The Ministry of electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in its June letter warned Twitter of strict action for not complying with the “content takedown orders”. Twitter has sought judicial review of some of the content that forms a part of these orders, requesting relief, for the court to set aside these blocking orders.
Twitter has recently moved to the Karnataka High Court against the order passed by Indian government. They were based on the grounds that the content was blocking orders from the IT Ministry and don’t pass
– “the test of the grounds provided under Section 69A of the IT Act”.
Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 allows the Centre to issue blocking orders to social media intermediaries- “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above”.
THE JUNE LETTER
IT Ministry in June wrote to Twitter, asking it to comply with its orders by July 4, or lose its safe harbor protection under the intermediary rules. The letter also set out serious consequences of non-compliance, which included initiating criminal proceedings against Chief Compliance Officer of Twitter. It granted a last opportunity to comply with the blocking orders under Section 69A.
A failure to comply would also mean Twitter to lose its safe harbor immunity of Section 79(1) of IT Act. Due to the seriousness of these threats, Twitter decided to challenge multiple blocking orders, through the legal mechanism of a writ petition before the Karnataka High Court. They are being challenged on the basis that they are procedurally and substantially deficient of the Section 69A requirements.
Between January and June 2021, India had the 4th highest number of legal takedown requests, according to a Twitter report. During this time, Twitter saw a 1,060% rise in blocking accounts and the spike was particularly the result of compliance of an Indian order.
WHAT HAS BEEN ALLEGED?
Alleging disproportionate use of power, Twitter has come up in arms on July 5, 2022 against the Ministry’s content-blocking orders issued under Section 69A. Twitter has reportedly alleged in its writ petition that content and account that were included in the blocking orders are “overbroad and arbitrary”, fail to provide notice to the “originators of the content” and are “disproportionate”.
Additionally, multiple blocking orders only cited the grounds of Section 69A but failed to demonstrate how the content falls within such grounds or what is the “violation of Section 69A”.
Twitter, in the petition has claimed that account-level blocking violates the rights of users under the constitution, especially when the reasons stated to block URLs and accounts lack specificity.
- Twitter has claimed that many of these blocking orders are procedurally and substantively deficient under Section 69A, including aspects such as absence of prior notice to users before taking down their content.
“Social media is a powerful medium. It has a lot of influence in our lives today. Its accountability is a valid question across the world. Countries and societies across the world are moving in the direction to make social media accountable. How to make it accountable? The first is self-regulation. Content that can create a harmful impact in society should be removed by self…” – Ashwini Vaishnaw, (Union Minister for Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology)
CONCLUSION
This issue is going to provide guidelines for several social media platforms. MeitY has stated that if portion of the content is unlawful, then the platform may take proportionate action to remove such alleged information alone, and should not completely suspend the user account. On the other hand, Twitter has stated that some of the content flagged by the Ministry might pertain to political parties’ official accounts, blocking which can be violative of the right to free speech.
This is not a sudden strike as over the past year, Twitter has been directed by the GoI to act on content from accounts supportive of Khalistan, posts spreading misinformation about farmers protests and tweets critical of the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It must be noted that Twitter’s lawsuit against MeitY, came days after MeitY, had given “one last opportunity” to the company to comply with its blocking orders. The Ministry warned that if content flagged by it is not taken down by the micro blogging platform, the immunity as an intermediary will be withdrawn. The time to comply with the blocking orders had expired on July 4.
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Sources: www.reuters.com, www.deccanherald.com, indianexpress.com