India told Twitter that it has one last chance to comply with the new IT rules. Or else they have to face unintended consequences according to an official letter.
The new rules that were announced in February that became effective are mostly aimed at regulating the contents on social media. This makes firms such as Facebook, its WhatsApp messenger and Twitter more accountable to legal requests. They also require big social media companies for setting up grievance redressal mechanisms. New executives to coordinate with law enforcement can also be appointed by this.
India’s technology ministry wrote to Twitter on May 26 and May 28 about the new rules. The company’s responses neither addressed the clarifications sought by the ministry nor indicated full compliance with the rules. This came to know by the letter from the technology ministry to Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker on June 5. That letter indicated that among other things, twitter had yet to inform the ministry about its chief compliance officer, and its grievance officer and nodal contact person were not employees as per the rules.
It also said that such non-compliance would lead to unintended consequences. That includes one of the possibilities that Twitter could be held accountable for contents posted on it, which is an exemption it currently largely enjoys. It also added that however, as gesture of goodwill, Twitter hereby is given one last notice to immediately comply with the rules.
The technology ministry didn’t give any comments regarding this. Twitter too declined to comment. Legal battles were spurred by the new IT rules. This includes a lawsuit filed by Facebook-owned WhatsApp that accuses the government of exceeding its legal powers by enacting rules that will force the messaging app to break end-to-end encryption.
