Last week, the Union government notified amendments to the Information Technology (IT) rules, 2021, bringing in a new social media content moderation framework. The key feature of this is what the government calls “grievance appellate committees”. Consisting of three members to be appointed by the government, these committees will allow users to complain about inaction on the content they reported, as well as appeal against their content or account being taken down by companies such as Meta and Twitter. A
Last week, the Union government notified amendments to the Information Technology (IT) rules, 2021, bringing in a new social media content moderation framework. The key feature of this is what the government calls “grievance appellate committees”. Consisting of three members to be appointed by the government, these committees will allow users to complain about inaction on the content they reported, as well as appeal against their content or account being taken down by companies such as Meta and Twitter. A day after the announcement, the junior minister for electronics and information technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said the scope and structure of these committees will be worked out soon, and the government’s motives for doing so was to help users navigate a “broken” grievance redressal system that companies have at present.
Regulating content online has become a contentious issue. Social media companies have often been found not doing enough and, at the same time, censoring too much. This is a global phenomenon. For instance, Europe’s Digital Services Act, which European Union members ratified earlier this year. The law tightens penalties on social media companies if they do not act on illegal content and establishes an independent regulator to hear complaints. Similar conversations are being held in the United States, where Republicans and Democrats want a law giving broad immunities to tech firms to be tweaked for conditionalities. In this context, India’s approach in general, is consistent with how global regulations are evolving. There is no question that social media companies need to be regulated, to be made more accountable — especially because their models are built around advertising, and they compete with traditional media that operates under certain codes.
The question is whether the government can create new out-of-court dispute settlement bodies with binding powers, and if the answer to that is yes, whether such committees can be truly independent. There is also a school of thought that argues that by forcing social media companies to block or unblock content, the government is stepping into the private realms that are the services and products of these corporates. The result could mean that, much like the IT Rules, 2021, the new amendments are likely to be challenged in court.
That will not do. The more such an impasse exists on platform governance, the longer citizens suffer from exposure to harmful content and arbitrary decisions. Keeping this in mind, the government should work with all stakeholders to arrive at content moderation and regulation protocols that draw from those that traditional media companies follow. Whether the social media companies, which leverage the safe haven protection they get as so-called intermediaries, will be willing to play ball is an entirely different question.
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