TwitterBanInIndia is trending in India, or at least was when this article began, as it refused to comply with the new Information Technology rules, and has lost its legal protection from being prosecuted over users’ posts. Without the legal protection mentioned above, Twitter could be sued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for any fake news leading it into excessive and spiraling legal hassles.
What happened with Twitter?
On Tuesday night, the first case against Twitter was filed in Uttar Pradesh over tweets on an assault on an elderly man in Loni. The Ghaziabad police said Twitter was attempting to incite communal trouble. The elderly man who was assaulted, identified as Sufi Abdul Samad, alleged that he was forced to chant “Vande Mataram” and “Jai Shri Ram” by a group that assaulted him and cut his beard. The Ghaziabad police said Samad is lying, and that it was not a communal incident as implied in the tweets by several users but the man was attacked by six men who were upset over amulets he had sold them.
Who have been accused?
The FIR filed against Twitter, along with journalists, fact-checkers and Congress leaders, alleged the tweets by the people accused had been broadcast on a large scale. The FIR is against the website The Wire, journalists Rana Ayyub, Mohammad Zubair, Saba Naqvi, Congress workers Dr. Shama Mohammed, Maskoor Usmani, Salman Nizami because they had shared the video. They have been accused of trying to create animosity between Hindus and Muslims and thereby attempting to destroy communal harmony. The social media platform has been accused of not removing the misleading content, a grainy, badly shot video clip where Samad is thrashed and his beard cut off by two young men, linked to the incident.
What new IT rules?
The Central government laid down new IT rules in February which came into effect from May 26. Under the new rules, they directed all major social media platforms operating in the country to appoint compliance officers in India, set up grievance response mechanisms, and take down content within 36 hours of a legal order.
According to the Centre, the new rules are designed to prevent abuse and misuse of platforms and offer users a robust forum for grievance redressal. The social media platforms, if they fail to comply with rules, would result in losing the intermediary status that provides them immunity from liabilities over any third-party data hosted by them.
In the first week of June, the Centre issued one last notice to Twitter over appointing India-based officers as per the country’s new rules for social media companies, failing which, the government said, it will face consequences as per the IT Act and other penal laws.
Strangely, the same trend was doing the rounds with Twitter users putting up their last messages in case Twitter ceased operations when the deadline approached in late May.