The IT intermediary rules for social media platforms such as Twitter and Meta that were notified on Friday proposes an appellate mechanism to address grievances against content.

Under the amended rules, a social media company must ensure the content posted on its platform is not obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another’s privacy, hate speech, promoting illegal activities or threatening “the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India”.

The notification is being seen as the government’s attempt to reign in big tech firms such as Twitter, Meta and WhatsApp.

The platforms would be required to acknowledge complaints from users within 24 hours and resolve them within 15 days — or 72 hours in case of an information takedown request. Intermediaries are now required to at least once a year inform their users of these rules, regulations and privacy policy.

The Internet Freedom Foundation said: “The notified amendment rules cause injury to the digital rights of every Indian social media user. A Grievance Appellate Committee is essentially a censorship body that would hear appeals against the decisions of social media platforms to remove content or not, thus making bureaucrats arbiters of our online free speech.”

“This will incentivise platforms to remove/suppress any speech unpalatable to the government. Further, while non-transparent decision-making by social media platforms on decisions such as ‘deplatforming’ users is concerning, creating an appellate panel is not the right approach.”

Under the amended rules, which come into effect from Friday, a government panel would be formed to hear complaints from users about content moderation decisions of social media platforms.

“The government shall, by notification, establish one or more Grievance Appellate Committees within three months from the date of commencement of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2022,” stated the gazette notification.