Government working on new guidelines for social media platforms to make them responsible and accountable

The Indian government is finalising a notification for an amendment to the Information Technology Act (2000) which makes social media platforms responsible for the content shared there. The act has been amended with new intermediary guidelines to make social media platforms responsible for removing unlawful content that has gone viral.

The Economic Times reported citing two senior officials in the law ministry who said some minimal changes to the draft amendments have been made by the Ministry of Electronics and IT, and the new guidelines are waiting for final approval.

The draft amendment was first reported by LiveLaw on March 12, 2020 and was tabled to make social media platforms ‘responsible and accountable’.

Presently, section 79 of the IT Act (2000) stipulates that an intermediary is not responsible for content uploaded by third parties. Moreover, the intermediaries are also required to act with due diligence and follow a ‘notice and takedown’ regime which stipulates that they will take down objectionable content after a judicial order has been issued against it.

There’s no law however that can make social media companies divulge information about users on their platform. However, the new guidelines might just force social media platforms to bypass encryption standards to find out who shared objectionable content.

“Notifying the guidelines is the only way to deal with the current situation where content is being created on one platform - Like TikTok - and being circulated on other social media like WhatsApp, while companies are not able to control it citing end-to-end encryption,” a government official told ET.

With the new guidelines in place, social media platforms have to take down objectionable content going viral on its platforms, even if the content originally came from another social media site. The ET report cited the government official asking companies like TikTok and Facebook to deploy better techniques and more investment to proactively take down objectionable content. Furthermore, platforms like WhatsApp cannot cite end-to-end encryption as a reason for inaction.

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