The Delhi High Court on Thursday pulled up YouTube stating that it was “providing a facility to misinform the public”, Bar and Bench reported.
A single-judge bench of Justice C Hari Shankar made the observation while restraining nine channels on the video streaming platform from running any more misleading videos about Aaradhya Bachchan, the 11-year granddaughter of actor Amitabh Bachchan.
Aaradhya Bachchan and her father Abhishek Bachchan had filed a petition seeking to restrain YouTube channels and John Doe defendants (unknown people) from publishing content that defames the family or discloses details about their private life. The petition mentioned that several fake videos about Aaradhya Bachchan’s health were being circulated online.
The judge asked YouTube to ensure that the videos were taken down immediately.
“If you are making money out of what you are doing, you have a social responsibility,” he said “You can’t allow such things to be posted on your platform...You are providing a facility to misinform the public.”
The judge also noted that spreading misinformation about a child reflects a “morbid perversity” and underlined that such conduct was “intolerable”, The Indian Express reported.
“Every child is to be treated with honour and respect be it a child of a celebrity or a commoner,” he said.
Lawyer Ameet Naik, one of the three counsels who represented the Bachchan’s in the court, described the verdict as a landmark judgement on three counts.
“[It] is an injunction that upholds privacy of a child, [is] against disseminating false and fake news about a child and against defamation,” he said.
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