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The Centre Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that the regulatory mechanism for social media companies is under consideration but the same will be prospective in nature and may not have any impact on the pending cases against user-related decisions of the platforms.
In response to an order asking the Centre to apprise it about any draft regulatory measures relating to social media platforms, a counsel representing the Centre submitted, “the amendment will take place at some point of time. We don’t really know (when) but the only difficulty is it will be prospective in nature so these cases perhaps will have been decided (as per existing regime)”.
A batch of petitions challenging the suspension of accounts by social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube are pending before the court. The platforms have questioned the maintainability of writ petitions against them.
On Centre’s submission that the proposed regulatory mechanism will be prospective in nature, Justice Yashwant Varma said it is for the court to interpret that aspect. The counsel representing the Centre submitted that the court can list the matter in a few weeks for hearing and in case the amendment comes in the meantime, that will be placed on record.
The court said that if the scope of the regulatory power that Centre proposes to invoke is known then it will know exactly the contours of its jurisdiction. “Before we render a judgement we also want to understand if there is any regulatory mechanism which they are proposing to implement, whether that will also have any impact on this batch of matters,” said Justice Varma.
The Centre submitted there is a change in the proposed amendments to the IT Rules that may have an impact on the case. Granting more time to the Centre to inform it about the proposed draft regulatory measures relating to social media platforms, the court listed the matter for hearing on December 19.
Centre in its reply to the case has earlier has said, “when a SSMI platform takes such a decision to suspend the whole or part of the user account ‘on its own account’ due to its policy violation, it should afford a reasonable opportunity to the user to defend his side, except in certain scenarios such as rape, sexually explciit material or child sexual abuse material (CSAM), bot activity or malware, terrorism related content etc”.
Centre in the reply filed in March also said that if a social media platform suspends an account without issuing notice, the user can invoke rule 7 of the IT Rules, 2021 and seek action by initiating appropriate proceedings as per law.
“SSMIs must be held accountable for subjugating and supplanting fundamental rights like the right to freedom of speech and expression, otherwise the same would have dire consequences for any democratic nation. It is humbly submitted that liberty and freedom of any individual cannot be waylaid or jettisoned in the slipstream of social and technological advancement,” it has argued.
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