Social media giants have been inviting more and more scrutiny from governments around the world, thanks to the dangers of misinformation and social polarization. India, once a safe haven for social media companies with barely any regulations, has been growing more and more stringent, and with the new IT rules, has completely turned the industry on its head. It is no revelation that the Central government and microblogging site Twitter have been in a bit of a tussle recently, but now, it seems like the country’s administration is all set for a full-on legal battle.
The government announced on Tuesday that Twitter has lost its legal indemnity in the country, owing to a failure on its part to comply to the newly established IT rules. For the unversed, legal indemnity refers to a sort of contractual agreement between parties (in this case, between India and Twitter) where one party agrees to protect the other against financial liability, by paying for any losses or damaged incurred by the latter.
As soon as this announcement was made, an FIR was filed against Twitter by the UP Police on June 15, on grounds of failing to stop a viral video, which shows an elderly Muslim man being thrashed near Ghaziabad, from circulating. Without the indemnity cover, Twitter is now liable to penal action under the Indian legislation. The FIR, which reads, “No communal angle to incident. Twitter has done nothing to stop video from going viral,” also names 8 other entities, including many journalists.
In a report to news platform ANI, government sources have said that the decision was taken after a lot of deliberation, and only after the three month period for complying to the new rules, which came into effect towards the end of May, ended. As of now, Twitter remains the only platform with more than 5 million users, to not have complied to the IT rules. The new guidelines, which were issued back in February by the IT Ministry, require social platforms to set up a detailed, three-tier grievance redressal system, complete with Chief Compliance Officer.
Twitter finally came forward to issue a statement regarding the matter through a spokesperson, who said, “We are keeping the MeitY apprised of the progress at every step of the process. An interim Chief Compliance Officer has been retained and details will be shared with the Ministry directly soon. Twitter continues to make every effort to comply with the new Guidelines.” However, no comments have so far emerged regarding the FIR on behalf of the firm.
This happens to be the first incident of the Central Government actually coming down hard on a social media company on account of non-compliance to the IT rules, which, the IT Ministry had threatened, could result in such platforms losing their status as an intermediary (which provides them from legal action against any third-party data on their servers) while also inviting legal and penal action. The spokesperson further added, “We have assured the Government of India that Twitter is making every effort to comply with the new guidelines, and an overview of our progress has been duly shared. We will continue our constructive dialogue with the Indian Government.”
