India's grievance committees, Yelp clamp down on paid reviews and Musk's main woman

Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation, your at-a-glance guide to the week's content moderation and online safety news. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw.

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That's enough preamble, here's everything in moderation this week - BW

Policies

New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation

The big story this week comes from India, where the government have announced the first three committees that will hear complaints brought by users against internet intermediaries.

The concept of Grievance Appellate Committees was announced last June (EiM #163) to ensure that "that Internet in India is Open, Safe & Trusted". Now we have the names of the people who will take on that sizeable task, including a retired police officer and the former general manager of the Punjabi National Bank. Users still can't submit cases, though: the website for submitting cases reads "available soon" and will reportedly come online on March 1.

One case that doesn't need to go to Committee is that of the recently released BBC documentary, India: the Modi Question, which examines the prime minister's role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. That's because Twitter and YouTube have already complied with orders from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to remove links to it on grounds that it represents “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage”, according to a government adviser. Mandating that public journalism be removed on a whim is obviously not a good look for a government and digital rights groups are not happy.