Govt Asks Twitter, YouTube To Pull Down Perfume Ad ‘Promoting Sexual Violence Against Women’

New Delhi: The Union Information & Broadcasting Ministry on Saturday asked Twitter and YouTube to remove videos of a perfume brand advertisement that triggered outrage in social media for “promoting sexual violence against women.”

The ministry wrote to the social media companies that the videos of perfume brand — named Layerr Shot — were “detrimental to the portrayal of women in the interest of decency and morality” and violated Information Technology guidelines and digital media ethics code.

“It has come to the notice of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting that an inappropriate and derogatory advertisement of a deodorant is circulating on social media. The Ministry has asked Twitter and YouTube to immediately pull down all instances of this advertisement,” an official spokesperson said.

The ministry said that the Advertisement Standards Council of India (ASCI) has also found the videos to be in violation of its guidelines and asked the advertiser to suspend the advertisement on an immediate basis.

Following the government direction, TV channels on which the video ad was being aired have already pulled it down.