Meta on Feb 7 announced its partnership with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for the G20 Stay Safe Online Campaign. As part of the partnership with MeitY, Meta will create and share helpful resources in multiple Indian languages through various channels, to spread awareness on how to stay safe online.
The resources under the G20 Stay Safe Online will cover themes such as tackling online frauds, how to report harmful content, tips to keep yourself safe when interacting online and more. India is at the cusp of becoming a $ trillion digital economy and at the time when India is holding the G20 presidency, this strategic partnership will not only support and equip the existing Internet users but will also be beneficial for the rapidly increasing new Internet users in India.
Speaking on the partnership, Akash Tripathi, CEO, MyGov said, “Under PM Modi’s vision of India’s Techade, we are witnessing rapid digital adoption and with this growth, there is a need to create easy to access tools and resources to protect users from increasing cyber crimes. We, at MeitY, have designed a Stay Safe online campaign in this year of India’s G20 Presidency and we are glad that tech companies like Meta are taking a lead in supporting the government’s vision of building an inclusive digital space which is free of severe online threats.”
On Safer Internet Day, Meta has also launched #DigitalSuraksha campaign builds on the company’s efforts to offer a safer and inclusive internet to everyone. The first phase of #DigitalSuraksha includes a partnership with Delhi Police to provide digital literacy to users in Delhi. The current phase of #DigitalSuraksha also includes a slew of measures on enabling digital education and literacy across youth well-being, child safety, tackling misinformation as well as the overall education of users towards various safety tools and resources available across Meta platforms.
Natasha Jog, Head, Public Policy, Instagram and Policy Programs, Facebook India (Meta), said, “The G20 Presidency opens up a great opportunity for India to design and create an ever-inclusive Internet model for the world, and we are excited to partner with the Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology in this endeavor. Creating a $1 trillion digital economy requires an ecosystem that is safe and empowering and we will support the government’s campaign by providing users with education, tools and resources to protect themselves in this rapidly evolving digital world.”
Providing Digital Literacy
Law enforcement agencies are a critical partner in ensuring online safety, under its #DigitalSuraksha campaign Meta will work with the Delhi Police on a 2-month long programme to provide digital literacy to 10,000 students across various schools and colleges in Delhi. Further, Meta and Delhi Police will jointly build resources to educate users about protecting themselves against online/ digital scams. As part of this partnership, Meta will also train Delhi police personnel on Meta’s various safety tools.
The #DigitalSuraksha campaign finds expression through a Digital Nagrik Pledge, which was also launched by Meta today, encouraging people across India to become responsible digital citizens (Nagriks). Built on Meta’s partnership with CBSE to provide Digital Citizenship course to 10 million students and 1 lac teachers, Digital Nagrik Pledge will further support the Indian Government’s objective to ensure an open, safe, trusted and accountable internet. The goal of the program will be to get 1 million people to pledge and to become safe digital citizens over the next one year.
Building Consumer Awareness
Underscoring the critical importance of educating users, Meta has also unpacked a series of consumer awareness initiatives on the tools and resources available for people to stay safe.
Building on the partnership with Delhi Police, for a period of one month, Meta will wrap one train on Delhi Metro’s Yellow line to educate users about safety tools available for them on Meta’s platforms. Commuters will be redirected to Meta’s safety tools through a QR code.
A new ‘Help protect children. Don’t Share. Don’t Comment. Report.’ campaign was also launched, to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and encouraging people to report such content instead. The campaign will educate users on the harm of sharing CSAM, and the impact it has on the victim and will encourage anyone who sees harmful videos and images of children to protect the victim by reporting it immediately to Facebook. The new campaign builds on the ‘Report it, don’t share it,’ campaign launched by Meta last year.
This year’s theme for Safer Internet Day underlines a crucial aspect of supporting young children by having conversations on life in the online world. With an aim to support and encourage meaningful conversations between parents and children around critical topics like use of social media, mental health and digital wellbeing, Meta has launched UnGap. A series of six episodes, UnGap is a chat show featuring pairings of well-known parents and children that includes actor Sheeba Chaddha and daughter Noor, actor Ahsaas Channa and mother Kulbir Badesron, comedian Abhishek Kumar and father Sundar Baalaji and entrepreneur Roshan Abbas and daughter Ayatal Abbas, among others.
Additionally, an awareness campaign on ‘tips for tackling misinformation’ was also launched with Yuvaa, through short videos. Available in Hinglish, 15-second campaign videos will feature six simple tips and tricks on tackling and identifying misinformation.
Meta will continue to add more initiatives to the #DigitalSuraksha campaign over the year. These will be geared towards reaching a larger set of users by educating them, creating more awareness and advancing India’s agenda of digital inclusion and growth.
