India Issues Notice to Social Media Firms for Child Sex Abuse Material Removal

New Delhi, Dec 8 (PTI) The government has issued notice to social media platforms including Telegram, YouTube and X to remove all child sex abuse material and groups circulating such content, Parliament was informed on Friday.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a written reply to Rajya Sabha said that the social media platforms have been informed that existing rules cast obligations on the intermediaries, including social media firms, to observe due diligence and if they fail to observe such due diligence, they shall no longer be exempt from their liability under law for third-party information hosted by them.

"The Government has issued notice to various social media intermediaries including Telegram, YouTube and X, to remove or disable access to all such CSAM and groups circulating such material which is violative of rule 3(1)(d) and rule 4(4) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021)," Chandrasekhar said.

He said social media platforms need to make reasonable efforts to cause the users not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share, information which is harmful to children, or obscene, or invasive of another's bodily privacy, or violates any law.

The minister said that the central government has also established three Grievance Appellate Committees (GACs) to enable users to appeal against the decisions taken by grievance officers of intermediaries on user complaints.