- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Shubham Ghosh
A day after Twitter said that it has appointed an interim chief compliance officer in India, the country’s Information Technology (IT) Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Wednesday (15) the social media giant deliberately defied and failed to comply with India’s new IT rules that became effective in late May.
In a series of tweets, Prasad said targeting Twitter that if any foreign entity believed that it could portray itself as the flag bearer of free speech in India to excuse itself from complying with the law of the land, such attempts were misplaced. He then said that Twitter has failed to abide by the Intermediary Guidelines that came into effect from May 26.
The news rules of the guidelines that were announced in February are aimed at regulating content on social media firms like Facebook, its WhatsApp messenger and Twitter, making them more accountable to legal requests for swiftly removing posts and sharing details on the origins of messages. Under the rules, big social media companies are also required to set up grievance-redressal mechanisms and appoint new executives to work in tandem with law enforcement.
As Reuters previously reported, India’s IT ministry wrote to Twitter on June 5, warning it of “unintended consequences” if it did not obey the rules.
While Prasad did not say directly whether the microblogging site lost intermediary protections but a senior government official told Reuters that Twitter may not be eligible to seek liability exemptions any longer either as an intermediary or host of user content in India because of its failure to comply with new IT rules.
‘If Indian firms can follow laws in other countries, why can’t Twitter?’
Prasad said in another tweet that while companies from India, be it pharma, IT or others voluntarily follow the local laws when they go to another country to do business, why platforms like Twitter exhibit reluctance in following Indian laws designed to give voice to victims of abuse and misuse.
Twitter had said on Monday that it was keeping India’s IT ministry informed of the steps it was taking. It said it was making every effort to comply with the new guidelines.
Internet Freedom Foundation, a New Delhi-based digital advocacy group, said it was for the courts and not the government to decide whether companies like Twitter remained intermediaries for alleged non-compliance such as appointing executives.
The clash between the Government of India and Twitter could see a bigger repercussion since it has irked firms that have spent millions to build hubs in India which is their largest growth market, the Reuters report added. Well-placed sources even told the news outlet that some of those firms are rethinking their expansion plans in India.
