The Indian government has asked social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to remove all posts that refer to one of the new coronavirus strains as the “Indian variant.”
In a noticeissued on Friday, the country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) said that posts mentioning “Indian variant” count as false news. The ministry reasoned that the strain is officially known as B.1.617, so there’s no need for attaching a geographical tag to it.
The ministry also wrote a letter to social platforms earlier this month tocurb misinformation and imposter accounts related to COVID-19.
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While the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified B.1.617 as“a variant of global concern,”the health agency’s guidelines for naming disorders discourage associatingnames of countries or places to a disease.
Various media outlets have colloquially referred to some strains as“the British Strain” or “the South African Strain,”but the scientific naming is the correct way to write about these variants.
We’ve asked Facebook and Twitter to provide information on actions they’re taking on this matter, and we’ll update the post if we hear back.
China’s Global Times reacted to this notice by saying the Indian media is showing “double standards” as some publications have published reports in the past noting thatthe coronavirus originated from China. Last March, a report published byL1ght, a company that specializes in measuring online toxicity, noted thathate towards China on Twitter increased by 900% after the pandemic started.
India is going through a surging wave of COVID-19 infections as the country has registered for more than 200,000 cases for over a month — the B.1.617 variant isbelieved to be the cause of this dangerous phase, which has taken a toll on India’s healthcare system.
Story byIvan Mehta
Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.“Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.”
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