Indian Minister Faces Fury of Twitter, Facebook Users

After facing strong opposition to his recent idea of monitoring content on social networking Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, Indian Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal has come out with a defensive statement. He says he does not advocate censorship, but he wants a solution to the offensive content on social networking sites.

I suggested that these platforms should evolve a mechanism on their own to ensure that such contents are removed as soon as they get to know of it. ... I have told them that this cannot go on, Sibal told reporters.

After getting the news, people, mainly youngsters, took to the two biggest social networking sites, sharing the link, Kapil Sibal is an Idiot.

They also termed him Taliban of India. Kapil Sibal is our local taliban. Perhaps we should call him, Kapil Siban. Or Kapan Sibal. Or Kaptali Siban, a Facebook user posted.

I want to see what you are writing on Facebook and Twitter instead of concentrating on my actual work, an excerpt from another Facebook status reads.

Twitter is also abuzz with comments against Sibal. I want Kapil Sibal statements monitored in real-time before they're uploaded to his mouth, a Twitter user posted.

Irony; Kapil Sibal wants censorship of content posted and has made sure that more 'hate' posts have got generated on this than ever before, another user tweeted.

Facebook has extended its support to the minister's concern and said any content violating the company's terms would be removed immediately.

We will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service, Facebook said in a statement.

The minister met representatives of companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and asked them to remove offensive content from their portals.