Twitter India warned to comply with IT regulations

The central government has given Twitter India “one last chance” to comply with the country’s Information Technology Rules by July 4 or face losing its immunity as an intermediary, according to sources.

The action by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) follows Twitter’s “repeated failures to act on the content take-down notices sent under Section 69 A of the IT Act,” as well as “non-compliance notices issued for not taking the content down,” according to officials in the know.

The ministry stated in the letter received on Monday that the microblogging site failed to comply with notices sent on June 6 and June 9.

“Despite numerous warnings and chances to respond, Twitter continues to be in breach.” As a result, necessary action is being taken against it,” a senior official said, adding that “all intermediates operating in India must obey the IT Rules in letter and spirit.”

According to MeitY’s notification, which was sent to Twitter’s Chief Compliance Officer, “if Twitter Inc. Continues to be in breach of these Directions and hence the IT Act, substantial repercussions under the IT Act shall prevail.”

This includes “loss of immunity as provided (to) an intermediary under sub-section (1) of section 79 of the IT Act and (being) liable to penalty for offences as stipulated in the IT Act 2000.”

It was unclear, however, which specific content removal notices Twitter had not reacted to or acted on. The MeitY notification similarly made no mention of the matter.
To be clear, this is not the first time the IT ministry has warned Twitter that it may lose its intermediary status due to noncompliance with IT Act restrictions.

MeitY issued a similar warning to Twitter in May 2021, when the IT Rules 2021 went into effect, requesting it to create a resident grievance officer, a resident chief compliance officer, and a nodal contact person or risk losing the protection afforded to it under Section 79 of the IT Act.

According to this regulation, an internet intermediary cannot be held legally or otherwise accountable for any third-party information, data, or communication connection that users host or make available on its platform.

Following that, Twitter appointed executives in all relevant jobs and alerted the IT ministry of its compliance with the standards.

Twitter has prohibited access to 80 pieces of material or user names in India during the last year in response to legal requests from the government, according to the intermediary’s disclosures on Lumen Database, an internet collection of transparency reports issued by social media intermediaries.

The microblogging platform bans access to a certain piece of material or handles only on obtaining a legitimate legal request from the country’s government, according to its laws on withholding content for a given geography.

Twitter’s nation withholding policy reads: “The withholdings are confined to the specific jurisdiction/country where the material is considered to be prohibited.”

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