Force of Good or Evil?

2021 brings new norms for social media cos to ‘follow’; firms ‘share’ concerns but ‘subscribe.’

Stuti Roy & Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

Explosive confrontations and standoffs between social media giants and the government marked a stormy start to 2021, and the coming year promises to be just as actionpacked as India brings in legislation to protect personal data, enforces tighter checks on digital platforms and regulates cross border transfer of information.

The year began on a turbulent note for social media platforms when the government asked Twitter to block tweets and handles in connection with the farmers’ agitation over agricultural laws, which have now been repealed. Twitter had complied, only to restore the accounts later, leading to a massive standoff between the microblogging platform and the government.

Matters only got worse for the microblogging platform as the government issued more notices in the following weeks to Twitter to take down accounts that were allegedly spreading misinformation and provocative content around farmers’ protests. It withheld access to accounts of certain prominent personalities like Punjabi singer JazzyB, hiphop artist L-Fresh the Lion and others in response to a legal demand in India.

Twitter went on an offensive and flagged concerns around the safety of its staff in the country. It alleged intimidation by the police after its office premises were searched by the Delhi police in May. The government questioned Twitter’s “differential treatment” in case of the US Capitol Hill siege, where it had taken prompt action and asked the platform to take swift action against “wellcoordinated” campaigns being run around the farmers’ protests.

Social media companies were under the lens globally too for hate speech, misinformation and fake news on their platforms. India, on several occasions, has emphasised that while it fully supports foreign and Indian companies in leveraging the internet as a “force of good”, it will take all measures to ensure that the internet remains open and is not dominated by big companies.

And this was evident when the Centre introduced stringent rules for social media and OTT platforms in February to make them more accountable to endusers in one of the world’s largest internet markets.

The rules required social media companies to take down contentious content quicker, appoint grievance redressal officers and assist in investigations. Significant social media intermediaries -- those with more than 50 lakh users -- have to follow additional due diligence, including appointment of chief compliance officer, a nodal contact person and a resident grievance officer and all the three officials will have to be residents in India.

The rules were controversial from the very start as platforms voiced concerns over traceability mandate and short timeline for appointment of the key officials.

While platforms like Facebook (now Meta) and Google complied with the rules by the May 26 deadline, Twitter —even after the expiry of the additional time -- did not appoint the requisite officers, leading to it losing the ‘safe harbour’ immunity.

Non-compliance with rules would result in these social media companies losing their intermediary status that provides them exemptions from liabilities for any third-party information and data hosted by them.

Twitter -- which has had several run-ins with the government this year including marking of posts by BJP leaders as manipulated media -- found itself in murky waters after displaying a distorted map of India that showed Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as a separate country. The glaring distortions added to a massive backlash from social media users.

In June, Twitter -- which has over 1.75 crore users in India -- courted controversy yet again when it temporarily blocked then IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account for alleged violation of the US Copyright Act, a move Prasad slammed as being arbitrary and gross violation of IT rules. Matters only aggravated after the verified blue badge was removed from many accounts, including the personal account of Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu.

“We value the open lines of communication with the Government of India and share a commitment to work together towards building a digitally inclusive, safe and Open Internet that encourages public conversation,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

In November, Twitter Co- Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Parag Agrawal would succeed him in the top role.

The India-born executive -- who served as Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer since 2017 -- will have to navigate the regulatory challenges across markets and scale up user base and revenue.

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