Twitter complies with IT Ministry’s notice within deadline

New Delhi: Micro-blogging website Twitter has complied with the IT Ministry’s last notice within the final July 4 deadline, after receiving a warning to either comply with new IT Rules, 2021 or face stricter action. Reliable sources told IANS on Tuesday that the company finally complied with the June 27 notice sent by the Ministry […]

New Delhi: Micro-blogging website Twitter has complied with the IT Ministry’s last notice within the final July 4 deadline, after receiving a warning to either comply with new IT Rules, 2021 or face stricter action.

Reliable sources told IANS on Tuesday that the company finally complied with the June 27 notice sent by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) over taking action on some controversial tweets.

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A query sent to Twitter India went unanswered.

The government had asked Twitter to act on the content take-down notices sent under Section 69A of the IT Act along with non-compliance notices issued for not taking the content down.

Not complying with the IT rules, 2021 could have resulted in Twitter losing its immunity as a social media intermediary under Section 79 of the IT Act.

In May, the IT Ministry issued a similar notice to the micro-blogging platform, directing it to appoint a resident grievance officer, a resident chief compliance officer, and a nodal contact person.

The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 mandate that the intermediaries, including social media intermediaries, must establish a grievance redressal mechanism for receiving resolving complaints from the users or victims.

Meanwhile, Twitter banned more than 46,000 accounts of Indian users in May over violation of its guidelines, the microblogging platform said in its monthly compliance report.

According to the report, Twitter removed 43,656 accounts for child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and similar content, while 2,870 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism.

The platform received 1,698 complaints in India via its local grievance mechanism between April 26, 2022 and May 25, 2022.

In addition, Twitter also processed 115 grievances which appealed account suspensions. No account suspensions were revoked, the report said.

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.