Twitter can’t take forever to comply: HC

The Delhi high court on Tuesday warned Twitter, saying the social media intermediary “will be in trouble” if it doesn’t comply with the new Information Technology Rules and appoint a resident grievance officers without any delay

The Delhi high court on Tuesday warned Twitter, saying the social media intermediary “will be in trouble” if it doesn’t comply with the new Information Technology Rules and appoint a resident grievance officers without any delay.

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“If Twitter thinks that they can take as much time as it wants in our country, then I will not permit that. You should have taken some firm steps to appoint the officer,” justice Rekha Palli said.

The court granted time till Thursday for Twitter to specify a time frame by which it can appoint the grievance redressal officers after the company’s counsel sought some more time to contact the company’s executives in San Francisco.

“Get clear instructions, or you will be in trouble,” said the judge, adding that the Union government is free to take any action against Twitter for not complying with the rules.

The judge also pulled up Twitter, represented by senior advocate Sajjan Poovaya, for “misleading” the court and giving a “wrong impression” on the appointment of a regular grievance officer.

“You never told me that it was an interim officer you appointed. Your counter [affidavit] gives the whole story which is very interesting. When a senior counsel makes a statement, I take it seriously,” she remarked.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) Chetan Sharma, appearing for the Union government, told the court that despite the lapse of 42 days since the deadline of May 25 (when the new rules came into force), Twitter is yet to appoint the grievance redressal officers.

“While the company is free to do business in India, its attitude cocks a snook at the digital sovereignty of the country... 42 days and no compliance and we have done nothing. Facebook has removed three crore (30 million) [pieces of] content. Google removed 3 lakh [pieces of] content. Twitter could have done better,” said the ASG. His reference is to recent compliance reports of the two companies that indicated the number of pieces of content taken down by the platform itself (for violation of its rules) or based on a complaint.

On Monday, the Union government, in an affidavit, told the high court that Twitter has lost its immunity from criminal prosecution -- this is given to intermediaries -- for content on its platform due to its failure to appoint a grievance redressal officer under the new Information Technology rules.

Submitting an affidavit in response to a petition by a lawyer, the government said that Twitter and other social media intermediaries were given a “sufficient” period of three months from February 25 to comply with the due diligence norm in order to avail of protection from prosecutions in cases of obnoxious and offensive content posted by a third party.

To be sure, whether Twitter continues to enjoy this safe harbour protection is a matter that will be decided by the courts, not by the IT ministry or any other arm of the government.

Twitter on Saturday told the high court that the three months timeline fixed by the Centre to appoint such officers under the new IT rules is “directional” but “not mandatory”. The social media intermediary had also told the court that it is in the “final stage” of appointing officers for grievance redressal.

Under the new digital rules introduced on February 25, social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter have to put in place a three-tier grievance redressal system and appoint a chief compliance officer, a nodal contact person, and resident grievance officer. The deadline for this was May 25.

The new guidelines also require these companies to identify within 36 hours the originator of a flagged message as well as to regulate their content, and adopt measures such as tracing individual (offensive) messages and voluntary user verification. WhatsApp has separately approached the Delhi high court over the traceability issue.

Proceedings before the high court on Tuesday commenced with senior advocate Poovaya telling the court that his submissions on the appointment of a resident grievance officer on May 31 were premised on instructions he received from the company.

He informed the court that even this interim resident grievance officer, who was actually a lawyer, tendered his resignation on June 21 and that the company is in the process of appointing a new one.

He added said that his clients are not in compliance with the IT rules as a result.

To this, the judge said, “What do you mean you are in the process? The rules are binding on you…It’s been more than two weeks since the person resigned... You have misled the court and gave a wrong impression. You never said that it was an interim officer that you were appointing. But be that as it may, if he went away on June 21, the least that Twitter was expected to do was to appoint a fresh officer in these 14 days before the matter was coming up.”

The court was hearing a plea by advocate Amit Acharya, who, through his counsel Akash Vajpai, contended that since no resident grievance officer has been appointed by Twitter to deal with complaints regarding tweets on its platform, he could not take action against two alleged offensive tweets by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mohua Moitra and journalist Swati Chaturvedi.

When the ASG pointed out that Twitter is in breach of the rules, the court said that it has already made it clear that Twitter will have to comply with the rules and asked the intermediary to give details of the efforts made for the compliance of the other provisions of the IT rules.

“I don’t know whether I can ask for the details but let us see what progress is being made…The steps should be known to everyone,” the judge remarked, posting the matter for July 8.

Twitter has been criticised by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for labelling tweets by one of its spokespersons “manipulated media” and has been questioned by the Delhi Police on the basis for doing so. The tweet in question pointed to a media outreach and social campaign document (a toolkit) that was purportedly put together by the Congress to target the government for its handling of Covid and the Central Vista project.

The Congress has claimed the toolkit was forged.

Twitter has also been summoned by the Ghaziabad Police over its role in amplifying a video that allegedly misrepresented an attack on an elderly Muslim man as a hate crime, and it also faces a bunch of police complaints about a wrong map of India on its website.

Twitter has previously said it was committed to India as a vital market, but criticised the new IT rules and regulations that it said “inhibit free, open public conversation”.

It has also raised concerns about the safety of its employees in India and flagged intimidation by the police. There have been several instances of confrontation between the social media firm and the government over orders to block access to content and marking of posts by BJP leaders as “manipulated media”.