After Facebook and Google, Twitter has finally decided to comply with new internet rules of Indian government and has made three new appointments for this. According to a lawyer representing the Federal government, Twitter has appointed a permanent employee to serve as the chief compliance officer and as a grievance officer, and another to serve as a nodal officer. These three appointments were required to be filled as per the new internet rules that were announced in the country in February. The social media platform announced that that the appointments were made earlier this month.
Google and Facebook have been complying with these internet rules since May this year while Twitter was dealing with a tough Face-off with the Indian Government till now. In June this year, the government warned Twitter of “unintended consequences” if it failed to comply with the new rules and then in July the government said that the platform had “lost its legal immunity for users’ posts” due to non-compliance. Later in July, Delhi High Court “took issue” with Twitter’s attempt to fill in two of the three legally required positions through a third-party contractor.
The Indian government was unhappy with Twitter’s moderation policies where police has raided Twitter’s offices when the company labelled a government official’s tweet as “manipulated media”. Now Twitter has suspended more than 500 accounts and has also reduced the visibility of some hashtags which had links to the ongoing Farmers protest.
