Breakingviews – India's technical rules adopt Chinese quality

MUMBAI (Reuters Breakingviews) – For global technology giants in search of growth, India was supposed to be an easier hunting ground than China. But New Delhi's plan to force Facebook and Google to Alphabet to actively control user-generated content threatens freedom of expression. After edicts restricting foreign giants Amazon and Walmart in e-commerce, the rules suggest that India might not be a much easier bet than the People's Republic.

The proposal, made by the Ministry of Technology in December, addresses a real problem. This is an effort to curb the spread of misinformation after the collective violence linked to messages broadcast on WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, which considers India as its main market. The project asks companies to pre-filter the user's content, delete the illegal content within 24 hours and provide a way to track the user. India also asks any content provider with more than 5 million users to be locally incorporated.

If adopted, this policy would reduce the tax benefits and liability protections for technology companies in contact with consumers because of their presence in the United States and elsewhere. An extremely broad definition of what constitutes "illegal content" also leaves much room for self-censorship and forced censorship in view of the general elections to be held in May.

A pressure group that groups the big names in the US criticized the project, reinforcing trade tensions between the two countries. Local companies, including Reliance Jio, a shareholder in billionaire Mukesh Ambani, and the Sharechat social network are less concerned about the interference. Admittedly, India is not the first to seek to curb the Internet and use it on its own terms, which benefits national actors.

But this is a blow for the tech giants who saw the country of 1.3 billion people as a way to compensate for the problems they faced in a larger and much richer China, which has been banning years the services of Facebook and Google's own Google.

The size and potential of India allow it to formulate certain demands. But companies such as Google have had to face a strong reaction at home when they have tried to comply with the demands of authoritarian regimes. Now that India has close to half a billion Internet users, foreign companies can be convinced that this price is subject to conditions.