Twitter files petition for judicial review of Indian orders on takedown

On June 27, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a notice to the Chief Compliance Officer of Twitter Inc, giving the company 'one last opportunity'

Twitter has filed a petition at the Karnataka High Court for a judicial review of the government telling the microblogging firm to take down content from its platform.

This comes even as the company has complied with the information technology ministry’s July notice on removing some content.

The details of the content could not be ascertained.

A Reuters report said Twitter argued in its request for a judicial review that some removal orders fell short of the procedural requirements of India’s IT Act, without specifying which ones Twitter wanted to be reviewed.

An email sent to Twitter on the petition did not elicit any response. Attempts made to connect with the IT ministry on the issue also failed.

At a press briefing, Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had noted that social media was important because of its reach.

“Social media accountability has become a valid question globally. It’s important to hold it accountable, which will first start with self-regulation, then industry regulation, followed by government regulation …,” said Vaishnaw.

“Whatever legal changes are required we will do. Within media groups, self-regulation is needed … self-regulation will be done … but wherever needed, we will take steps to make social media more accountable,” said Vaishnaw.

Globally, governments and society are moving in a direction that can hold social media platforms accountable, he added.

“While one area is accountability, the other is the need to look at how content producers should earn benefit from social media platforms, especially if the latter are benefiting from content,” he said.

The minister reiterated any company from any sector would have to abide by the laws of the country.

Twitter has been having run-ins with the government on the time taken to remove the content from its platform.

On June 27, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued notice to the chief compliance officer of Twitter Inc., giving the company “one last opportunity” to act on multiple content takedown notices by July 4. Failure to comply with those may lead to loss of immunity as an intermediary under the IT Act, 2000, the ministry said.  

In May the government had asked Twitter to take action on content related to Khalistan and Kashmir. According to media reports, the government had asked Twitter to remove 60 accounts and tweets of journalists, politicians, and supporters of farmer protests.

A ministry official had then told Business Standard Twitter had failed to act on those notices, issued under Section 69(A) of the IT Act. The social media company had also failed to act on non-compliance notices sent at other times, the official added. However, the details of the content remain unclear.

According to Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the government has the powers to give directions to block public access to any information under specific circumstances. It can order taking down digital information in the interests of the sovereignty, integrity, and defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order.

Meanwhile, the government has proposed setting up a grievance appellate committee to look into the appeals filed by individuals against the decisions taken by the grievance officers of the social media platform.

Meanwhile, Twitter, in its transparency report for the period April 22, 2022, to May 25, 2022, has said it received 1,583 grievances and action was taken against 1,621 URLs (uniform resource locators). For the same period, it received 115 grievances for Twitter account suspension.

The platform also suspended 46,526 accounts proactively. Of these, 43,656 were suspended for issues like child sexual exploitation and related matters, and 2,870 for espousing the cause of terrorism.

“It kind of indicates another low. The Twitter strategy has been to push back as much as they can by using the legal tools they have. It is more of a delaying tactic or in some cases it is trying to extract some concessions from the government. There is to a certain extent some leverage it has got with this strategy. We are talking about draft amendments to the Bill and the government has started a discussion as well. But you also see Twitter agreeing to some of the requests of the government. While it is complying in some cases it is pushing back too,” a lawyer said.

Twitter tussle

• IT ministry had asked Twitter to comply with content takedown orders by July 4

• Company argued some of the orders not in line with IT Act

• The microblogging site suspended 46,526 accounts

• Details about the specific content asked to be taken down remain unclear