Responding to Twitter’s concern, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said it strongly controverts the claims made by Twitter today in its press release. “India has a glorious tradition of free speech and democratic practices dating back centuries,” it said.
New Delhi: Soon after, Twitter raised concern over the “potential threat to freedom of expression in India and intimidation tactics by the police”, the government at the Centre on Thursday issued a statement directing the social media platform to “stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land”. Responding to Twitter’s concern, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said it strongly controverts the claims made by Twitter today in its press release. “India has a glorious tradition of free speech and democratic practices dating back centuries,” it said.
issuing a strong-worded statement, the IT Ministry said, “Twitter’s statement is an attempt to dictate its terms to the world’s largest democracy. Through its actions and deliberate defiance, Twitter seeks to undermine India’s legal system. Twitter needs to stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land. Lawmaking and policy formulations are the sole prerogative of the sovereign and Twitter is just a social media platform and it has no locus in dictating what should India’s legal policy framework should be.
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Government assures that representatives of social media companies including Twitter are and will always remain safe in India and there is no threat to their personal safety and security. Government condemns Twitter’s statement as baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide their follies,” the statement added.
Earlier in the day, Twitter broke its silence on the new digital rules implemented in India and flagged concern over “the potential threat to freedom of expression” and “the use of intimidation tactics by the police”. In a release, the social media giant said while it will “strive to comply with applicable law”, it planned to ask for changes to elements in the rules “that inhibit free, open conversation”.
The new IT rules require the social media companies to set up an India-based grievance redressal officer, compliance officer, and a nodal officer “so that millions of users of social media who have a grievance get a forum for its redressal”, said IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
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The obligation to reveal the originator of an offensive message already in circulation relates only to offenses relating to sovereignty, integrity, and security of India, public order, rape, and child sexual abuse. The government on Wednesday had strongly defended its new digital rules, saying the requirement of messaging platforms like WhatsApp to disclose the origin of flagged messages does not violate privacy, and went on to seek a compliance report from large social media firms.
The new rules, announced on February 25, require large social media platforms — defined as those with over 50 lakh users in the country — to follow additional due diligence, including the appointment of a chief compliance officer, nodal contact person, and resident grievance officer.
The new, tighter regulations for social media firms require them to remove any content flagged by authorities within 36 hours and setting up a strong complaint redressal mechanism with an officer being based in the country.
Significant social media companies will have to publish a monthly compliance report disclosing details of complaints received and action taken, as well as details of contents removed proactively. They will also be required to have a physical contact address in India published on its website or mobile app, or both.
Under the rules that would make digital giants more accountable for the content hosted on their platform, companies will have to take down posts depicting nudity or morphed photos within 24 hours of receiving a complaint.
Non-compliance with new IT rules would result in these platforms losing the intermediary status that provides them immunity from liabilities over any third-party data hosted by them. In other words, they could be liable for criminal action in case of complaints.
Twitter, in a statement on Thursday, has expressed concern over “use of intimidation tactics by the police” after the microblogging platform gave a manipulated media tag to tweets by a BJP leader. Twitter said it is concerned about its employees in India and the “potential threat” to freedom of expression.
In its first official statement after the Delhi Police visited the company’s offices in Delhi and in Gurugram on Monday, Twitter said it will continue to be strictly guided by principles of transparency, a commitment to empowering every voice on the service, and protecting freedom of expression and privacy under the rule of law.
Earlier this week, WhatsApp filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court challenging the new digital rules on grounds that the requirement for the company to provide access to encrypted messages will break privacy protections.
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The government has emphasised that the new norms will not impact the normal functioning of the popular free-messaging platform, and the IT Ministry has turned up the heat on significantly large social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp asking them to report their status on compliance with the new rules, which have come into effect.
The ministry in a statement on Wednesday had termed WhatsApp’s last moment challenge to the IT rules as an unfortunate attempt to prevent the norms from coming into effect.
The UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada require social media firms to allow for the legal interception, it had said, adding “What India is asking for is significantly much less than what some of the other countries have demanded”. As per data cited by the government, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 44.8 crore YouTube users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram users, while 1.75 crore account holders are on the microblogging platform Twitter.
