The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has issued a notice to Twitter to comply with all its past orders by July 4. Failing to do so, Twitter may lose its immunity and intermediary status, which means the platform would be liable for all the tweets and comments posted on the it.
As per the MeitY notice, addressed to Twitter’s chief compliance officer, the ministry had issued various directions for blocking certain pieces of content and accounts under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, but Twitter has “failed to comply with the directions on multiple occasions”.
The Section 69(A) of the IT Act allows the government to issue content blocking orders to social media companies “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above”.
Twitter India gets government ultimatum — comply with IT Rules by July 4 or face the music
What’s the issue?
Twitter has locked horns with the government several times in the past. However, the recent order is regarding the blocking of certain accounts and content on its platform.
Earlier on June 26, Twitter had submitted a list of over 80 accounts and tweets that it has blocked based on a request from the government in 2021. The request from the government was to block multiple accounts and tweets from international advocacy group Freedom House, journalists, politicians, and supporters of the farmers' protest.
However, as per a government source, there were several other orders, with which Twitter is yet to comply, the Business Standard reported. Twitter has received over 17,000 requests from the Centre between January 2012 and June 2021 for taking down Twitter accounts and tweets under section 69A of the IT Act. So far, Twitter has complied with only 12.2 percent of the requests. It has withheld only about 1,600 accounts, and 3,800 tweets and further action was taken on 6,300 items under Twitter's term of service.
Twitter had run into trouble with the government last year when a new set of intermediary rules came into effect. Then, the issue was over Twitter appointing an external person as its India-based grievance officer which was against the rules that require the grievance officer to be an employee of the company.
Separately, the government has now proposed an amendment in the new IT rules for social media platforms. Under the new rules, the government will set up an appellate grievances redressal panel which will have the power to overrule decisions taken by a social media company's grievance cell as per the law of the country.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
