New IT rules: 7 social media platforms comply with some guidelines; Twitter drags feet - The rules were notified in February and 3-month time period was given to social media platforms to implement them.
The prescription of a content code for streaming sites and news portals is legally dubious. GoI has no authority granted to it by Parliament to enact such a code. The IT Act grants the authority only to make regulations with respect to intermediaries, which by definition host user content like Facebook or YouTube.
Facebook and Google have agreed to implement the changes, while WhatsApp has moved the Delhi High Court to register its objection to the traceability clause of the new IT rules.
View: Making sense of the standoff between govt and WhatsApp over new IT rules
SECTIONS
Last Updated: May 28, 2021, 12:05 AM IST
Share
Synopsis
The public square, where citizens are meant to come together to hold elected representatives accountable, has now been hijacked by corporations, some of whom act like government censors, while others claim to act on behalf of the public, or both. Amid this choreographed spectacle in India, social media intermediaries appear to be challenging the government’s right to enforce its own policy requirements.
Agencies
The intermediaries were threatened with the loss of their operating licences or, at the very least, with losing the protections they enjoyed on account of being middlemen. That deadline has now passed.