News Politics National Misuse of social media comes under attack in NIC meet

Misuse of social media comes under attack in NIC meet

New Delhi: The misuse of social media to spread objectionable content and hatred among communities today came under attack from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a number of Chief Ministers who demanded some mechanism to



He said before this, in 2012, people have fanned hatred against the people of the Northeast which resulted in their mass exodus.

“Social media helps youngsters to get new information and new thought. It should be used in ensuring brotherhood and communal harmony.

“It is necessary to maintain independence of giving opinion and views by people in social media. But at the same time, it is also important that we donot let miscreants and troublemakers to misuse social media. I feel today's meeting will look into the issue of misuse of social media and deliberate on it,” he said.

The Prime Minister asked parties to refrain from taking advantage out of communal strife and said states should crackdown on elements fanning such violence irrespective of their political affiliations or influence.

Underlining that the onus for preventing communal violence lies with the states, he said effective steps should be taken by the administration to ensure that small issues don't snowball into a big controversy.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who had experienced the misuse of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) in which an attack on two youth in Pakistan a couple of years ago was circulated during the Muzaffarnagar riots, lamented that there was no mechanism to check objectionable content being transmitted through social media.