Why should government control the media ? That makes no sense.
Most of the social media giants lose money on their India operations while giving poor Indians an opportunity to have a better platform to express themselves. India has virtually seen a one party rule since independence, that too by a single family who could be more corrupt than all the south american dictators combined. The only way an ordinary tea seller could become a PM while defeating this party was because of power of social media are grassroot movement against corruption.
India has a history of screwing up what works without fully understanding the consequences of their regulations.
That makes it all the more worring. Subverting democracy at the behest of a foreign actor for pay.
Pay per tweet taken to a new level.
The foreign social media sites have political agenda blatantly well “foreign”.
Media houses are strictly regulated and have to abide much stringent criteria for reporting or an oped.
It’s about control it was in the best interest of these tech firms to be “neutral” before they captured the entire public discourse space. That is clearly not the case now, They have infinitely more power than they had before and even more power than the sovereign government in many many countries.
Some governments are trying to protect their (digital) sovereignty through regulation.
On their websites. You keep leaving that out. Facebook can't control what goes on Twitter and vice versa. But the government has power over both. That's why it's bad for the government to do it.