Share compliance details: Govt to social media firms

NEW DELHI: The Indian government has written to all social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to send details of their compliance officer, nodal contact person, resident grievance officer and physical contact address in India, asking them to confirm if they have complied with the new Information Technology Act guidelines after the deadline to do so ended on Tuesday.

The guidelines, seen as controversial by the industry as well as activists, put in place a new mechanism for companies to regulate content, appoint officers who will be liable for compliance, and adopt features such as traceability of messages and voluntary user verification.

“Government through a separate notification has also prescribed that a social media intermediary having fifty lakh (5 million) registered users in India will be considered a Significant Social Media Intermediary (SSMI),” the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) said in its communication to the companies.

“Additional set of due diligence for SSMI and are being administered. The additional due diligence required from SSMI have come into effect today, at the conclusion of three additional months given to SSMIS.” The government asked the social media intermediaries to preferably share the details by the end of Wednesday.

Most of the prominent companies, including social media giants Facebook and Twitter, instant messaging application Whatsapp, and Google are yet to comply with the new rules, the deadline for which lapsed on May 25. While Whatsapp has a resident grievance officer, it is yet to appoint a compliance officer. Twitter and Facebook too have not appointed anyone yet.

Facebook on Tuesday said it aims to comply with the new guidelines but indicated there were unresolved issued.