Courtesy-TheGuardian
Twitter is likely to lose legal protection accorded to it under section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) act along with its status as a social media intermediary as mentioned by sources in the know of the development to The Indian Express.
According to a source close to the development said that it is believed by the government that the intermediary status is lost by whoever has not complied with the guidelines. Any penal action that is applicable under the Indian Penal Code shall apply to Twitter.
Any intermediary shall not be held legally or otherwise liable for any data, communication or third party link made available or hosted on its platform, according to section 79. Among significant social media intermediary, Twitter remained the only platform as of June 15 to not have appointed the required executives in those roles despite reminders from the government as mentioned by the sources.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was kept updated on the progress of appointments at each stage of the process as said by Twitter in response to an email query on the development. Details for the retained interim chief compliance officer shall be shared with the Ministry directly soon and every effort to comply with the new guidelines is continued by Twitter, as said by one of the spokespeople for the platform.
The microblogging platform Twitter has been reduced to the status of a publisher with its status as intermediary gone and therefore the rule which caps foreign investment in Media publishers at 26 per cent shall also be applied, according to a government official.