India will set up one or more grievance committees with the veto power to oversee content moderation decisions of social media firms. Within three months the Grievance Appellate Committee will be created.
The Grievance Appellate Committee, which will comprise a chairperson and two whole time members, was added to the new IT law last year. Last year, social media firms appointed grievance and other officers in India to hear feedback and complaints from their users.
The Grievance Appellate Committee will be able to reverse the social media firm's decision. The 30 day period from the date of receipt of communication from the grievance officer is when individuals will be able to file their appeal. The committees will have to deal with the appeal quickly and bring the resolution within 30 days.
New Delhi said that every order passed by the Grievance Appellate Committee would be complied with and a report would be uploaded on its website.
The IT law has been amended to require social media firms to address user complaints within 15 days. The complaint should be resolved within 72 hours if the request is for content removal.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S.-India Business Council raised concerns about the independence of the panels. The firms represent some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Tension has arisen between the Indian government and social media firms over the content and accounts they keep or remove. Last year, the Indian government disapproved of some of the things that were said on the social networking site.
In May last year, Sambit Patra, the spokesman for the ruling party of India, was labeled a manipulated media by the social networking site. A special squad of Delhi police that investigates terrorism and other crimes made a surprise visit to two of Twitter's offices in the country to seek information.
At the time, the company said it was concerned about recent events in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people it serves.
Lawyers for Musk raised concerns about the lawsuit against the Indian government, which they said puts the company's third- largest market at risk.
The minister of state for electronics and information technology in India, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, told the news agency that the government expects the Musk-owned social networking site to comply with the country's IT rules.
Regardless of who owns the platforms, our rules and laws are the same as always. He told the outlet that the expectation of compliance with Indian laws is still there.
The Internet Freedom Foundation said Friday that the Grievance Appellate Committee is a government body that hears appeals against the decisions of social media platforms to remove content or not.
The government will be able to also decide what content must be displayed by platforms since platforms will be incentivised to remove/Suppress any speech unpalatable to the government.
Jagmeet Singh made a contribution.
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