New Delhi: With changes to India’s contentious new IT rules announced on Friday, which activists criticised as an attempt to restrict free speech, government-appointed panels would be given the power to examine content moderation decisions or takedowns by platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
The change paves the way for the setting up of ‘Grievance Appellate Committees’, which will settle issues that users may have against the way social media platforms initially addressed their complaints regarding content and other matters, in three months.
The action is probably going to be seen as control of big tech firms, which have come under increasing scrutiny in India following a dispute between Twitter and the nation’s ruling BJP last year. The panels, according to activists, might lead to further government regulation of online content.
“The central government shall, by notification, establish one or more grievance appellate committees within three months from the date of commencement of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2022,” the notification said.
Each grievance appellate committee will include a chairperson, two full-time members (two of whom must be independent), and one ex-officio member who are all selected by the central government.
It stated that after 30 days of receiving information from the grievance officer, “Any person aggrieved by a decision of the grievance officer may prefer an appeal to the grievance appellate committee.”
According to the order, the grievance appellate panel would handle the appeal “expeditiously” and try to reach a final decision within 30 days of the appeal’s receipt.
According to the revised regulations, the corporations must respond to user complaints within 15 days or, in the case of an information deletion request, within 72 hours of receiving them.
Advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation said the changes “cause injury to the digital rights of every Indian social media user” and called the methods of choosing appeals for their review “opaque and arbitrary”.
“[The committees are] essentially a government censorship body that would hear appeals against the decisions of social media platforms to remove content or not, thus making bureaucrats arbiters of our online free speech,” it said in a statement.
“This will incentivise platforms to remove/suppress any speech unpalatable to the government or those exerting political pressure and increase government control and power since the government will be effectively able to also decide what content must be displayed by platforms,” the group said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has had strained relations with many Big Tech companies, and the BJP administration has been tightening regulation of firms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Tension over social media content decisions has been a particularly thorny issue in the country, with companies often receiving takedown requests from the government or removing content proactively.
(With Agency Inputs)