India has asked all social media platforms to remove any content that refers to an “Indian variant” of COVID-19. The Indian government made the appeal in a letter published over the weekend.
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In the letter , the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) stated that the World Health Organization has not associated the term “Indian Variant” with the B.1.617 variant of COVID in any of its official reports .
However, this variant (B.1.617) acquired the label “Indian variant” when it began to be written on social media and online that it originated in India. Last month, the UK Science Media Center said that use of the label “Indian variant” should be avoided, as it is difficult to confirm whether the variant originated there.
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“Social media platforms are requested to immediately remove all content that names or refers to this variant as the ‘Indian variant’ of COVID-19,” the Ministry wrote in the letter.
Earlier this month, India (specifically MeitY) had sent another letter, which called on social media platforms to inform users not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share information that may mislead the Indian public in any way.
In that initial letter, MeitY urged platforms to launch awareness campaigns for users to not upload or circulate fake news related to COVID-19. The ministry had said that this should be avoided to avoid panic among the Indian population due to fake news.
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At the same time, India has asked social media platforms to remove posts criticizing the Indian government's handling of the COVID-19 situation. Last month, Twitter was ordered to remove dozens of tweets criticizing the government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak
Source: ZDNet
