Google and Facebook ‘intend to comply’, Twitter silent, Whatsapp sues the government
Report by Nidhi Arora with inputs from Anirudh Bhargava
When someone writes something that is hurtful, who is responsible? Is it the writer of the message, or the social medium on which it is published?
Suppose the social media site has hateful content? Who do we complain to?
To answer these important questions, the Government of India framed and notified (made everyone aware of them) the Intermediatory Guidance and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules, 2021 on February 25th , 2021. Social media companies had three months to prepare for following these rules.
What are the rules? What do they say?
All significant social media providers (those with 50 lakh or more registered users) will be treated as intermediaries of content.
- All such intermediaries must have the following three key executives appointed and living within India:
- A Chief Compliance Officer
- A Nodal Contact Person
- A Resident Grievance Officer
- They must have a physical office in India and the details of this local office must be published ontheir website and on their app.
- They must make all users aware of their policies and remind the users at least once a year thatuser accounts can be closed for not following the policies.
- They must acknowledge all complaints within 24 hours and resolve all complaints within 15 daysof receiving the complaint or grievance. Anyone can make this complaint or grievance.
The person making the complaint should get a ticket number and should be able to track the statusof their complaint. They should also be given reasons for the action taken on their report.
The Compliance Officer needs to report every month on the number of complaints received andthe action taken on such complaints by the intermediary.
Why do we need a complaint mechanism?
Let’s understand an example of a time when a complaint becomes necessary.
Ram and Shyam are neighbours. They regularly fight over parking space. There is no official parking, so all residents use the available slots on first come first served basis. One day, out of spite, Ram goes to a social media site and writes that Shyam is a thief and everyone in the colony knows this. Shyam’s boss sees this post and as a result, Shyam loses his job.
Shyam tries to complain to the social media site that the content is false. There is not even a police complaint against him. But there is no one to complain to! There is no grievance officer, no one who even sits in India! Shyam pays the price of Ram’s wrongdoing and cannot do anything.
The other rules are:
- All advertisements should be clearly marked as advertisements / promotions.
- Where required, they must track the original sender of a message to find the ‘first originator’ of unlawful content.
- They must remove any content flagged by the government within 36 hours.
- They must provide information required by the government for investigation within 72 hours.
- They need to report cybersecurity incidents to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team.
For news publishers
• They must acknowledge complaints related to their content within 24 hours and close these complaints within 15 days.
At level 1 (the first level of complaint redressal), the platform can investigate and resolve the issue at their end. At level 2, a body of publishers can hear the appeal and self-regulate (control one’s own behaviour to ensure that nothing wrong is done). If both these mechanisms fail, only then will the ministry be involved.
For OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon, etc.
- OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, etc. should categorise their content by appropriate age for viewers. Films in India are certified by a Censor Board but for the OTT platforms, self- declaration is enough.
- Parental lock should be possible for viewing content that is rated 13+ and age verification should be made possible to allow viewers to see ‘A’ rated content.
What is the issue?
The Government of India had given all significant intermediaries three months to comply with these rules – having a local office, and appointing three key employees (mentioned on Page 1).
These three months ended on May 25th .There was a feeling that these social media giants may not be able to operate in India now. There has been no change in their operations so far (evening of May 26th).
The current status is as under:
- Only one company – Koo (which is an Indian platform that does the same thing as Twitter) hascomplied with these requirements.
- Twitter has not responded to media enquiries on the matter.
- Facebook has indicated that it is committed to working with Indian laws, but needs more time andanswers from the government.
- Whatsapp, however, has gone ahead and filed a case against the Government of India. This lawsuit says that they cannot identify the originator of a malicious message, because it violates the privacy of the user and they currently offer end to end encryption to the users. Which means that, according to Whatsapp, no one at the company can read what a user has written to another user.
Two related points
Whatsapp changed its privacy policy on 15th May. According to this privacy policy, the user voluntarily gives Whatsapp permission to use their data and share it with others.
The Government of India filed a case against Whatsapp’s privacy policy change. This case is still in court. Whatsapp has, however, gone ahead and rolled out the new privacy policy.
The Government has now sent a notice to Whatsapp, asking it to roll back the privacy. Whatsapp responded with a letter telling the government that user privacy is important to them.
On 21st May, Twitter marked some content released by a member of the ruling BJP as ‘manipulated media’. There was no court order marking this content as fake news or manipulated media. The content was about the main opposition party and had nothing to do with Twitter. The decision was taken by Twitter and was implemented. Twitter has indicated that the ‘manipulated media’ tag is given as a result of automated and human review of content shared on its platform. The government lodged a protest with Twitter immediately. Twitter has refused to comply.
5 days later, at the time of writing this report, the tag is still there.
Time to think: Questions for you
This is a very interesting situation that concerns every digital citizen of India. Do read ALL the important points given above, and then tell us:
1. Can the Government of India stop the operations of Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, etc. in India? Why do you feel as you do?
2. If you were the Government of India, what would you do? And if you were a social media company, what would you do?
Do share your thoughts with us at tcpedit@gmail.com.