Karnataka High Court doors knocked on by Twitter on takedown orders

Karnataka High Court doors knocked on by Twitter on takedown orders

Providing 'one last opportunity', a notice was issued to the Chief Compliance Officer of the social media platform last month

The microblogging firm Twitter has filed a petition in the Karnataka High Court for a judicial review of the government instructing it to take down content from its platform.

The move of the company comes even as it complied with the July notice issued by the Ministry of Information Technology to remove certain content. Meanwhile, the details of the content have not been ascertained.

In its plea, Twitter argued that some orders for the removal fell short of the procedural requirements of India's Information Technology Act, 2000. It did not specify which ones required reviewing by Twitter.

Earlier, at a press briefing, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Information Technology Minister had spoken about the importance of the reach of social media.

He stated, "Social media's accountability has become a valid question globally. It is important to hold it accountable, which will first start with self-regulation, then industry regulation, followed by government regulation."

"Whatever legal changes are required we will do. Within the media groups, self-regulation is needed (and) self-regulation will be done. But wherever needed, we will take steps to make social media more accountable," Vaishnaw added.

He reiterated that globally, governments and society were moving in a direction that can hold social media platforms accountable.

"While one area is accountability, the other is the need to look at how content producers should earn benefit from social media platforms, especially if the latter are benefiting from content," he specified.

The minister stressed that any company from any sector would have to abide by the laws of the country.

Meanwhile, Twitter has been having run-ins with the government on the time taken to remove the content from its platform.

Last month, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued a notice to the Chief Compliance Officer of Twitter giving the company "one last opportunity" to act on multiple content takedown notices by 4 July. Failure to comply with those may lead to loss of immunity as an intermediary under the IT Act, the ministry said.

Earlier, the government had asked Twitter to act on content related to Khalistan and Kashmir. It directed Twitter to remove 60 accounts and tweets of journalists, politicians, and supporters of farmers' protests.

However, Twitter had failed to act on the notices, issued under the IT Act. The social media company had also failed to act on non-compliance notices sent at other times.

Under the IT Act, the government has the power to give directions to block public access to any information under specific circumstances. It can order taking down digital information in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, and defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order.

The government has, meanwhile, proposed setting up a grievance appellate committee to investigate the appeals filed by individuals against the decisions taken by the grievance officers of the social media platform.

On the other hand, Twitter, in its transparency report for the period 22 April 2022 to 25 May 2022, said that it received 1,583 grievances and action was taken against 1,621 URLs (uniform resource locators). For the same period, it received 115 grievances for Twitter account suspension.

The platform also suspended 46,526 accounts proactively. Of these, 43,656 were suspended for issues including child sexual exploitation and related matters, and 2,870 for espousing the cause of terrorism.

According to a lawyer, "It kind of indicates another low. The Twitter strategy has been to push back as much as they can by using the legal tools they have. It is more of a delaying tactic or in some cases, it is trying to extract some concessions from the government. There is to a certain extent, some leverage it has got with this strategy.

"We are talking about draft amendments to the Bill and the government has started a discussion as well. But you also see Twitter agreeing to some of the requests of the government. While it is complying in some cases it is pushing back too."