The government makes a move to bring all digital platforms, including social media and over-the-top (OTT) services, under strict supervision.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has drafted a guideline in this connection and sought opinions of stakeholders and the public.
All social media firms, intermediaries, users, mobile applications, OTT platforms and digital media websites, including news or TV outlets, will be supervised under the guideline.
The government will look over any digital content on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp or OTT platforms like Bioscope, Chorki or Hoichoi as well as news portals.
"Considering benefit of both the public interest and the industry, Bangladesh government has decided to regulate online content in order to protect the consumer, vulnerable group (i.e. women, children) including fraud/cheating, threat to public tranquility/sovereignty, illegal content service providers offering pirated program, obscene content and to ensure fairness for all players n the digital platforms," according to the draft guideline.
Government sources say a BTRC committee has drafted the 'Regulation for Digital, Social Media and OTT Platforms 2021' in line with a Supreme Court directive.
Any social media intermediary must have a physical contact address in Bangladesh published on its website, mobile app or both for the purposes of communication.
"The social media intermediary shall implement an appropriate mechanism for the receipt of complaints and shall enable the complainant to track the status of such complaint or grievance by providing a unique ticket number for every complaint or grievance received by such intermediary," it cites.
All intermediaries, including Facebook or YouTube, require appointing resident agents to coordinate with the government anytime.
They also need to appoint a resident complaint officer to recognise any complaint within 24 hours and dispose of such complaint within 20 days from the date of its receipt.
A social media intermediary should, within three months from the date of notification of the threshold, comply with these rules of the guideline.
Social platforms will not host any unlawful content and if they do that unknowingly and receive notices through court orders or the BTRC, they must remove it within the highest 72 hours.
They must preserve the removed information for 180 days or more to be used for legal proceedings against the user.
When an intermediary collects information from a user for registration, it will retain the information for 180 days after any cancellation or withdrawal.
The regulators will be able to block public access to any information in case of emergency and suggest legal action under the Digital Security Act 2018 as well, according to the draft.
If information ministry makes a written request to the BTRC to stop/block/remove a content of any digital media, the BTRC will comply with it," notes the draft.
Any platform will be bound to share the info to verify identity for the purpose of prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution of offences under any law.
The government authorities can seek such information after clearly stating the purpose.
Social media platforms also need to preserve the first originator of any content in the platform.
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