India to create committees with veto power over social media content moderation • TechCrunch

India will set up grievance committees with the veto power to reverse content moderation decisions of social media firms, it said today, moving ahead with a proposal that has rattled Meta, Google and Twitter. The panels, called Grievance Appellate Committee, will be created within three months, it said.

In an amendment to the nation’s new IT law that went into effect last year, the Indian government said any individual aggrieved by the social media’s appointed grievance officer may appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee, which will comprise a chairperson and two whole time members appointed by the government.

The Grievance Appellate Committee will have the power to reverse the social media firm’s decision, the government said.

“Every order passed by the Grievance Appellate Committee shall be complied with by the intermediary concerned and a report to that effect shall be uploaded on its website,” New Delhi said in a statement.

Shortly after India proposed creating such panels, the US-India Business Council (USIBC), part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), both raised concerns about the independence of such committees if the government controlled their formation. Both the firms represent tech giants including Google, Meta and Twitter.

The decision to form panels follows tension between the Indian government and social media firms Meta and Twitter over the content and accounts they keep or remove. Twitter received heat from New Delhi for not blocking some tweets last year that the Indian government had deemed objectionable.

Twitter labeled a tweet from Sambit Patra, the then spokesperson of India’s ruling party BJP, in May last year as “manipulated media.” Days later, a special squad of Delhi police that investigates terrorism and other crimes made a surprise visit to two of Twitter’s offices in the country to seek information about Twitter’s rationale to term Patra’s tweets as manipulated.

Twitter at the time said it was “concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve,” and this year moved to sue the Indian government to challenge some of the block orders on tweets and accounts.

(More to follow)