Union Minister Kapil Sibal comes up with innovative solution to counter rumour mongering on Twitter

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With internet censorship once again entering public discourse thanks to the arrest of a 21-year old girl over a comment she made on Facebook during Bal Thackeray’s funeral, Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal has come up with an out of the box solution to solve the issue of rumour-mongering a lot more elegantly than blocking individual Facebook pages, Youtube links or Twitter handles.

Unreal Times journo Kismat Kasam Kanth had a quick chat with the man of the moment Mr. Kapil Sibal on his way back from the parliament working session. [Ed: “Working” session. Hehe].

KKK: So Sibal Sir. I can’t wait to hear the one stop solution you have thought of to solve this issue. More of it please!

Sibal: Well it’s all in the human mind. How many movies have you watched?

KKK: Well Sir, a lot of them. But I don’t get the point. How is this issue related to watching Indian movies?

Sibal: Well watch the numerous court scenes of Indian films. What’s the first thing that happenswhen a witness is called to the witness box?

KKK: Er… he or she is made to swear by the almighty?

Sibal: Exactly! So beginning with Twitter, we’re going to implement something  quite similar. Every Tweeter will be required to type in an oath before typing his or her Tweet. Otherwise the Tweet will not get published.

KKK: What??!! Apologies. Pardon me for the outburst of emotion. But how on Twitter? I would like to emphasize it is already a micro blogging site, I mean it has only 140 characters.

Sibal: Yes, I have a dedicated team from an Indian software major which is working on this 1 billion dollar project to be implemented in Indian operations of Twitter very soon.

KKK: So may I know the text Sir? With your permission I would like to publish it for all social media users. Just as a heads up to them.

Sibal: Well this is the tenative swearing text: ”I hereby place my right hand on the screen and sincerely swear that all I tweet is nothing but the truth.”

KKK: Sir give me a moment please. Let me open my twitter account and count the number of characters. Oh my! That comes to 107 characters.

The mandatory Twitter oath

Sibal: Bingo! So leaving this text aside, folks will have 33 remaining characters to type. Isn’t that cool?

KKK: Er.. yeah. That is really…innovative.

Sibal: You see what I’m doing here? I am ushering in a new age in social media. We are veritably moving on from micro-blogging to nano-blogging!

KKK: Er.. absolutely Sir. Thanks for your time Mr. Sibal.

So readers, let us keep our fingers crossed for similar such interventions that might be introduced in other popular social media hangouts like Facebook or Google+. This is Kismat Kasam Kanth signing off from New Delhi for The Unreal Times.

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