Viewed as yet another frontal attack on social media to check free flow of information or freedom of the press or free speech by the current fascist union government, the objective behind setting up of the committees, as claimed by the government, is ostensibly to give social media platforms that include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc. recourse, other than approaching the courts, to settle complaints. The draft Rules were first floated in June 2022 for public consultations. Activists, experts and media professionals view the government move to censor social media and control it by overruling self regulated control mechanism of the social media.

Final Rules prescribes shorter timelines of 24 hours for acting on sensitive content along with instructing intermediaries to respect all the rights accorded to the citizens under the Constitution including in the Articles 14 (equality), 19 (freedom including freedom of speech and freedom of press) and 21 (liberty, privacy and life). There is also some relief for platforms on conducting ‘due diligence’ on user generated content. Provisions contained in the amended Rules, provide for a three-person Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) consisting of a chairperson and two whole-time members, one ex-officio and two as independent members.

Under the amended Rules, any person aggrieved by a decision of the grievance officer of an intermediary can, within a period of 30 days, appeal against the decision. When the initial draft Rules were floated, it was assumed that the IT Ministry had decided to go ahead with its contentious provisions to appoint multiple GACs despite IT industry lobbying a self-regulatory body. Government is of the view that the platforms do not act on user grievances in a timely manner, according to IT experts.

Companies had opposed the setting up of government backed GACs, questioning the independence of such forums and citing concerns over freedom of speech. The government had been asking the IT majors to come up with a self-regulatory model. But a lack of consensus among key platforms on a framework scuttled that effort.

As proposed, the GACs will endeavor to resolve appeals within 30 days. Further, the GACs have been given the liberty to seek assistance from any person or persons with requisite qualifications, experience and expertise in the subject. In the final changes, the Ministry of IT has said that social media intermediaries shall make reasonable efforts to inform their users that they cannot host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that is obscene, pornographic, pedophilic, invades others’ privacy or violates some other laws, among others, of the country. This stance of the government deviates from the earlier one where the onus of informing the users lay squarely with the social media intermediaries.

This forms design of the fascist union government to control thought processes of the people through control mechanisms of social media. As in Hitler’s governance model, India is currently facing free flow of information, critical appraisal/scrutiny of the government and for that matter critical thinking of the people and their ability to sift chaff from the grain, throttled and fully controlled. This act of the government is viewed as the last nail in the coffin of the free speech and freedom of the press following gag orders imposed by various coercive actions to control diverse media comprising print, electronic (TV, audio-visual, web based news/current affairs portal). This is also over the covert pressures on the industrialist owners of major media houses to fall in line or else, with little exception of few individual news papers and select few audacious media professionals of repute who have staked their neck on the gallows to bring home truth to the people. They are the real conscience keepers of the nation!