Social media giant Facebook on Tuesday said it will publish an interim report on July 2 as mandated by the IT rules and provide information on the number of messages or posts it has removed between May 15 and June 15.
A final report will be published on July 15, which will contain details of user complaints received and action taken by the US firm.
“The report on July 15 will also contain data related to WhatsApp, which is currently being validated,” a spokesperson of Facebook said.
Last month, the Union ministry of electronics and information technology wrote to all significant social media intermediaries (SSMIs) with registered users in India requesting details of compliance under the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code), Rules, 2021.
The new IT rules are designed to prevent misuse of digital platforms and provide registered users of these social media platforms with a robust grievance redressal option. Under these rules, social media companies will have to take down flagged content within 36 hours, and remove within 24 hours content that is flagged for nudity and pornography.
The rules also require intermediaries to publish compliance reports every month mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken, links and information removed or disabled access through proactive monitoring.
SSMIs, classified as those with over 50 lakh registered users in India, are also required to appoint a chief compliance officer, a nodal officer and a grievance officer and these officials are required to be residents of India.
The government had said in February that there are 41 crore Facebook users in India. WhatsApp and Instagram have 53 crore and 21 crore users, respectively. There are 44.8 crore YouTube users, while 1.75 crore users access Twitter in India.
Panel notice to Twitter
A parliamentary panel on Tuesday asked Twitter to explain within 48 hours why it had blocked access of Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor to their accounts, sources said.
The missive from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology, headed by Tharoor, came amid a continuous tussle between the microblogging platform and the Centre over various issues, including new IT rules.
