelines show how the company still directs its moderators to flag such content for further review.
Private Member’s Bill to allow employees to ignore calls after work
The Right to Disconnect Bill mandates companies to detail out-of-work demands “as a way to reduce stress and ease tension between an employee’s personal and professional life,” Sule said.
Hurt by WhatsApp curbs in polls, parties seek way forward
Representatives of several political parties told The Indian Express that they felt the impact of the platform’s changes during the just-concluded Assembly elections. Sources aware of the platform’s inner workings say WhatsApp forwards have declined in India since the change.
Govt introduces changes to Aadhaar law, Opposition says violation of Supreme Court order
The Supreme Court had barred mandatory use of the 12-digit unique identifier by private firms.
Ravi Shankar Prasad to introduce Bill to amend Aadhaar Act
The Cabinet in mid-December approved amendments that would permit voluntary use of Aadhaar for mobile SIM card and bank account authentication, and allow children who turn 18 to opt out of the system.
Report: Contrary to stance, Facebook flags posts against a religion
In a meeting in October, Facebook’s Vice-President for Global Policy Solutions Richard Allen had said Facebook does not consider hate speech to be speech attacking any religion or belief, but rather it defines hate speech as speech attacking a group of people.
Private Member’s Bill in Lok Sabha to propose alternatives to IT Act draft amendments
The Bill’s “Network Enforcement Authority” will hold platforms accountable with the values of “fairness, proportionality, and necessity”. Appointed by the Centre, the suggested authority has been compared to the Election Commission by the MP’s office.
Since 1885, how the law for monitoring and intercepting data evolved
The Indian Telegraph Act remains one of the major laws regulating government monitoring of information today, along with the Information Technology Act, 2000.
In Local vs Cloud: Most Smart Cities take to data hyper-localisation
So far, the 12 cities that are the furthest along have already created hyper-local silos to store data within their cities.
Express Snippets: Rise in number of social media URLs blocked or removed
Facebook reported a total of 30,000 restrictions in 2015, 2,700 in 2016, roughly 3,000 in 2017, and about 2,000 in the first half of this year.
US politics, Russian ‘disinformation’ on social media: what analysis found
The report says “computational propaganda” was carried out by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a group of Russians who have been indicted by the US Justice Department.
Platform for Smart Cities to share data on anvil, could be monetised
A Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) official said that while the concept of paid contracts is not in the discussion currently, this will be a precursor to a monetised marketplace of Smart City data.
Telcos have stopped Aadhaar authentications as of November 20: UIDAI CEO
UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey said it has put on hold the contracts of Authentication User Agencies (AUA) and KYC User Agencies (KUA) “that should not be using” Aadhaar for authentication.
Rural development works now rely on geotagged verifications
Taking off two months ago, the Ministry of Rural Development now has public images of over one lakh assets, with everything from sewage drainage pipes and borewells to water tanks and streetlights.
In Jaipur, a question for WhatsApp: How to track the source?
They discussed verification methods through news searches, reverse image searches and fact-checking organisations as well as technical features.
Spike in Govt requests to Facebook for information, user accounts
The request for information has consistently increased from just eight in the first six months of 2013 to 16,580 in the first half of 2018.
Twitter to add political ads portal expanding its consent policy
Google and Facebook have announced similar features to be deployed in India.
Internet platforms defend efforts against fake news in India
In anticipation of 2019 elections, both Google and Facebook said they will focus on training journalists while Twitter emphasised eliminating fake accounts and automated manipulation as well as political ad transparency.
ORF-WEF survey: ‘70% youth unaware of govt’s skill development programmes’
The low training participation was mostly due to financial barriers and time constraints, with each category cited by a third of youth respondents.
Chhattisgarh elections: Wrong call? 16 districts with least mobile users rank low in phone sop
Under the first phase, till September 28, 86 lakh phones with free six-month data plan and 100 free call minutes every month for six months had been distributed.
