Twitter has finally responded to India's new IT rules and said it would strive to comply with applicable law in India. Twitter said that the Tech that it is particularly concerned about the requirement to make an individual (the compliance officer) criminally liable for content on the platform, the requirements for proactive monitoring, and the blanket authority to seek information about our customers.

Twitter goes on to add that this represents dangerous overreach that is inconsistent with open, democratic principles."Twitter is deeply committed to the people of India. Our service has proven vital for the public conversation and a source of support for people during the pandemic. To keep our service available, we will strive to comply with applicable law in India. But, just as we do around the world, we will continue to be strictly guided by principles of transparency, a commitment to empowering every voice on the service, and protecting freedom of expression and privacy under the rule of law," a Twitter spokesperson said. Twitter has also urged the Ministry of Electronics and IT to publish these Standard Operating Protocols on procedural aspects of compliance for public consultation.

The company also requested an extension in order for Twitter to implement the rules. Twitter India requested the Ministry to consider a minimum of three months extension for Twitter to implement the Rules.

The company added that it continues to accept grievances from users and law enforcement via its existing grievance redressal channel available here under the new Rules. The company also expressed how it feels about recent events in India where it was served notice."Right now, we are concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve. We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules," a Twitter spokesperson said.

"We plan to advocate for changes to elements of these regulations that inhibit free, open public conversation. We will continue our constructive dialogue with the Indian Government and believe it is critical to adopt a collaborative approach. It is the collective responsibility of elected officials, industry, and civil society to safeguard the interests of the public," the spokesperson added.

According to Twitter, the escalated content constitutes legitimate free speech. Yet, due to the law’s limited scope under Section 69A, which gives limited room to an intermediary to defend the content, it was compelled to withhold in response to a non-compliance notice. Not doing so poses penal consequences with many risks for Twitter employees, adds the company.

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A report in AP states that for the first time, Twitter has flagged some of President Donald Trump’s tweets with a fact-check warning.

On Tuesday, Twitter added a warning phrase to two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mailboxes will be robbed,” among other things. Under the tweets, there is now a link reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” that guides users to a Twitter “moments” page with fact checks and news stories about Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.

Until now, the president has simply blown past Twitter’s half-hearted attempts to enforce rules intended to promote civility and “healthy” conversation on its most prominent user. Trump frequently amplifies misinformation, spreads abuse and uses his pulpit to personally attack private citizens and public figures alike — all forbidden under Twitter’s official rules.

In a statement, Twitter said Trump’s vote-by-mail tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”

Trump has never previously faced Twitter sanctions on his account. The husband of a woman who died by accident two decades ago in an office of then-GOP Rep. Joe Scarborough recently demanded that Twitter remove the president’s baseless tweets suggesting that Scarborough, now a fierce Trump critic, killed her. Twitter issued a statement expressing its regret to the husband but so far has taken no action on those tweets.

Over the weekend, the president issued several tweets calling into question the legality of mail-in-ballots. The storm of tweets followed Facebook and Twitter posts from Trump last week that wrongly claimed Michigan’s secretary of state mailed ballots to 7.7 million registered voters. Trump later deleted the tweet and posted an edited version that still threatened to hold up federal funds.

Twitter policy forbids sharing “false or misleading information intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in an election or other civic process.” While it has previously flagged tweets conveying misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, it has never before put warnings on tweets for any other reason.

Trump replied on Twitter, accusing the platform of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and insisting that “as president, I will not allow this to happen.” His 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said Twitter’s “clear political bias” had led the campaign to pull “all our advertising from Twitter months ago.” Twitter has banned all political advertising since last November.

Trump’s Scarborough tweets offer another example of the president using Twitter to spread misinformation — in this case, about an accidental death that Trump persists in linking to the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show.

“My request is simple: Please delete these tweets,” Timothy J. Klausutis wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week.

The body of Lori Kaye Klausutis, 28, was found in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach, Florida, congressional office on July 20, 2001. Trump has repeatedly tried to implicate Scarborough in the death even though Scarborough was in Washington, not Florida, at the time.

There is no mystery to the death of Lori Klausutis. Medical officials ruled that the aide, who had a heart condition and told friends hours earlier that she wasn’t feeling well, had fainted and hit her head. Foul play was not suspected.

Klausutis wrote in his letter that he has struggled to move on with his life due to the ongoing “bile and misinformation” spread about his wife on the platform, most recently by Trump. His wife continues to be the subject of conspiracy theories 20 years after her death.

Klausutis called his wife’s death “the single most painful thing that I have ever had to deal with” and said he feels a marital obligation to protect her memory amid “a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died.”

Trump’s tweets violate Twitter’s community rules and terms of service, he said. “An ordinary user like me would be banished,” he wrote.

At Tuesday’s White House briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly refused to say why Trump was pressing the unfounded allegations or whether he would stop tweeting about them. Instead, she focused on remarks that Scarborough made about the case that she said were inappropriate and flippant.

Dorsey did not reply directly to Klausutis’ letter and has not taken any action on the president’s tweets. In a statement, Twitter said it was “deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family.”

Scarborough has urged the president to stop his baseless attacks.

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A report in AP states that Twitter has added a warning to one of President Donald Trump’s tweets about protests in Minneapolis, saying it violated the platform’s rules about “glorifying violence.”

Trump, a prolific Twitter user, has been at war with the company since earlier this week when it for the first time applied fact checks to two of his tweets. Those were about mail-in ballots. 

The third tweet to be flagged came amid days of violent protests over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer kneeled on his neck.

“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen,” Trump tweeted about the protesters. “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

Twitter did not remove the tweet, saying it had determined it might be in the public interest to have it remain accessible. It does that only for tweets by elected and government officials. But the tweet was hidden so that a user looking at Trump’s timeline would have to click on the warning to see the original tweet. 

The earlier tweets that Twitter flagged were not hidden but did come with an option to “get the facts about mail-in ballots,” a link that led to fact checks and news stories by media organizations. Those tweets called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mailboxes will be robbed,” among other things.

Twitter’s decision to flag Trump’s tweets came as the president continued to use the platform to push a debunked conspiracy theory accusing MSNBC host and former congressman Joe Scarborough of killing a staffer in his Florida congressional office in 2001. Medical officials determined the staffer had an undiagnosed heart condition, passed out and hit her head as she fell. Scarborough, who was in Washington, not Florida, at the time, has urged the president to stop his baseless attacks. The staffer’s husband also recently demanded that Twitter remove the tweets. The company issued a statement expressing its regret to the husband but so far has taken no other action.

On Thursday, Trump targeted Twitter and other social media companies by signing an executive order challenging the laws that generally protect them from liability for material users post on their platforms.

The order directs executive branch agencies to ask independent rule-making agencies including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to study whether they can place new regulations on the companies, though experts express doubts much can be done without an act of Congress.

The president and fellow conservatives have claimed for years that Silicon Valley tech companies are biased against them. But there is no evidence for this, and while the executives and many employees of Twitter, Facebook, and Google may lean liberal, the companies have stressed they have no business interest in favouring one political party over the other.

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Three months ago, in response to a Twitter dare, the Central Government quickly issued a new set of IT rules.

These rules are broad, granting the government enormous power over any company dealing in information and content within India. Almost all internet companies, whether social media networks, messaging services, news organizations, or streaming services like Netflix, must comply with the new rules. The deadline for doing so, that is, complying with the new rules, is tonight. In other words, one more day means a major headache for companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

But first, the big question: Will Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp be banned in India starting tomorrow, May 26? It's unlikely.

However, if they do not follow the new rules, they will always face significant government action.

To understand everything, let's take a quick look at what the government is requesting.

The government is attempting to impose a number of new conditions and regulatory requirements on social media companies. However, a few noteworthy examples are:

1- Big tech companies, dubbed "significant social media" by the government, must have a chief compliance officer in India who can respond to government demands and needs whenever they arise. For example, if the government requests data from Twitter about User A and the request is legally valid, this compliance officer will be in charge of gathering this information.

2- The tech companies have also been asked to hire a nodal officer who will coordinate with law enforcement agencies 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whenever the government requires it.

3- The social media companies have been asked to hire a grievance redressal officer, to whom social media users can direct their grievances if they have any.

4- Finally, companies such as WhatsApp have been asked to ensure that messages can be traced back to the original sender. This effectively means breaking or circumventing message end-to-end encryption. For a service like WhatsApp, complying with such a request is extremely difficult, if not outright impossible.

There are additional rules, but the majority of them involve technological and policy changes that tech companies have been instructed to implement. The four requirements listed above, however, are more important.

So the big question is, what happens next? Will Netflix be prohibited in India? Will the government request that WhatsApp leave the country and block the app in India? Will Twitter face legal repercussions?

Most major technology companies have yet to comply with the new It rules. Netflix, on the other hand, has done it. Other streaming services have followed suit. According to Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, “we aim to comply with the provisions of the IT rules and continue to discuss a few of the issues that require more engagement with the government.”

But what if they refuse or are unable to comply? The government hasn't said much, other than a vague statement in its rules. It reads as follows:

“Where an intermediary fails to comply with these rules, the provisions of sub-section (1) of Section 79 of the Act shall not apply to such intermediary, and such intermediary shall be liable for punishment under any law in force at the time, including the provisions of the Act and the Indian Penal Code.”

But what if they refuse or are unable to comply? The government hasn't said much, other than a vague statement in its rules. It reads as follows:

“Where an intermediary fails to comply with these rules, the provisions of sub-section (1) of Section 79 of the Act shall not apply to such intermediary, and such intermediary shall be liable for punishment under any law in force at the time, including the provisions of the Act and the Indian Penal Code.”

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