New Delhi: Twitter has appointed Vinay Prakash as India’s Resident Grievance Officer for India amid tensions with the government. A few days back, the company had appointed a Chief Compliance Officer. Apart from this, Twitter has also published the first India Transparency Report under the new IT rules. This information has been placed on the website of the company.
Twitter has been in constant controversy for failing to comply with the new Information Technology (IT) rules in India. Under the new IT rules, social media companies with more than 50 lakh users are required to make three key appointments….Chief Compliance Officer, Nodal Officer, and Grievance Officer. These three officers must be residents of India.
According to the information posted on Twitter’s website, Vinay Prakash is the Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) of the company. Users can contact them through the website given on the page. It further states that Twitter can be contacted at….4th Floor, The Estate, 121 Dickson Road, Bangalore-560042. Prakash has been named along with Jeremy Kessel, the company’s global legal policy director. Kessel is a US resident.
Earlier, Twitter had appointed Dharmendra Chatur as its Interim Resident Grievance Officer for India under IT regulations. Chatur resigned from his post a few weeks later. California-based Jeremy Kessel was made India’s Grievance Redressal Officer. But this appointment did not meet the requirements of the IT regulations. Among these, the Grievance Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and Nodal Officer should be residents in India under the rules.
Twitter has also published its first compliance report. In its India Transparency Report: User Complaints and Forward Monitoring, July 2021 report, Twitter said it had received 94 complaints. From May 26, 2021, to June 25, 2021, it has ‘action’ on 133 URLs.
Twitter said that 20 of the complaints received through the Complaints Officer-Indian channel were related to defamation, six to exploitation/abuse, and four to sensitive adult content. Apart from this, one complaint was also related to the infringement of intellectual property. In addition, the company also settled 56 complaints appealing for the suspension of Twitter accounts.
Twitter suspended 18,385 accounts under a separate category- ‘aware data-monitoring. These accounts were suspended for child abuse, pornography, and other similar content. 4,179 accounts were closed on charges of promoting terrorism.
Twitter has about 1.75 crore users in India. Twitter is having a dispute with the Indian government over the new social media rules. Twitter has lost its legal shield as an intermediary in India. Now she will be responsible for any kind of illegal content posted by the users.
Earlier on July 8, Twitter had informed the Delhi High Court that it has appointed an interim Chief Compliance Officer, who is a resident of India. Apart from this, the company had also committed to filling up regular posts in eight weeks under the new IT rules.
