The Indian government has said that 50 lakh (5,000,000) registered users in India is the threshold to be categorized as a significant social media intermediary under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

On February 25, while announcing the new norms for SM and OTT platforms, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) Ravi Shankar Prasad had said significant SM intermediaries would have additional levels of norms’ compliance.

The new rules, which were notified Thursday evening, state a significant social media intermediary shall, within three months from the date of notification of the threshold, observe additional due diligence while discharging its duties. Some of the additional yardsticks include the following, apart from others:

(a)  Appoint a Chief Compliance Officer responsible for ensuring compliance and shall be liable in any proceedings relating to any relevant third-party information, data or communication link.

(b)  Appoint a nodal contact person for 24×7 coordination with law enforcement agencies and officers to ensure compliance to their orders or requisitions made in accordance with the provisions of law or rules made thereunder.

(c)  Appoint a Resident Grievance Officer.

(d)  Publish periodic compliance report every month mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken thereon, and the number of specific communication links or parts of information that the intermediary has removed or disabled.

(e) Deploy technology-based measures, including automated tools or other mechanisms, to proactively identify information that depicts any act or simulation in any form depicting rape, child sexual abuse or conduct, whether explicit or implicit, or any information which is exactly identical in content to information that has previously been removed or access to which has been disabled on the computer resource of such intermediary.

(f) Enable users who register for their services from India, or use their services in India, to voluntarily verify their accounts by using any appropriate mechanism, including the active Indian mobile number of such users, and where any user voluntarily verifies their account, such user shall be provided with a demonstrable and visible mark of verification, which shall be visible to all users of the service.

(g) Inform publishers of news and current affairs content that in addition to the common terms of service for all users, such publishers shall furnish the details of their user accounts on the services of such intermediary to the government.