Twitter may lose safe harbour protection

Subject : Governance

Context : Twitter may ‘lose’ safe harbour protection as government says it ‘failed’ to fill key positions

Concept :

Microblogging platform Twitter is likely to lose its status as a social media intermediary and, in turn, the legal protection accorded to it under Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act.

Safe Harbour Provisions

The safe harbour provisions have been defined under Section 79 of the IT Act, and protect social media intermediaries by giving them immunity from legal prosecution for any content posted on their platforms.
This protection, the Act says, shall be applicable if the said intermediary does not in any way, initiate the transmission of the message in question, select the receiver of the transmitted message and does not modify any information contained in the transmission.
This means that as long as a platform acts just as the messenger carrying a message from point A to point B, without interfering in any manner, it will be safe from any legal prosecution brought upon due to the message being transmitted.
The protection accorded under Section 79, however, is not granted if the intermediary, despite being informed or notified by the government or its agencies, does not immediately disable access to the material under question.
The intermediary must not tamper with any evidence of these messages or content present on its platform, failing which it lose its protection under the Act.

Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code

In February 2021, the guidelines had asked all social media platforms to set up a grievances redressal and compliance mechanism.
It included appointing a resident grievance officer, chief compliance officer and a nodal contact person.
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology had also asked these platforms to submit monthly reports on complaints received from users and action taken.
A third requirement was for instant messaging apps was to make provisions for tracking the first originator of a message.
The failure to comply with any one of these requirements would take away the indemnity provided to social media intermediaries under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.