The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has blocked 45 videos from 10 YouTube channels as they allegedly contained hateful speech against religious communities and spread communal disharmony.
Based on the inputs from intelligence agencies, the Ministry issued the directions for blocking the videos under the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. The blocked videos had cumulative viewership of over 1.30 crore.
“The content included fake news and morphed videos with the intent to spread hatred among religious communities. Examples include false claims such as the government has taken away the religious rights of certain communities; violent threats against religious communities; declaration of civil war in India, etc. Such videos were found to have the potential to cause communal disharmony and disrupt public order in the country,” said the Ministry in a statement.
Spread disinformation
Some of the videos in question were being used to allegedly spread disinformation on issues related to the Agnipath scheme, Indian armed forces, India’s national security apparatus, Kashmir, and other matters. “The content was observed to be false and sensitive from the perspective of national security and India’s friendly relations with foreign states,” it said.
Some of the videos depicted erroneous external boundaries of India with respect to Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. “Such cartographic misrepresentation was found to be detrimental to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India,” said the Ministry, adding that the videos came under the ambit of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.
In August, the Ministry blocked seven Indian and one Pakistan-based YouTube news channels on the charge of spreading disinformation pertaining to India’s national security, foreign relations, and public order. Those channels had 114 crore views and 85.73 lakh subscribers. A Facebook account and two posts on the social media platform were also blocked.
Since December 2021, the Ministry has taken similar action against more than 100 YouTube news channels and several other social media accounts.
