Govt.’s intent is to work with social media intermediaries, not be seen as adversarial: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Currently, users just get a ‘thank you for sending your grievance, we will revert to you’ message from these platforms. The purpose of the GAC is to address unresolved grievances.

The latest amendment to the IT rules puts a definite due diligence obligation on social media companies so that no unlawful content or misinformation is posted on their platforms, said Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar. He also clarified that the new rules do not strengthen the government’s power to moderate content on the Internet while stressing that the government’s intention is to work with the intermediaries, not be an adversary. Excerpts:

There are two issues that we are looking at – safety and trust, and accountability. Earlier, under due diligence, intermediaries had to only broadcast to users about not uploading certain categories of harmful/unlawful content. There was no enforcement. We have changed that to say not only shall intermediaries inform and publish, but also cause that these things don’t happen and in that we have included misinformation (in the content categories).

So there is now a definite obligation on the part of the intermediary on content moderation. They have to do it. In case they miss something, then when somebody informs them, that needs to be taken down within 72 hours. There is no other moderation of content. The GAC does not come into the picture at all.

The person who points out that there is misinformation is not the government, it could be any one… so the content moderation is not an issue that is going to come to GAC at all. All the non-content related issues come to the GAC… account block/hacked etc.

Currently, users just get a ‘thank you for sending your grievance, we will revert to you’ message from these platforms. The purpose of the GAC is to address unresolved grievances.

GAC is really a disincentive to intermediaries to not to continue their status quo casual way of approaching grievances redressal… I have enough work… everybody in the Ministry is working hard... to take on the role of being an ombudsman for the Internet. That is not our primary goal. But we are forced to do that because of the lack of progress in the last one year.

It is not an area the government wants to get into. We are doing it very, very reluctantly because we have an obligation and duty to the digital Nagriks that someone listens to their grievances; if platforms do not, then at least the government should.