Keyword censorship: 'We are not China, but getting there'

Government of India, under the pretext of banning hateful content in cyberspace, has also blocked few twitter handles which have supposedly criticised the government or makes fun of it. Shivam Vij, blogger and activist, says that such steps taken by the government are taking us a step closer to China-like censorship.

“We are not China yet but we are getting there. For first time for blogs today we have keyword censorship,” Shivam Vij told CNN-IBN.

“There is no recourse to defend. You don’t know who to go to appeal. So the nature of this censorship mechanism is very China like,” he added.

By blaming the social media for the internal security issues, Government is just deflecting attention from its own incompetence, Vij said.

“Government has blamed Pakistan and social media to deflect attention from its own incompetence in handling the internal security situation in Banglore, Mumbai and elsewhere. Nobody is talking about the role of Urdu newspaper which actually disseminated those fake Burma images,” Vij said.

Regarding the parody accounts, Vij said, if we are not allowed to make fun of the Prime Minister than its not a democracy.

“Twitter is full of parody accounts of all kind of celebrities and personalities all over the world. Twitter’s official policy says as long as you do not really pretend to be that person, as long as it is clear that you are parodying rather than impersonating, it should be allowed,” he said.

“If you are not allowed to make fun of the Prime Minister, its not a democracy,” he added.