Establishing An Adjudicatory Body For Facilitating Online Free Speech And Promoting Internet Governance; In Context Of Facebook Oversight Board
Astle, Advocate, Ph.D. Scholar, Gitam School Of Law
ABSTRACT
The advent of this decade brought changes to the human lifestyle and revolutionise the techno-legal aspect of mankind. The Social platform became an emblem of the person’s character and a reflection of thoughts and ideology. The unprecedented novel coronavirus made huge human suffering and slumping of the economy but the techno industries kept growing.
Facebook, with over 2 billion users shared stories post 365 days a year. But cling to that crime, threats, country security and all such penal threats were other sides of social networking. It was this social media that transmitted the information of Colonel Gaddafi as a dictator and incited the rebellion resulting in the burning of Libya. Facebook with its norms and set of rules comes up with a “Community standard”, In India, since the internet has no physical jurisdiction, the local authorities in absence of uniform laws started arresting people on online posts, if that appears to be a threat to internal security. Users were restricted to express their free speech under the reasonable ground of restriction (Article 19(2-6)) Indian constitution. So, the need for “Internet governance is ought to be paramount for facilitating online free speech and ensuring respect for others.
In November, Mark Zuckerberg announced to establish an Oversight Board for articulating Internet governance1. In India, in December the ‘Oversight panel took cognizance of a case where the prophet Mohammed was in his leather shining armour with sword depicting President Emmanuel macron as a devil. The committee removed the post stating it as a veiled threat to an Individual. The way forward is how this parallel adjudicating body ensures online free speech and whether this could be the next generation in techno-legal governance.
Keywords: Internet Governance, Adjudicating body, Techno legal governance, online free speech, Oversight board.
