On the 15th of December, journalist Aarti Tikoo, a Kashmiri Pandit herself, took to Twitter to raise alarm about Islamic terrorists from Kashmir issuing death threats to her brother. Two days later, on the 17th of December, Twitter India, the social media giant, decided to “lock” Aarti Tikoo’s account. The notice that Aarti got said that she could “unlock” her account if she deleted the tweet about her brother getting threats.
Aarti Tikoo had tweeted, “My brother @TikooSahil_ who lives in Srinagar, is being openly threatened by jihadi terrorists sitting in Kashmir-India, and their handlers in Pakistan, UK and US. Is anyone watching? Are we sitting ducks waiting to be shot dead by Islamists or will you crackdown on them?”. Saying this, Tikoo had tagged the Home Minister Office’s handle on Twitter.
Twitter, for some odd reason, decided that this tweet raising alarm over her brother getting threats violated their community standards. In the notice that Tikoo got to delete the tweet, Twitter deemed this tweet as targeting a group of people, threatening them or harassing them.
In the notice, Twitter said, “You may not promote violence against, threaten or harass other people on the basis of race, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or serious disease”.
The notice further said that she had to delete her tweet, thereby acknowledging that her tweet violated Twitter rules.
When Twitter locks the account due to tweets that they believe violate their community standards, Twitter “locks” the account. This essentially restricts the users from Tweeting anything unless they delete the tweet in question, acknowledging that they violated Twitter rules. There is a provision to appeal the disputed tweet, but Twitter either hardly responds or responds upholding their division, no matter how inexplicable.
In this instant too, Aarti Tikoo seems to have tweeted nothing that would go against Community standards. In fact, she raised alarm about her brother getting death threats. Twitter perhaps locked her account deeming that the use of the word “Jihadi” or “Islamist” was against religion, religious affiliation, or community that Twitter wishes to protect. Here, Twitter seems to have deemed a tweet, raising alarm over death threats, hateful to the people who were issuing the threats.
IT guidelines issued by the central government, not being followed by Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms
In February 2020, The central government issued fresh guidelines for social media and OTT platforms. The government said that these guidelines were being introduced to “establish a soft touch progressive institutional mechanism with a level playing field featuring a Code of Ethics and a three-tier grievance redressal framework for news publishers and OTT platforms on the digital media”.
The guidelines that were issued by the central government had several provisions and code of ethics for the functioning of OTT platforms, Digital News websites and Social Media behemoths like Twitter, Facebook etc.
One of the most significant provisions of these guidelines is that if the social media platforms don’t comply with the provisions prescribed in the guidelines, this will attract penal provisions as per the Information Technology Act. The new guidelines say that the social media intermediaries must follow the due diligence mentioned in it, and if any intermediary does not follow the due diligence, the safe harbour provisions will not apply to them.
The section 79 of the Information Technology Act defines this safe harbour, which basically makes them not liable for any content posted by users on their platforms. It says that an intermediary shall not be liable for any third-party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by them, provided they themselves didn’t initiate such communication, and observes due diligence under the IT act.
Now, this due diligence to be observed by the social media companies have been defined in the new guidelines. It includes various measures they have to perform, like identifying the first originator of any information that appears on social media, not allowing content that is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, inciting violence, against national integrity, misleading, false etc. The platforms also have to remove any such content within 36 hours of receiving a court order or a government direction to remove such content.
According to the guidelines, if the social media sites allow such objectionable content to be hosted on their platforms, and don’t remove them even after receiving such orders from courts or the government, it will mean that they are not observing due diligence. As a consequence, they will lose the safe harbour in the IT Act that isolates them from content posted on their platforms.
This means, if the social media companies do not comply with the guidelines, they will be held responsible for any content which is not allowed as per the guidelines. And, the officials of the social media companies will be liable to be prosecuted for such content. This implies that the social media officials will also be punished according to the nature of the offence, which is defined in the IT Act for various kinds of offences. The punishment defined in the act includes imprisonment for three years for most offences, but life imprisonment for some like cyber terrorism, and also includes fines of various amounts.
Ideally, this instance would be perfect for Twitter’s safe harbour to be taken away given that they seem to have allowed threats to be hosted on their platform, but deem a Tweet raising alarm over the tweets “hateful”.
