Government-Appointed Grievance Appellate Committee to Decide Complaints Against Contents on Social Media

The Union Government has notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2022, to provide for the Grievance Appellate Committee, which will decide the appeal against the decision of the grievance officers of the intermediaries, that is, social media platforms. The 2022 Rules are in addition to the 2021 IT Rules.

The Rules state that the Union Government will form the Grievance Appellate Committee within three months of the 2022 Rules coming into force. Each Grievance Appellate Committee will comprise a chairperson and two whole-time members appointed by the Union Government, of which one will be a member ex-officio and two will be independent members.

The Rules state that any person aggrieved by a decision of the Grievance Officer may prefer an appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee within a period of thirty days from the date of receipt of communication from the Grievance Officer, and thereupon the Grievance Appellate Committee will deal with such appeal expeditiously and shall make an endeavour to resolve the appeal finally within 30 calendar days from the date of receipt of the appeal.

The Rules mandate that the order passed by the Grievance Appellate Committee shall be complied with by the intermediary concerned and a report to that effect shall be uploaded on its website.

In addition, the Rules mandate intermediaries to take all reasonable measures to ensure accessibility of their services to users along with a reasonable expectation of due diligence, privacy and transparency besides respecting all the rights accorded to the citizens under Articles 14, 19 and 21the Constitution.

The Rules also require intermediaries to prominently publish on their website, mobile-based application or both, as the case may be, the rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement in English or any language specified in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution for access or usage of its computer resource by any person in the language of his choice and ensure compliance of the same.

Besides, the Rules mandate intermediaries to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that its user do not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that,—

(i)  belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right;

(ii)  is obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another‟s privacy including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the 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;

(iii)  is harmful to child;

(iv)  infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;

(v)  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;

(vi)  impersonates another person;

(vii)  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;

(viii)  contains software virus or any other computer code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource;

(ix)  violates any law for the time being in force;”

Any complaint received by intermediaries is required to be acknowledged by them within 24 hours and resolved within a period of 15 days from the date of its receipt, the Rules state.

However, the complaint in the nature of request for removal of information or communication link shall be removed within 72 hours, if they are related to:

• obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another‟s privacy including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the 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;
• is harmful to child;
• 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;
• impersonates another person;
• 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;
• contains software virus or any other computer code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource.

In February 2021, the Union Government had notified The new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 to bring OTT, a digital news and social media platform under regulation. Social media has been described as content “intermediaries” that have been identified in the guidelines on two levels, firstly, ‘intermediary’ and ‘significant social media intermediary’ with a large number of users.

The Government has fixed fifty lakh registered users as the threshold for defining ‘significant social media intermediary’, which will have to adhere to new IT rules that seek to crack down on misuse of social media platforms.

In August 2021, the Bombay High Court stayed clauses 9(1) and 9(3) of the “Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021”  under which publishers are required to observe and adhere to the Code of Ethics and a three-tier grievance redressal mechanism is to be constituted for complainants.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni found these two rules, prima facie, violative of the freedom of speech and expression and beyond the rule-making power of the Executive under the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Click here to read the 2022 Rules.