India starts regulating social media, OTT |
India on 25th February 2021 notified new guidelines for intermediaries in “soft touch oversight” rules, saying these were needed to hold social media and other companies accountable for “misuse and abuse”. These will require Big Tech platforms to set up stronger grievance redressal mechanisms, and appoint executives to coordinate with law enforcement in India. For social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc, the guidelines remove the “safe harbor” provided to these companies which limited their liability over content that users post on their platforms. These companies will now make them accountable if their platforms do not comply with due diligence norms. The rules also call for a three-tier regulation mechanism for over-the-top or OTT platforms like Netflix, YouTube, etc and require them to self-classify their content into five categories based on age suitability. The move comes amid a flurry of activity across geographies over the last 12 months to frame new regulations aimed at policing Big Tech, which may force some of the world`s most valuable companies to fundamentally recalibrate their business models in order to stay inline with these regulations. While all the rules have been framed and notified under the existing Information Technology (IT) Act, the administrative powers for the regulation of OTT and digital news sharing platforms shall be under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B). The new guidelines place more onus on all such companies which provide a platform to host, share, view, or modify the content, while also including for the first time, entities that are in the business of either creating or distributing news online under the ambit of an online intermediary. The rules for OTT platforms also follow a “soft-touch self-regulatory architecture” and call for online digital news disseminating agencies to self-categorize their content into one of the five age-based broad categories.
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