Govt should impose regulations on social media: Infosys Executive Co-Chairman Krish Gopalakrishnan

BANGALORE: IT major Infosys Executive Co-Chairman Krish Gopalakrishnan today said government should impose regulations to check media players like Google, Yahoo and Facebook from hosting objectionable contents on their websites.

"The government should regulate social media websites from hosting objectionable contents. It is vital to establish jurisdiction over citizens' data for security reasons," he said at the Knowledge Summit organised by All India Management Association here.

Gopalakrishnan noted that this was a global problem and it was being dealt differently by different countries. "The European Union is trying to set up its own guidelines, while the US is doing it in its own style," he said.

He said social media had become powerful in terms of opinion making and publishing positive and negative stories. "Sometimes, deliberately or by mistake, such stories could be twisted to create needless problems," he added.

Facebook, Google, Yahoo India and Microsoft have been accused of hosting anti-religious or anti-social contents on their websites.

The controversy over monitoring social networking websites arose after Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal had asked them to 'screen' their contents.

A Delhi court had recently directed several social media players including Facebook India, Google India Pvt Ltd and Youtube to remove objectionable contents from their websites.