Keypoints:
- This move comes in the view of new IT rules coming into force last week which require significant social media intermediaries.
- The ones with more than 50 lakh users need to appoint a grievance officer, a nodal officer and a chief compliance officer. These personells are required to be residents of India.
WhatsApp names Paresh B Lal as Grievance Officer for India on its website. This decision comes in the view of the new IT rules coming into force last week which require significant social media intermediaries.
According to the website of WhatsApp, users can contact Paresh B Lal who is the Grievance Officer. Users can contact him through post box in Banjara Hills in Hyderabad, Telangana. Earlier, sources of WhatsApp had said that it was updating the details of the new grievance officers appointed in order to replace the existing information on its platform.
According to the new social media rules, digital giants like Google has already started to reflect the appointment of grievance officers.
The ‘Contact Us’ page in Google shows details of Joe Grier as the contact person along with an address from Mountain View, US. Additionally, the page also includes details on the grievance redressal mechanism for YouTube.
According to the rules, all the intermediaries will have to prominently publish the name of the grievance officer and his/her contact details as well as the mechanism by which a user or a victim may make a complaint. This has to be done on their website, app or both.
Within 24 hours, the grievance officer will have to acknowledge the complaint and dispose such complaint within a 15-day period from the date of its receipt. They will have to receive and acknowledge any order,notice or direction issued by authorities.
In the new rules, social media companies will have the time of 36 hours to take down flagged content, and will have 24 hours to remove the content which is flagged for nudity, pornography,etc. Centre has said that new rules are made to prevent abuse and and misuse of social media platforms, and offer users a robust forum for grievance redressal.
Non compliance with these rules will result in the platforms losing their intermediary status which provides them immunity from liabilities over any third-party data hosted by them. In simple words, in case of complaints, they would be liable for criminal action. After the new norms coming into effect on May 26, IT ministry has turned up on significant social media companies and have asked them to immediately report compliance and provide details of the three key officials appointed.
The new IT rules also require significant social media intermediaries who have to prove services primarily in the ‘message’ nature in order to enable the identification of the “first originator” of the information which undermines sovereignty of India, security of the state, or public order.
Every month, these large platforms will have to publish periodic reports along with the details of complaints received and action taken. They also have to mention the number of specific communication links or parts of information that the intermediary has removed or disabled access to in pursuance of any proactive monitoring conducted by using automated tools or other reasons.
