The government has come down heavily on social media platforms Meta and X for failing to give details of some of the handles in the recent bomb hoax threats to national and international flights.

The government has maintained that these social media companies did not handle the situation responsibly. Their actions, according to sources, amounted to ‘abetting the crime’. The companies were told to immediately pull down such handles from their sites.

Sources said a top official at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) called a virtual meeting on Wednesday with officials from affected airlines and the two social media platforms.

In this meeting, X and Meta officials were severely reprimanded for not divulging information in time about the bomb threats.

The platforms were seen to be reluctant in sharing details about user handles who sent out fake threats. “The government official stressed that prompt response is needed to ensure that the perpetrators and repeat offenders are identified swiftly, and nabbed,” sources said.

The social media giants are also understood to have told the government that they are ready to cooperate, but can do so only when the requests come through the “proper channel” under the law, the sources said.

“The Home Ministry and the IT Ministry have the powers to seek details under specific provisions and specific conditions. The companies have been cooperating when the requests are coming through the proper channel and under the specific provisions,” an official told businessline.

In the past week, Indian airlines have received more than 100 hoax bomb threats resulting in inconvenience to passengers and monetary losses to the airlines. Most of the threats were posted on accounts on X (formerly Twitter) and the accounts were created by using a virtual private network (VPN) or dark web browser that investigative agencies have been unable to detect.

The Delhi Police have filed eight cases in connection with bomb threats. The threats messages were received through anonymous posts on X which were later suspended by the authorities.

All the handles engaging in such messaging were found to be fake, which meant that the Delhi Police and other agencies were not able to locate the real people behind them.

Related Topics