Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi today made it clear that anti-trolling measures will not amount to "cyber patrolling" even as she held talks with Twitter India officials as part of the consultation process to check online abuse.
"There will be no patrolling on the internet. The unit will only respond to complaints made by affected women through email. The only time we will respond is when we receive complaints about abusive behaviour, harassment, hateful conduct," Maneka said.
The minister held a meeting with Twitter India's Head of Public Policy, Mahima Kaul, during which it was decided that the social networking site will appoint "a dedicated contact person to whom the ministry can direct complaints of trolling on Twitter," a source said.
Maneka will also be meeting Facebook officials next week.
Earlier, there was a meeting between the cyber crime department and the ministry officials.
"Complaints received by the ministry, which are of a grave nature, will be reported to Twitter for action.
"The Ministry will also work with cyber-crime cell wherever required," said a press statement of the ministry.
A Twitter spokesperson in a statement said that "hateful conduct has no place on Twitter and we will continue to tackle this issue head on alongside our partners in industry and civil society."
The ministry has broadly defined three different categories of complaints on which it will take action and this will include abusive behaviour, harassment and hateful conduct.
Maneka's initiative to safeguard women against online abuse met with criticism from when National Commission for Women Chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam had raised strong objections when the panel was asked to monitor cases of online abuse.
She had told PTI "You can't police the net. It is an open space, it is like a galaxy almost. There are billions of twitter accounts and no organisation can keep an eye on twitter. It is not physically possible for anybody to say we are following everybody's twitter".
"The ministry will also create a separate e-mail id by tomorrow for complaints about online abuse," a source said.
