Riding the momentum of the internet expansion and with the growing number of users, the quantity of posts on social networking sites with malicious content has alarmingly been increasing all the more. Virtual space has become a sanctuary from where a vested quarter conducts different sorts of offences like spreading hatred about religion and government by posting fake and fabricated news, trapping young people into doing illegal activities and maintaining contacts hiding their traces.

The lack of monitoring, except some special issues on Facebook, Youtube and other sites, is triggering the trends to assassinate someone’s character and spread fake and fabricated news with particular purposes. The group has just kicked over the traces by taking advantage of the inadequate preventive actions from sites and the absence of necessary laws, which has also been giving benefits to social media giants for doing business in the country without any investment and accountability, depriving the government of vat and tax, and siphoning off a huge amount of money every year.

To face up the situation, the authorities concerned therefore have to pull out all the stops. The process of opening a local office in Bangladesh must be shortened as it will help bring culprits to book and check online-based crimes and unethical activities. The formulation of new laws covering all irregularities and crimes relating to social network sites, of which we are hearing for a long time, must be done in the quickest possible time. But till then, the authorities should fix their priority on whether they would let the situation go in the present way or be selective in complaining to the sites. If the second is preferred, it should be ensured that any measure or tool meant to tackle crimes is not used for other purposes.