The American social media firm will lose liability for user-generated content in the South Asian country for not following local IT rules; Twitter has hired a complaining official in India. On Sunday, Twitter identified Binoy Prakash as its new Resident Complaints Officer and shared a way to contact him under India’s new IT rules, which were published in February this year and took effect in late May. Twitter also released a compliance report, another requirement to be listed in the new rules.
Earlier this week, the Indian government told a local court that Twitter had lost liability protection on user-generated content in the country because it had failed to appoint consent, complaints, and a so-called nodal communications officer to address land concerns. . Other Internet giants, including Facebook, Google, and Telegram, have already hired local compliance officers in India.
Internet services enjoy what is referred to as “safe port security” which means that tech platforms will not be responsible for the posts that technology users post or share online. If you insult someone on Twitter, for example, the agency may be asked to remove your position (if the insulted person has come to court and a removal order has been issued), it may not be legally liable for what you have said or done. Without protection, Twitter – which has more than 100 crore users in India according to mobile insight firm App Annie – is responsible for what these users say on its platform.
Indian police have already filed at least five cases against the agency or its officials on various issues. The new development should ease tensions between Twitter and the Indian government. Towards the end of the day, a special squad of Delhi Police surprised two Twitter offices, which many thoughts was a scare tactic.
Twitter said at the time that it was “concerned about the recent developments in India regarding our employees and the potential threat to freedom of speech for the people we serve” and urged the Indian government to give it three more months to comply with the new IT rules. Earlier this week, Twitter told an Indian court that they were working to “fully comply” with the new rules.
