New Delhi: The Center may request a statement from social media companies including Twitter and meta‘s facebook about the lower compliance by these platforms of legal notices in India compared to other major countries, people who were directly aware of the issue told ET.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is in the process of compiling comparative reports of such measures taken by key social media intermediaries (SSMIs) both voluntarily and in response to official communications in India and abroad for a detailed review, the sources said.
“The level of compliance with legal requirements in India is very low compared to the number of users (SSMIS) has in the country,” said officials who were aware of the discussions. “Since India has a large number of social media users, it is only natural that the number of offensive and useful content in India will also be higher,” they noted.
The matter is likely to be discussed at “the next biweekly meeting between the ministry and SSMIs,” the sources added.
At present, Meta considers India as its largest market with more than 400 million users, while Twitter has about 24 million users in India, which accounts for about 10% of its global user base of 330 million monthly active users.
“But when you compare compliance rates, SSMIs lag behind here,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
A Twitter spokesperson said the platform had “no comment” to offer.
A Meta representative said the “Community Standards of the company outline what is and is not allowed on our platform. If the content violates our Community Standards, we will remove it from the platform.”
“If we receive a valid court order to remove content that violates local law, but may not violate our community standards, we will restrict the content’s availability in the country where it would be illegal,” he added. the person to it.
Just to be sure, Facebook indicated in its transparency report for the period July 2021 to December 2021 that it received a total of 50,382 requests from various governments in India, of which 47,123 were legal requests. It met 64% of these requests with some data being shared with the government, it said.
However, industry sources note that when SSMIs receive court or government orders under Section 69A of the IT Act, they comply with those orders at all costs, “even under protest.”
In comparison, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company said it received a total of 59,996 requests in the US, of which 56,230 were legal process-related requests.
A total of 3,766 emergency disclosure requests were received from the government and 103,665 requests were for users or some accounts that were on the platform. The social media major said he had complied with 88% of these requests, with some user data being shared with the US government from July 2021 to the December 2021 period.
In the UK, Facebook said it had received 10,117 requests, of which 8,528 were legal requests. The platform said it had received 1,589 emergency disclosure requests and 1,201 requests for data from some users or accounts. It fulfilled 89% of these requests with some user data being shared with the government.
Twitter — currently engaged in a major showdown with the Indian government over takedown requests that it claims fail the test of “proportionality” — reported that India’s overall legal request compliance rate was 11%, compared to 13% for the US and 7% for the UK. From January 2021 to June 2021, Twitter received 17,338 regulatory requirements from the Indian government and its agencies at various levels, compared to 1,461 from the US and 839 from the UK, it said in its global transparency report.
Officials in the know noted that if the IT ministry and several SSMIs are scheduled to meet every two weeks, the issue of discrepancies in compliance rates will be discussed at the next meeting.
Typically, the Department submits a list of objectionable content and may request immediate compliance under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.
Earlier this month, Twitter approached the Karnataka High Court to plead 39 legal demands made by the Indian government between February 2021 and June 2022, on the grounds that they failed the test of “proportionality”.
Twitter’s petition followed an earlier June 27 notification to the platform by the Department of IT that it had given it “one last chance” to comply with all the standards of the 2021 IT rules by July 4, otherwise it risked. its intermediate status and thus the safe harbor protection granted to it under Section 79 of the IT Act.