NEW DELHI: The I&B Ministry on Thursday put the social media giants, OTT platforms and news portals on notice with a 15-day ultimatum to provide details of compliance with the tighter IT Rules that came into effect from May 26.
This they will do so by displaying on their sites the internal grievance redressal mechanism with phone numbers of the responsible officials.
Making it clear that the new rules are applicable to all online news and digital media entities and OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, the ministry said these are to prevent abuse and misuse of the media by skipping government oversight.
The ministry's notice requires all platforms to follow additional due diligence as per the new rules, including appointment of chief compliance officer, nodal contact person and resident grievance officer, who are based in India. The regulations require removal of any content flagged by the authorities within 36 hours.
The regulations require the companies to publish a monthly compliance report detailing complaints received and action taken as also details of the contents removed proactively or on orders by the authorities.
As per data cited by the government, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 44.8 crore YouTube users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram users, while 1.75 crore account holders are on microblogging platform Twitter. All these users may lose the services of these US-based giants unless they comply with the new regulations.