What all you need to know about the new rules & guidelines setup by Ministry of Electronics & IT for Social Media/Digital Platforms.

In order to curb the unlawful or unethical use of social media and to regulate the functioning of social media. Government of India enacted the new “The Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021”. The new guidelines will definitely help the Government in minimising the cases of spreading fake news, pornography, defamation & impersonation cases and obscenity. In the eyes of one section of society, guidelines appears to be violating the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech. Amid all this the social media platform giants are asked to have a proper grievance redressal systems that will help the common man to raise their concern with competent authorities. Digital platform is not just Facebook or twitter it is more than that. It covers social media sites, blogs, microblogging, Vblogs and WIKIs. Following rules is being setup for regulation

1. Privacy policy or user agreement of the digital platform will inform the user and restrict the hosting of the content that belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right, content showing bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, libellous, racially or ethnically objectionable, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise inconsistent with or contrary to the laws in force, harmful to child, infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights, misleading information, impersonation, content that threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, content contains software virus or any other computer code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource.
2. Any such information should be removed by the digital platform within 36 hours of receipt of order from Government or the Court.
3. Such content needs to be preserved for the period of 180 days for further investigation.
4. Within 72 hours the platform needs to provide information to government agency for the purposes of identity verification, prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution, or offences under any law for the time being in force, or for cyber security incidents.
5. Any Cyber security incident need to be shared Cert-In.
6. Platforms needs to setup grievance redressal mechanism and appoint the Grievance Officer. Complaints needs to be acknowledged within 24 hours and resolved within 15 days. Prima facie unlawful content needs to be put down.
7. Appointment of Chief Compliance Officers, will be responsible for compliance of rules and acts.
8. Sharing the details of first originator of the content with the agencies against the order issued.

Sharing the details of the first originator is breaking the end to end encryption security feature that builds the trust among the user in terms of their privacy. It is matter of debate that new rules and guidelines are violating the right to privacy and freedom of speech.

DISCLAIMER: All views are as per my understanding of the rules and guidelines, do not necessarily reflect the original rules and guidelines.