Centre To Maintain Status Quo In Forming GAC To Handle Social Media Content Issues: Report

The centre is mulling over sticking to the idea of forming a grievance appellate committee (GAC) to oversee content issues on social media platforms.

Social media platforms that are planning to create self-regulatory bodies of intermediaries will have to follow the same mechanism as GAC, the Business Standard quoted a government official saying.

The official informed that MeitY had earlier reached out to social media intermediaries working abroad. After receiving their responses on the inclusiveness of the self-regulatory body, the centre has decided to go ahead with its plan of forming GAC.

“The self-regulatory organisation (SRO) can cover only a few companies working from outside India. After implementing the SRO model in India, a limited number of social media platforms can be covered,” the official said.

It has also been informed that SRO can only be set up if it co-exists with the GAC model or else, only GAC will be there to resolve grievances of social media users. 

Earlier in June, the ministry said that the GAC holds the potential of overruling the decisions of grievance officers.

As per the draft amendments to IT Rules 2021, GAC will work as an alternate redressal mechanism where social media users can reach out to the committee in case they are not satisfied with the decision of a social media platform’s grievance officer.

The latest development comes after MeitY formed a mechanism to quarterly audit the compliance of social media intermediaries under the IT Rules 2021.

By doing so, the MeitY would check if social media platforms are accurately reporting the grievances that are raised to them. Additionally, it will verify if the measures taken by grievance officers of these social media platforms are in accordance with the IT rules.

As per the IT Rules, social media intermediaries having a user base of over 5 Mn have to publish their monthly compliance reports. 

Last week, social media giants–Facebook, Instagram and Twitter published their compliance reports for the month of June.

As per Meta’s compliance report, the social media giant took action against 22.8 Mn content pieces on its platforms–Facebook and Instagram in the month of June. 

On the other hand, Twitter’s compliance report states that the microblogging platform received 724 complaints in the country. Of this, it took action against 122 content pieces. Meanwhile, it also banned 43,140 accounts in the country for promoting terrorism, nudity, child sexual exploitation and other allied content.