Description

Twitter loses protection under Section 79 of IT Act

Date - 16th Jun 2021

Twitter, the social media giant, has lost its protective immunity in India for failing to appoint officials as required by the Indian government's new IT regulations. This will mean that Twitter will not be protected by Section 79 of the IT Act and its senior management will now be held liable for all content on its platform that is deemed inflammatory or illegal in nature.

However, Twitter has reportedly appointed an interim Director of Compliance for India and details of this will soon be released to India's Ministry of Information Technology.

According to a Twitter spokesman, the ministry is kept abreast of progress at every stage of the process. An interim director of compliance has been appointed and details will be communicated directly to MeitY shortly. Twitter has continued its efforts to comply with the new regulations.

Twitter loses its Section 79 reseller status

Without the protection of Section 79 of the IT Law, the social media platform will now be liable for any “third party information or communication channels accessed or posted by it”. In short, Twitter can now be prosecuted for content on its platform. However, for the end user, losing Twitter will have no effect.

On June 5, the government sent Twitter a final notice asking them to comply with the law or lose their middleman status. Later, while other platforms agreed to comply with the guidelines, Twitter asked the government to extend the deadline for compliance with the new rules. He said he intends to comply with the guidelines, but it still takes more time due to the pandemic situation in India.

However, due to this continuous rift with Twitter, the government finally announced that whoever does not yet comply with the rules will lose their middleman status. Thus, Twitter became the first platform in the United States to lose its Section 79 protection and, therefore, to lose its status as an intermediary within the country.

Information Technology Minister Shankar Prasad said that

Minister of Electronic and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad took to Twitter on June 16, 2021 and said that the obvious fact is that Twitter does not comply with the mediation rules, which took effect on May 26, 2021.

He added that the company was given many opportunities to comply with the new IT regulations, but deliberately followed the trail of non-compliance. The Union minister also said the viral tweet about the Ghaziabad incident "demonstrated Twitter's arbitrariness in its fight against fake news."

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