The Supreme Court's recent refusal to lay down guidelines for the suspension of social media accounts is a moment that warrants deep reflection. The bench, led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and including Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, has effectively left the governance of our primary public square in the hands of private corporations. While the plea by advocate Sanjay Kumar Singh was dismissed, the underlying question it raised about digital rights and arbitrary power remains unanswered.
This situation brings to my mind a much older, yet startlingly relevant, concern about unchecked systemic power. It reminds me of the prescient warnings of Norbert Wiener, which I explored in a previous post, 'Norbert Weiner Saw This Coming'. Wiener famously equated the automatic machine with 'slave labor,' warning that any human competing with it must accept its economic conditions.
I see a direct parallel here. Social media platforms, with their opaque algorithms and unilateral terms of service, are the new automatic machines governing our public discourse. By participating in these digital spaces, we are forced to accept their 'conditions'—conditions that can lead to arbitrary suspension and silencing without due process. They have become the de facto arbiters of acceptable speech, and the judiciary has now chosen to look the other way.
The court's decision is not just about a single petition; it’s about whether our legal frameworks will adapt to protect fundamental rights in an era where the public square is privately owned and algorithmically controlled. By declining to create a framework, we are failing to ensure the 'human use of human beings' in the digital realm. We are ceding authority to entities whose primary motive is profit, not the preservation of democratic discourse.
This reluctance to engage with the complexities of the digital world leaves a vacuum. Who will guard these new digital gates? If not the courts, then we are left at the mercy of unaccountable corporate power. This is a profound challenge to the very notion of digital citizenship.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
Of course, if you wish, you can debate this topic with my Virtual Avatar at : hemenparekh.ai
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