Twitter in compliance with IT Rules with permanent officers in place: govt

The new appointees are employees of Twitter Inc and not its India arm, and will report to the US office directly

Twitter Inc seems to have complied with IT Rules, 2021 by appointing permanent officers as required, the government told the Delhi High Court on Tuesday, ending the long ongoing issue.

"Prima facie, they have appointed Chief Compliance Officer, Resident Grievance Officer and Nodal Contact Person. As of date, they appear to be in compliance," ASG Chetan Sharma submitted, according to legal news portal LiveLaw.

Twitter had told the Court about the appointment of the permanent officers on Friday, in the ongoing case relating to Twitter's non-compliance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021).

The advocate appearing for Twitter clarified that earlier contingent officers were appointed since Twitter Inc. does not have a corporate presence in India, LiveLaw reported. He added that the plan was to make the officers full-time employees of the company.

"Twitter appears to be the last of the significant social media intermediaries to comply with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, marking a new age in India of online transparency and accountability. Under this new regulatory framework, significant social media intermediaries, like Twitter, have had to undertake several onerous compliance, including appointing a Grievance officer resident in India to resolve grievances," said  Namita Viswanath, Partner, IndusLaw.

The government on Tuesday sought time to file an affidavit on the matter and the Court has given it two weeks time to do so. The next hearing is now fixed for October 5.

The lawyer appearing for Twitter told the Court that the company has notarised the affidavit on August 5, in the US.

The new appointees are employees of Twitter Inc and not the India entity of the microblogging platform, and will report to the US office directly.

Content regulation comes under ambit of Twitter Inc while Twitter India provides support services for promoting and marketing Twitter in India.

The nodal contact person, as per reports, is an ex-Bytedance employee Shahin Kamath.

Twitter earlier named Vinay Prakash as it’s resident grievance officer in India, who will be based in Bengaluru.

"While Twitter had previously expressed concerns over the potential issues of privacy and freedom of speech posed to its users by the new rules and the enhanced burden of compliance placed on significant social media intermediaries, its eventual acquiescence to the new rules was anticipated due to the drastic penalty of losing its safe harbour immunity under section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Without this immunity lost, Twitter would be held criminally liable for any and all unlawful and infringing user-generated content shared on its platform. This makes losing the safe harbour immunity a serious regulatory threat to any social media intermediary," added Viswanath.

The government had earlier (in July) told the Delhi High Court that Twitter had lost its safe harbour shield due to non-compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021.

The "immunity" or safe harbour is the protection provided to intermediaries like Twitter, Google, Facebook, Koo, ShareChat and others, under the IT Act. It enables intermediaries to protect themselves from liability for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by them.

Losing safe harbour would mean platforms could become liable under law for third-party and user-generated content hosted by them.