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India slashes social media takedown timeline to three hours
India's government on Tuesday tightened the timeline for social media platforms to remove unlawful content, cutting it from 36 hours to just three hours after notification. The amended IT rules, effective February…
India's government on Tuesday tightened the timeline for social media platforms to remove unlawful content, cutting it from 36 hours to just three hours after notification. The amended IT rules, effective February 20, apply to Meta, YouTube, and X, and mark a significant escalation in the government's push to regulate online speech.
The revised rules also scaled back an earlier proposal that would have required platforms to visibly label AI-generated content across 10 per cent of its surface area, instead mandating that such content be "prominently labelled". The 2021 IT rules have already been a flashpoint between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government and global tech companies, drawing criticism from digital rights advocates.
Meta declined to comment on the changes, while X and Alphabet's Google did not respond to requests for comment.
Indian Opinion Analysis
The three-hour takedown rule brings India's compliance bar far below comparable democracies, where notice-and-takedown typically runs from 24 to 72 hours. Platforms must now have teams on call around the clock, raising operational costs that hit smaller rivals hardest. The Supreme Court has upheld the government's right to regulate intermediaries under Section 79 of the IT Act, but the timeline's feasibility for real-time verification has not been tested. The next flashpoint will likely come when a platform misses the window and the government invokes penal provisions under the IT Act or the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
The next flashpoint will likely come when a platform misses the three-hour window and the government invokes penal provisions.
Source: scmp.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
