After a long-standing civil war, Twitter has finally lost the platform liability protection in India, after failing to comply with the new IT rules.
This was revealed by the Indian IT ministry in yesterday’s court documents, mentioning the American microblogging platform’s failure and loss of immunity. It will now be responsible for any objectionable content by users on its platform.
Holding Twitter India Responsible
The new IT rules for social media platforms in India were announced in February this year, by the Indian government, and are life since May.
According to them, all the social media platforms with over 5 million users should have a chief compliant officer, a resident grievance officer, and a nodal contact person appointed to respond and solve the complaints posed by stakeholders.
Though the Indian government has given significant time to get accustomed to the new rules, Twitter India has failed to comply with them, as it didn’t appoint any of the above-said officers after the given tenure.
Thus, it now lost legal liability protection in India, which makes it responsible for any objectionable content posted or shared by its users. There are already five cases registered against Twitter India by Indian police, with two of them specifically targeted at its local CEO, Manish Maheswari.
As per the court documents filed by the IT ministry yesterday, N Samaya Balan of the regulatory body mentioned,
“I state the immunity conferred on intermediaries under section 79(1) is a conditional immunity subject to the intermediary satisfying the conditions under sections 79(2) and 79(3). As provided in Rule 7, failure to observe the IT Rules 2021 results in provisions of Section 79(1) of the IT Act, 2000 not being applicable to such an intermediary.”
Twitter has earlier tried complying with the rules though but failed gradually. An Indian officer appointed to look over the grievances had resigned.
And an appointment of an American officer for this post is a violation of the law, thus, Twitter has no one to show before the law, making it vulnerable now.
