Hoax threats to flights: Govt issues advisory for social media companies; warns punishment if they don't act – Times of India

NEW DELHI: With almost 300-400 flights of Indian carriers getting threat messages in the last two weeks, Govt has issued an advisory for social media (SM) companies like X (former Twitter) and Meta to make “reasonable efforts to disallow such malicious acts including hoax bomb threats from being disseminated on their platforms.” The ministry of electronics and IT Friday (Oct 25) in its advisory notes that “the scale of spread of such hoax bomb threats has been observed to be dangerously unrestrained due to the availability of the option of “forwarding/re-sharing/re-posting/re-tweeting” on the social media platforms. Such hoax bomb threats are mostly misinformation that is massively disrupting the public order, operations of airlines and security of the airline travellers.”Accordingly, social media intermediary companies have been asked to “observe their due diligence obligations that include the prompt removal or disabling access to such unlawful information specified under the…