Indian Cage Awaits the Wild Bird: Twitter Tales

Twitter is the first social media platform to lose its "intermediary" status under the new Indian IT law. It lost this status because of not appointing Indian statutory officers in time. Now, the question remains in the fact of how this situation would affect the common Indians. The answer to this question has two sides. On one side, to protect people from online abuse or harassment, appointing a local supervisor seems logical. On the other hand, the digital rights organizations are doubtful that losing the intermediary status may hamper with Indian people's right to freedom of speech.

The Indian public is demanding a transparent and inclusive discussion before the formulation of any steady law on social media intermediaries. What people fear is that the government's definition of 'illegal content' can be biased. They think that the loss of intermediary status would prevent Twitter from providing a completely independent platform for free speech. However, the government has commented on this situation by saying that the end-users such as common people will not be affected by these new changes in the IT law. Twitter has stated that they are currently in the process of appointing the local statutory officers and they are notifying the Indian government about every step being taken.

There have been many instances in the past where the Twitter platform has been crowded with criticisms of the actions of the government and the tug of war between the two is currently one of the hot topics. Hence, people are demanding for the social media regulations to be handled and monitored by the parliament, with the Constitution in mind.