Twitter approaches Karnataka HC challenging Centre's orders to take down content

Microblogging platform Twitter has approached the Karnataka High Court to challenge some of the notices issued by the Indian government to take down content from its platform.

The government had recently issued a notice to Twitter to comply with all its past orders by July 4.

The platform has challenged the orders in the Karnataka HC, and as per reports it has alleged abuse of power by the officials.

According to Live Law, Twitter has approached Karnataka High Court to challenge some of the take down orders issued by the Government of India.

Twitter has been at loggerheads with the government on several occasions.

On June 26, the microblogging site submitted a list of over 80 Twitter accounts and tweets that it has blocked based on a request from the government in 2021.

The request from the government was to block multiple accounts and some tweets from the international advocacy group Freedom House, journalists, politicians and supporters of the farmers' protest.

Government sources, however, had said that there are several other orders, with which Twitter was yet to comply and the platform had been given a final deadline of July 4 for compliance.

The government had earlier issued a notice to Twitter stating that if it doesn’t comply with the past orders regarding content-monitoring and regulation by July 4, it might lose its intermediary status and then it could be held directly accountable for all that is posted on the platform.

These content take-down notices were sent to the micro-blogging platform under Section 69A of the IT Act, along with the non-compliance notices which were issued for not taking the content down from their platform.

According to the new Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code 2021 which was issued by MeitY, all intermediaries, including social media platforms must establish a grievance redressal mechanism for receiving and resolving complaints from the users or victims.

Recently, Twitter, in its India Transparency Report for the month of June, had also revealed that it had received over 1,500 complaints through its local grievance channels, out of which 115 grievances which appealed to account suspensions were resolved by the social media platform.

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