​Tackling takedowns: On the government and online censorship

The Union government’s enthusiastic misuse of its spurious powers to censor lawful speech online is an alarming and exponentially growing threat to India’s democracy. With amendments to the IT Rules, 2021 — which are themselves on shaky constitutional ground — the government has successfully pressured Meta and X to take down content within three-hour timelines that leave little time to push back, lest they lose “safe harbour” protections and be dragged into court or, worse, have their employees face personal criminal liability. Under the cover of fighting AI-generated content, all speech is being subjected to a despotic regime where the state can silence speech at will, destroying the promise of the Internet, which has emerged as an important alternative voice to express everyday concerns. Visceral, hard-hitting expressions of independent voices are an integral part of a society led by free ideals and representative democracy. Weaponising Sections 69A and 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000 to take down such content, and accounts wholesale, distorts the public conversation in a way that benefits the ruling party, with scant regard for the freedoms of audiences and the livelihoods of creators. Often, entire accounts of the Opposition are deleted. Since this infrastructure of censorship has been built brick by brick without any moral compunctions on the path down which they lead, takedowns of independent media outlets and critical commentators have grown. Some have been reversed, at the cost of revealing their identity. The government continues to enjoy these powers under a veil of secrecy, publishing no meaningful data on how its hold on online discourse has tightened.

By opening up the so-called Sahyog portal to police officials around the country, requests under Section 79(3)(b) have been supercharged as a censorial rubber stamp that the IT Act simply does not give them. The clear Supreme Court precedent outlining what “actual knowledge” of illegality online constitutes for takedown orders has been reduced to a mockery. The Karnataka High Court has even brushed aside binding Court precedent under Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, even as the government has not dared to formalise the powers that it is exercising by passing a law in Parliament. Social media platforms have failed miserably in acting as a check in this ongoing rampage for power over online speech and have instead chosen the peace of mind that comes with automatically processing takedown notices. X continues to resist the Sahyog portal, but faces pressure from proceedings in the Karnataka and Delhi High Courts. The political elite must ponder the consequences of its campaign against online speech. Opposition-ruled States have quickly leapt to leverage the Sahyog portal’s powers. A future government run by today’s Opposition will likely play by the same sordid rules.