DM Monitoring
India’s battle with Twitter escalated on Wednesday with the government accusing the US firm of “deliberately ignoring new IT rules”, as reports suggested it can now be prosecuted for users’ tweets.
Currently social media companies operating in India are classed as intermediaries, shielding them from criminal liability for anything posted on their platforms.
But the companies face losing this protection if they fail to comply with new “Intermediary Guidelines” that came into force in India on May 26.
These rules — which critics say could be used to silence dissent — demand that the firms give details of the “first originator of posts deemed to undermine India’s sovereignty, state security or public order”.
The tech companies also have to appoint a chief compliance officer for the rules and a “grievance redressal officer”, both based in India. The Indian government said on June 5 that while its peers such as Facebook had complied, Twitter has not. It gave it “one last notice” to do so.
On Wednesday IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said — on Twitter — that the firm was still not in adherence.
“It is astounding that Twitter which portrays itself as the flag bearer of free speech, chooses the path of deliberate defiance”, Prasad said. He stopped short of saying whether Twitter had now lost its protection from prosecution, however. He said the new rules were aimed at tackling the “menace of fake news”.
The Times of India reported on Wednesday that Twitter has now lost its so-called “safe harbour” immunity from prosecution for “unlawful” or “inflammatory” tweets.
After not complying, “Twitter now stands exposed to action… for any third-party unlawful content,” the paper quoted an unnamed government source as saying.
Twitter on Wednesday insisted that it was “making every effort to comply with the new Guidelines” and was in close touch with the government. “An interim Chief Compliance Officer has been retained and details will be shared with the Ministry directly soon,” a spokesperson told AFP.
Experts said that Twitter could now find itself inundated with prosecutions.
In what may be the first, police in Uttar Pradesh state registered on Tuesday a case against Twitter — as well as several journalists and others — over a video posted on the platform showing a Muslim man’s beard being shaved off in an attack.
Nikhil Pahwa, founder of technology and policy publication Medianama, said that the government was sending a “message to other intermediaries that this could happen to you too.”
Twitter, he said, will now have to challenge the rules in Indian courts, as Facebook’s WhatsApp subsidiary — whilst still complying with the rules — has done.
The ministry in its statement said it was disappointed after Twitter “unwillingly, grudgingly and with great delay” complied with only parts of the government’s orders.
It cited Twitter’s crackdown on accounts after last month’s Capitol Hill insurrection in the United States, calling it a “differential treatment” to India. It said what happened in Washington was comparable to the violence at India’s Red Fort on January 26 when a group of protesting farmers stormed New Delhi’s 17th century monument. Hundreds of police and farmers were injured in clashes and one protester died.
Twitter did not immediately comment on the ministry’s statement.
Leaders from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party also attacked Twitter for what they said was a refusal to abide by Indian laws.
On Thursday, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad named Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn in parliament and said they would have to follow the Indian constitution. He warned the social media websites of “strict action” if they were “misused to spread fake news and fuel violence.”
The clampdown on Twitter accounts comes as thousands of farmers have camped outside the capital for months to protest new agricultural laws they say will devastate their earnings. The government says the laws will boost production through private investment.
