Twitter publishes first compliance report, abides by new IT-rules

National

After months of to and fro, Twitter on Sunday appointed a local grievance Officer of India and published a ‘transparency report’ which is mandatory for all social media sites according to the new Information Technology (IT) laws of the country.

This move comes after the Delhi High Court on Thursday, 8 July, refused to allow any interim protection to the micro-blogging site and allowed the centre to act against any violation of the new IT rules. For the past several months, Twitter has been in a prolonged face-off with the Indian government over its new amendments in the IT rules. The company has been under immense criticism from the Centre over its alleged failure to comply with the new IT rules in India.

Twitter has now appointed Vinay Prakash as its Resident Grievance Officer for India and the announcement was made through the official website. The micro-blogging site has also produced its first compliance report, titled ‘India Transparency Report.’

The transparency report provided information on its proactive monitoring efforts for the period of May 26 to June 25 and the company said that it has removed 133 URLs over several content complaints, which includes abuse and harassment (36 URLs), defamation (87), impersonation (1), misinformation/synthetic or manipulative media (1) and privacy infringement (6). However, the company has yet not taken any action on complaints around ‘sensitive adult content.’

“In addition to the above data, we processed 56 grievances which were appealing Twitter account suspensions. These were all resolved, and the appropriate responses were sent. We overturned seven of the account suspensions based on the specifics of the situation, but the other accounts remain suspended,” it said, without giving specific details. The redressal report also said to have suspended 18,385 accounts for child sexual exploitation and 4,179 accounts for terrorism-related activities globally.

Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital ethics Code) rules 2021 was recently enforced in India which regulates the functioning of new media portals, publishers and OTT platforms. According to new IT rules, social media and streaming platforms will be required to take down disputable content and appoint grievance redressal officers based in the country to deal with online content picked out by authorities and courts and assist in the investigation.