Facebook, Google, Twitter yet to cooperate over hate messages

Parents say at least two popular schools in Chennai have taken recourse to spying on children on networking websites such as Facebook and microblogging site Twitter to prevent the institutions from being maligned.
NEW DELHI: As the government initiates legal proceedings against social media users who had posted inflammatory content on the web in the wake of communal strife in Assam, platforms like Twitter, Google and Facebook are yet to cooperate with the law enforcers in identifying those behind the blocked posts.

The department of information technology (DIT) had written to Twitter, Google and Facebook around 10-12 days back, seeking details of accounts that had uploaded inflammatory messages, images and videos last month. The information was sought in keeping with the law that requires DIT to grant a hearing to net users whose posts are blocked as an emergency measure.

A DIT official claimed Google said it had pulled down objectionable posts from their sites in accordance with their policies and not under Indian law. The authorities are interpreting this as reluctance on part of foreign ISPs to help law enforcement in India, an outlook rejected by both Google and Facebook.