“Nowhere in the world has pre-screening content resulted in something positive”

Adhvith Dhuddu, Founder & CEO of AliveNow, a social media management firm, says:

Pre-screening content and erecting virtual barriers on the Web will only result in one thing: a marked increase in exactly the same kind of messages that you seek to block. Nowhere in the world has pre-screening content resulted in something positive. Governments and institutions which tried this approach in the past have faced a heavy backlash (remember, the Arab Spring revolution).

Censorship is fundamentally counter-intuitive in nature and that hypothesis is nowhere as visible as it is in the world of social media. Not only is censorship immature, it is also technically impossible to implement in totality. Technology doesn't understand sarcasm and hence there is no practical way to pre-screen or censor content.

Facebook has about 3.8 crore users in India and a significant chunk of those users log in daily to post status updates. Thousands more tweet, blog and pen their opinion on various online platforms. As it is, social networks have a self-regulating mechanism because an overwhelming majority of users are mature and reasonable, people who would reject vile and insensitive content and encourage (or make viral) content they can relate to or associate with. Even cartoons or remarks that take potshots at the Government go viral only because people are consciously sharing them online. And they are using their personal space on the net (profiles, blogs, twitter etc) to express an opinion.

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