New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued clear directions to YouTube to remove all sorts of false & misleading content on Aaradhya Bachchan, the daughter of actors Abhishek Bachchan & Aishwarya Rai Bachchan from its platform.
The High Court coming down hard on the YouTube also instructed that the video sharing platform must ensure that such fake news is not shared or disseminated in future.
The 11-year-old grand daughter of Amitabh Bachchan had moved High Court on Wednesday over some YouTube channels for reporting fake news about her health. The fake videos reportedly claimed that Aaradhya Bachchan was passing through a difficult phase & was ‘critically ill’.
In its searing observation, the court said that spreading misinformation about a child reflects “morbid perversity”.
Justice C Hari Shankar said that dissemination of misleading information about a child’s health was “completely intolerable in law” and directed it to inform the complainant about details of video uploaders and also asked it to ensure that similar videos, if come to notice again, be pulled out from public view.
“Defendants 1 to 9 (YouTube channels) are completely restrained from publishing, sharing and disseminating any content on any public platform across the net relating the state of health or physical condition of the plaintiff,” said the court.
Reprimanding the video sharing platform for being ‘ignorant & insensitive’ to others’ concerns, the court asked why it doesn’t have any policy or monitoring mechanism via which there can be curbs on misleading & fake content.
The court also asked Google & YouTube whether they had changed their policy in accordance with amendments in IT rules and asked them to file a reply, detailing about their plan & practice to deal with such objectionable content on their platform.
It also directed the Centre to block access to the content in question.
