Making every effort to comply with new digital rules: Twitter to government

NEW DELHI: Twitter India on Wednesday told the Centre that it is making every effort to comply with the new digital rules which came into force last month.
"We want to reiterate that Twitter is making every effort to comply with the new guidelines. Twitter has been, and remains, committed to serving the people of India by providing a platform to serve the public conversation in India, especially during critical moments and emergency situations such as those we have seen globally in recent months," the microblogging platform said in a statement.
The statement comes amid a protracted row between the Centre and the US-based giant over the compliance with the new digital rules. The government had asked Twitter that it must comply with the laws of the land.
Twitter said the guidelines were notified on February 25 and the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic made it more difficult to comply with the guidelines, which includes hiring of a resident grievance officer to deal with complaints regarding tweets on its platform.
"Similar to other significant social media intermediaries (SSMls) operating in India, in order to comply with the underlying intention behind the Guidelines, we have appointed a Nodal Contact Person (NCP) and a Resident Grievance Officer (AGO) on a contractual basis while we recruit to fill the positions on a permanent basis," it said.
It said its in advance stages of finalising the appointment of a chief compliance officer.
"We plan to provide additional details to you in the next several days, and at the latest within a week," Twitter told the government.
The Union ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) had said that it had given Twitter one last notice to comply with the new rules concerning social media companies.
The new IT rules for social media companies that came into effect last month mandate large platforms like Facebook and Twitter to undertake greater due diligence and make these digital platforms more accountable and responsible for the content hosted by them.
The rules also require significant social media intermediaries — providing services primarily in the nature of messaging — to enable identification of the "first originator" of the information that undermines the sovereignty of India, the security of the state, or public order.
Under the rules, significant social media intermediaries — those with over 50 lakh users — are required to appoint a grievance officer, a nodal officer and a chief compliance officer. These personnel have to be residents in India.
Further, social media companies will have to take down flagged content within 36 hours, and remove within 24 hours content that is flagged for issues such as nudity and pornography.
(With inputs from PTI)