Appellate committees that are to be appointed by the Centre to handle users’ appeals against online intermediaries’ grievance redressal could deal with a number of issues including content moderation, deplatforming and data protection, The Indian Express has learnt. The government is planning to create three such committees.
In October, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) had notified amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021 where it said that the government will appoint one or more grievance appellate committees (GACs). The committees are being formed to offer users an avenue to appeal decisions taken by the grievance officer of online intermediaries.
So far, the common understanding was that the government-appointed grievance appellate committees will only look after user complaints raised around issues of content moderation and deplatforming. However, the remit of these committees could go far beyond that understanding. “There will be no restriction on the type of grievance appeals that the GAC can take up. It can be about a number of disputes between a consumer and an internet intermediary including issues like content moderation, deplatforming, and even data protection,” a senior government official said.
“The government is working on the design of these committees currently in order to empower them to be able to deal with a varied range of user appeals. So far, the consensus is that there will be three such committees.”
Under the amended IT Rules, each GAC is slated to have a chairperson and two whole time members appointed by the Centre, one of which will be a government official and two “independent members”. GACs can seek assistance from people who may have adequate expertise and experience in a subject matter while dealing with users’ appeals.
The GACs will adopt an “online dispute resolution mechanism” where the entire appeal process, from its filing to the final decision, will be done online. Intermediaries such as social media companies and e-commerce platforms will also have to compile every order passed by the GAC and report them on their respective websites.
Any person aggrieved by a decision of the grievance officer of a social media intermediary will be allowed to file an appeal to the GAC within thirty days. The GAC is expected to deal with the appeal and resolve it within a month.
The appointment of such committees by the Centre has drawn the ire of civil society activists. Delhi-based digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation, in a submission to MeitY in July, had said that the provision could “make the Central Government (rather than an independent judicial or a regulatory body) the arbiter of permissible speech on the internet. It would incentivise social media platforms to suppress any speech that may not be palatable to the government, public officials or those who can exert political pressure”.