New Delhi: US micro-blogging site Twitter has sought a legal review of multiple notices issued to it by the Indian government to take down content.
A lawyer and Information Technology (IT) Ministry official — aware of the development — confirmed that Twitter has filed a petition challenging the takedown requests in the Karnataka High Court.
ThePrint has asked Twitter to respond to the petition that seeks to overturn the government’s requests. The copy will be updated once we receive a reply.
A government official, however, said the IT ministry was yet to receive a copy of the petition.
In June and July alone, Twitter shared at least 13 takedown notices with the Lumen database – which is a repository of takedown notices hosted by Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Internet companies and social media firms voluntarily share such notices so that researchers and journalists can access them via Lumen.
Twitter’s challenge comes at a time when the government has threatened it with legal action in case of non-compliance.
On 27 June, the government issued a notice to Twitter to comply with all its past orders by 4 July, failing which the social media site would lose intermediary status, which means it would be liable for all comments posted on its platform.
In its filing, Twitter said some of the content takedown orders had not even given notice to the users who posted the content, Reuters reported.
Reuters added that some content the government had asked to be blocked was “related to political content posted by official handles of political parties, the blocking of which amount to violation of freedom of speech”.
The Reuters report also said: “Twitter argues in its request for a judicial review that some removal orders fell short of the procedural requirements of India’s IT act, without specifying which ones Twitter wanted to be reviewed.”
“The IT act allows the government to block public access to content in the interest of national security, among other reasons.”
Twitter has faced constant pressure from the government to block content.
On 26 June, Twitter shared with Lumen that it had received 24 notices for 80 “offensive” tweets.
Twitter has been asked to remove content, including posts that are alleged to have spread misinformation about farmer protests and over tweets critical of the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For example, as the Covid second wave raged last year and the government tried to curb misinformation, the social media site had to block tweets from politicians like Congress’ Pawan Khera, MP Revanth Reddy and Bengal minister Moloy Ghatak.
Meanwhile, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Tuesday that social media accountability has become a valid question globally. “It is important to hold it accountable, which will first start with self-regulation, then industry regulation, followed by government regulation,” he said.
The minister added: “Be it any company, in any sector, they should abide by the laws of India. It is the responsibility of everyone to abide by the laws passed by Parliament.”
Vaishnaw also said “an ecosystem, a thought process that social media should be held accountable, is spreading in our country as well as globally… rapid work is underway on how to make it accountable.”
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