DailyPost 2342
SOCIAL MEDIA CODE – LEGAL AND STRINGENT
If something has messed up with the all sorts of personal and even official relationships it is the social media. A look at the world around would give you a fair idea how duplicity has been inbuilt into this new tool and has slowly become the order of the day. Virtually you are out to do away with real civilizational elements of human existence. Physical to the virtual has been finally and it seems has been permanently transformed into virtual to physical. The social media persona sticks on to you, for good or for evil, the real gets relegated into the background.
Behind all the rules, conventions, norms, accepted societal living and also the limits to which aberrations can tolerated has gone for a six with the deep undercurrents of the social media. If you are at the receiving end, you will not realize what has hit you. While we have started talking of ethics in the development of Artificial Intelligence, where have we brought our social media and consequently our existence, we are not even ready to speak a word. Illegality rules the social media, as it is treated as an unregulated territory and generally you can get away with vast majority of things.
You will find social media as the root of large part of ills; either being the causal medium or facilitating the pace of spread. Can formal organizations be allowed to run without a social media code, and run amok to everyone’s misery. The cumulation of privacy of the social media users means misery to large numbers. Once the damage is done, very little can be undone. That people it seems will not understand the gravity and complexity of this medium, so the only way left is to regulate it. A no holds barred social media has brought us to this juncture, it has the potential to slide us into perennial misery.
Just think of last few years as to how much of public domain ruckus has been its creation. A legal and stringent social media code is must for the government; the politicians and bureaucrats. An advisory or some simple obscure rule is not going to make any difference. At the barest minimum it has to become a codified social media code of conduct. It should have the sanctity of the conduct rules which government servants and informed citizens and institutions are aware of. Preferably, there needs to be an enactment; India Social Media Act applicable to politicians and bureaucrats, which would tighten the legal noose, on all what is avaricious, vested, envious, planted and with any other reason designed to create intended detrimental consequences. The vested interests have taken over. Civilization is about civilized behavior and that is being sacrificed on the altar of social media.
THE FEAR OF LAW ONLY CAN TAME THE SOCIAL MEDIA OFFENDERS.
Sanjay Sahay