Govt gives last notice to Twitter on IT rules

The government on Saturday sent a letter to Twitter asking it to share compliance details with the new intermediary guidelines that came into effect on May 25 and said the company’s refusal to follow them demonstrates a “lack of commitment towards providing a safe experience to the people of India”.

It said, as a “gesture of goodwill”, the government was giving Twitter one last notice to immediately comply with the new rules or lose the exemption from criminal liability available to the social media intermediary under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.

Section 79 provides Twitter protection against any kind of criminal action for third-party content posted on the platform.

The rules notified on February 25 mandate companies such as Twitter, Whatsapp, and Facebook to regulate content, appoint officers liable for compliance, and adopt features such as traceability of messages and voluntary user verification.

Twitter has been at loggerheads with the government since February when the company was asked to block content related to criticism of farm laws and about the protests they triggered. The new rules were introduced later that month. Twitter last week urged the government to give it three more months to comply with the rules.

Facebook-owned Whatsapp has moved court against the rules saying the government was exceeding its legal powers. It maintained the rules will force the messaging service to break its end-to-end message encryption.

Twitter also last week said it was worried about the safety of its staff in India. This came days after police visited one of its offices as part of a probe in connection with the tagging as manipulated some posts of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders related to a document allegedly created by the Congress to highlight the government alleged pandemic mishandling. The Congress maintained the document was