Govt. notifies amended Guidelines for Digital Social Media to provide for Redressal of Complaints to be adjudicated by the Committee set up by the Govt.

Govt. notifies amended Guidelines for Digital Social Media to provide for Redressal of Complaints to be adjudicated by the Committee set up by the Govt.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India on 28th October, 2022 notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2022.

The Centre has listed several guidelines for necessary execution by social media intermediaries, which has been defined as one which primarily or solely enables interaction between two or more users on its platform and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify or access information using its services.

According to the notification, a Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) will be set up to redress grievances from users aggrieved with the content moderation decisions of social media platforms.

As per the rules, a social media intermediary shall make reasonable efforts to ensure that the user do not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that:-

1. Belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right;
2. Is obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another’s privacy including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on thc basis of gender, racially or ethnically objectionable, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion or caste with the intent to incite violence;
3. Is harmful to a child;
4. Infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;
5. violates any law for the time being in force;
6. Deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature;
7. Impersonates another person;
8. Threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign States, or public order, or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence, or prevents investigation of any offence, or is insulting other nation;
9. Contains software virus or any other computer code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource;
10. Is patently false and untrue, and is published or written in any form, with the intent to mislead or harass a person, entity or agency, for financial gain or to cause injury to a person.

Further, the intermediaries shall take all reasonable measures to ensure accessibility of its services to users along with reasonable expectation of due diligence, privacy and transparency and It shall respect all the rights accorded to the citizens under the Constitution, including in the articles 14, 19 and 21.

The amended rules provide for an online dispute resolution mechanism.

In case of a complaint against a post that violates rules, the intermediaries must acknowledge the report within 24 hours, resolve it in 15 days, and if the complaint contains a request to remove the post, do so within 72 hours.

Anyone who is not satisfied with their complaint’s resolution can approach a GAC within 30 days. The GAC will endeavour to resolve the appeal in 30 calendar days.

The GAC’s decisions will be binding on the social media intermediaries.