While this may be viewed as a victory for internet freedom, it establishes an odd precedent that allows for the national government to have a stranglehold on social media. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are regulated privately, and any government regulation of their Terms and Conditions in the United States could be viewed as a violation of the First Amendment. In addition, the power of the government getting the deciding voice in removing content could be dangerous if gone into the wrong hands, as a country like China could use this policy to target certain people and groups.
Even with India's decision to have basically unrestricted free speech on their social media, their Ministry for Information and Technology has just recently implemented new rules to have platforms comply with government orders within 24 hours, which is too soon to properly evaluate the situation at hand. In addition, the IT Ministry is seeking a way to trace the origination of hate speech and fake news, though that creates a new problem where the users' encryption is likely to become compromised. There is additional concern that automated filtering technology could ban content on accident, and that it's better to have human evaluate the content even if it's more exhaustive.
Shreya Singhal, the student and now lawyer that changed social media policing in India.
Although this case took place outside of the United States, it is still noteworthy because of the impact it might have for the Western Hemisphere. As countries struggle to prevent "fake news" from misinforming the public, lawmakers in Europe and the United States have focused on implementing automated filters to remove hateful or threatening speech from social media. However, these filters may not properly understand the context or meaning behind a certain post. For example, terrorism recruitment videos are already illegal, but these filters may ban a post that's instead reporting on terrorism. The price to filtering content is also costly, as YouTube said they paid $100 million for their automated technology, a price that most outlets simply cannot afford.
There doesn't look like a right way to do this, but the rules in each country has left a lot of interesting proposals on the table. In my opinion, leaving the ability to filter out malicious and/or erroneous content up to people is just not possible, as nobody can evaluate the millions of social media posts and users that are present online, especially in countries as large as India or the United States. Despite this, it should still be made possible for any accounts or posts that are reported on to get a second reference from human reviewers, since this process could accurately determine whether or not the decision to remove a user or post was correct. That is a process that most outlets have taken up, so the current situation for sites like Facebook and Twitter should remain the same, though a few minor revisions could be made to clarify their review process. The idea of almost unmonitored internet speech (with exception to the government) sounds crazy, though we will still have to wait and see what impact it has on India, and potentially the rest of the world.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/filtering-out-free-speech-shreya-singhal-case-supreme-court-6220277/
https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/regulations-are-important-to-protect-free-speech-online-say-experts-at-sflc-panel-on-intermediary-liability-law/story/394161.html
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