Submissions

Social Media networks and platforms, chat and messaging applications, photo and video sharing services have radically transformed the internet landscape in India and elsewhere in the last decade. User generated content has allowed diverse voices to create and share views, political opinions, dance videos, movie and music commentaries.

While the platforms and networks have encouraged these voices, there is also a growing concern1 over the sharing of potentially offensive material such as pornographic content, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), hate speech and violent content often not suitable for the wide audience such platforms caters to.

The INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (GUIDELINES FOR INTERMEDIARIES AND DIGITAL MEDIA ETHICS CODE) RULES, 2021 notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), together with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), Government of India – under the IT Act 2000, seeks to monitor and control user generated content and provide firm guidelines for social media Intermediaries, digital news publications and other organizations who host or transfer content on the internet.

The Rules were notified in February 2021, and went into effect in May 2021. Organizations and individuals have challenged the Rules on various counts2 – including their applicability under the parent law. Large platforms and social media networks have expressed concern about implementation and compliance.

Privacy Mode, a hub for conversations around privacy, data security and compliance, conducted a two-part research project seeking to understand the impact of the Rules on organizations and employees in the tech ecosystem who might be responsible for implementing the Rules and achieving compliance in tech and media products.

A qualitative study of Social Media Platforms, Digital News Publications, and Cloud Computing services providers, was undertaken to look at the possible impact on encryption, traceability, compliance, applicability of law among others, was conducted in May-June 2021; and a quantitative survey of tech workers across India, looking at awareness, professional and personal impact, work flows and requirements, was conducted in June-July 2021.

This report is a comprehensive analysis of both surveys and presents a rounded picture of the impact of the IT Rules 2021 on organizations and its employees. This research report also looks at larger questions and concerns about privacy, freedom of expression and speech given the discursive debates around responsible tech, digital platforms and ethics, and impact on society and individuals.

Executive Summary and Core Concerns

Scope of the law

By definition, the ‘Rules’ framed for any law in India are ‘Subordinate Legislation’ or ‘Delegated Legislation’. While laws are made by the Parliament/Legislature, Rules are made by the Executive i.e., the Government of India, to fulfill the requirements of the parent law. In Indian democracy, it is only the Legislative that can make laws. The Executive can only implement them. If the law says ‘XYZ has to be accomplished’, rules can frame the methods in which ‘XYZ’ can be accomplished. However, in the case of IT Rules 2021, the Rules are seen as overarching and exceeding the parent law.

Notified under the Information Technology Act, 20003 , which provides ‘Safe Harbour’ status to digital intermediaries, the Rules are ultra vires of the parent Act and seek to regulate activities that have no mention in it. Further, bringing digital news publishers under the ambit of the Rules, is unconstitutional and ultra vires of the IT act, as news websites do not fit the definition of ‘Intermediaries’ given under the Act4.

Further, the activities of news publishers and media are regulated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB)5, and thus excluded from the ambit of the IT Act. Concerns emerged that the Rules – which did not pass through the legislative body – sought to curtail rights and laws that did emerge from due legislative process.

Further, with existing guidelines under the Press Council Act that govern news organizations, the Rules are seen as overarching and drafted to censor specific media channels and outlets.

The Rules require intermediaries to identify the first originator of messages deemed objectionable. This implies that messaging platforms and social networking sites will have to significantly alter their product (and the technology underlying products) to comply. This is again not governed by the parent act, and is therefore unconstitutional. The Rules also operate from a position of assumed guilt, where all conversations and communications are expected to be scanned for potentially offensive material, and traced back to the original sender. This is against the assumption of innocence enshrined in the legal system operating in the country.

Breaking encryption and implementing traceability, a fundamental requirement of the new Rules, have international legal implications, as messaging services and social media platforms will need to alter the underlying technical architecture of their products or services - or at least have a different product and user experience for Indian users. Since this cannot be implemented for users in India alone and will affect every user of the services across the world, these social media intermediaries will be in violation of international laws governing user privacy and security, thus inviting legal costs.

Freedom of expression and natural justice

The Rules are seen as violating freedom of expression guaranteed in the Indian constitution by implementing traceability, which breaks encryption. Privacy, also a fundamental right as determined by the Supreme Court of India, is increasingly seen as a ‘make-or-break’ feature of all websites, apps, products, and services. Privacy operates from a position of assumption of innocence of the user. The Rules, by enforcing traceability, violate the fundamental rights of Indian citizens by reducing privacy to a conditional service, and not a constitutional guarantee

Cost of compliance

When the IT Rules came into effect in May 2021, they were criticized for imposing high costs of compliance, including legal and personal liability attached to employees of social media organizations. In the case of the office of the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), liability extended even after the CCO retired from office. Every social media and news organization surveyed during this research pointed to the personal liability attached to the role of the CCO, grievance and nodal officers as imposing financial and legal costs on their organizations.

Proactive content filtering requirements will impact human resources requirements, demand changes in product and business operations, thereby significantly increasing costs. Traceability clauses under the Rules require extensive overhaul of messaging services and social networking platforms’ core architecture, requiring significant monetary and human resource investment.

Further, respondents in the Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) believed that ease of doing business will diminish given the stringent compliance regime and employee impact.

The Rules are also framed vaguely and arbitrarily, leading to confusion over operating clauses. Additionally, they have stringent reporting requirements. This will affect all organizations, especially small and medium enterprises, financially, and otherwise.

Skill and competency of Industry

In addition to the legal and ethical concerns emerging from implementation of the Rules, there are knowledge, awareness, and skill gaps across a representative sample of the IT industry, which may impact the ability of organizations to comply with the IT Rules.

Software developers in junior and mid-level roles in IT organizations believe their workload will increase with the IT Rules. Respondents hinted at their jobs now requiring them to do more documentation and reporting, and their role in achieving compliance in the company’s product as increasing their workload.

Industry representatives however felt that tech workers and product managers will fundamentally need knowledge in, or retraining in, privacy features, content filtering and user experience, in order to fully comply with the Rules. Experts in the industry believe that more than just technical skills or knowledge, what is missing is also perspective and understanding of how executing the Rules will impact users of media and tech products.

As noted above, encryption and traceability requirements of the Rules will mean major changes in products, especially user experience and inability to safeguard privacy of Indian users under the IT Rules. Implementing features such as voluntary verification will need product managers to acquire new skills and knowledge. Tech workers will need to learn how to work in coordination with legal teams. Given the implementation of the IT Rules, each content takedown request will have to be serviced on a case-by-case basis. This will impact scale and standard operating procedures in organizations, or will result in organizations relying more heavily on automation to censor content proactively (and to avoid being served takedown notices). In both cases, users of these products will bear the brunt, where their freedom of speech and expression will be reduced drastically.

Individual chapters and sections of the report are presented as submissions. Scroll down to read them.

About the principal researchers

Nadika Nadja is a researcher at Hasgeek. She has worked across advertising, journalism, TV and film production as a writer, editor and researcher.

Bhavani S is a Research Associate at Hasgeek. She has previously worked for the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS), Microsoft Research India, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Support team

Anish TP illustrated the report. Satyavrat KK provided research and editorial support. David Timethy and Zainab Bawa were project managers for producing this report. Kiran Jonnalagadda and Zainab Bawa advised on research design and execution.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following individuals who provided feedback during different stages of the research. Their feedback helped the team fine-tune and bring rigour to the research process.

  1. Suman Kar, founder of security firm Banbreach, for reviewing early drafts of the quantitative research questionnaire, and providing detailed inputs on survey design.
  2. Prithwiraj Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Marketing at IIM-Bangalore, for reviewing early drafts of the quantitative research questionnaire, and providing detailed inputs on survey design.
  3. Chinmayi SK, Founder of The Bachchao Project, for reviewing and providing feedback on the final report and conclusions

While Hasgeek sought funding from organizations, the research itself was conducted – with full disclosure at all stages – independently and objectively. The findings do not reflect any individual organization’s needs.


  1. Unicef: Growing concern for well-being of children and young people amid soaring screen time (2021) - https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/growing-concern-well-being-children-and-young-people-amid-soaring-screen-time ↩︎

  2. LiveLaw: Supreme Court Lists Centre’s Transfer Petitions, Connected Cases After 6 Weeks
    https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/it-rules-2021-supreme-court-lists-centres-transfer-petitions-connected-cases-after-6-weeks-181032 ↩︎

  3. India Code: The Information Technology Act 2000 https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/1999/3/A2000-21.pdf ↩︎

  4. India Code: IT Act Definitions https://www.indiacode.nic.in/show-data?actid=AC_CEN_45_76_00001_200021_1517807324077&sectionId=13011&sectionno=2&orderno=2 ↩︎

  5. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting: About the ministry https://mib.gov.in/about-us/about-the-ministry ↩︎

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Accepting submissions

Not accepting submissions

This Call for Submissions is open to: Organizations doing research and advocacy on the IT Rules and IL Guidelines. Technologists, lawyers, computer scientists, journalists, researchers and the like who are investigating encryption, traceability and privacy. expand

This Call for Submissions is open to:

  1. Organizations doing research and advocacy on the IT Rules and IL Guidelines.
  2. Technologists, lawyers, computer scientists, journalists, researchers and the like who are investigating encryption, traceability and privacy.
  3. Product managers - from media organizations and products - who will be tasked with content moderation and content filtering.
  4. Hosting providers who may have operational and legal concerns with IL Guidelines.
  5. Web developers building websites using Content Management Systems (CMS); CMS communities.

You can submit content on any of the following topics:

  1. Primers and explainers about IT Rules and IL Guidelines.
  2. Legal and tech-policy origins of IL Guidelines.
  3. Laws and regulations, similar to the IL Guidelines, implemented in other parts of the world.
  4. Operational issues in regulating content platforms and apps.
  5. Litigation and advocacy, globally, in response to content censorship, internet censorship and platform censorship.
  6. Operational challenges that product managers, in India and across the world, run into when complying with IT Rules-like regulations.
  7. Case studies of using ML and AI filtering mechanisms for content moderation.
  8. Exacerbating bias in content filtering.
  9. Over-compliance and user/customer backlash at the product.
  10. Alternatives to AI/ML - from point of view of costs (compute and processing costs), and resources (manpower, handling infrastructure, etc) for content scanning and complying with IL Guidelines.

If you have topic suggestions that you want to share, post a comment on https://hasgeek.com/PrivacyMode/it-rules-2021-intermediary-responsibilities/comments

Nadika N

Nadika N

Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Anish TP

Anish TP

Research methods, design, sampling and execution

This is a mixed-method research study, comprising both qualitative and quantitative methods. more
  • 1 comment
  • Submitted
  • 22 Sep 2021
Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Nadika N

Nadika N

Anish TP

Anish TP

Respondents profile

Qualitative research was conducted with 33 respondents. These included representatives from SSMI organizations, digital news publications and cloud service providers. One FGD was conducted with independent software developers who are vocal about privacy, digital rights, data security and responsibility in technology on social media and community forums. We classified this set of respondents as “p… more
  • 2 comments
  • Submitted
  • 18 Sep 2021
Nadika N

Nadika N

Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Anish TP

Anish TP

Detailed findings: Overall awareness

The IT Rules, Intermediary Guidelines 2021, have a far-ranging impact on social media apps, digital news and content, and cloud hosting providers in the country. The Rules could potentially affect a far wider section of the startup and SME sector in India given that many of these organizations produce content in one form or another which can be regulated. While the legality and ethicality of the … more
  • 0 comments
  • Submitted
  • 22 Sep 2021
Nadika N

Nadika N

Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Detailed findings: Legal concerns

IT Rules are Ultra Vires of IT Act 2000 The IT Rules are notified under the IT Act1, 2000, which provides ‘Safe Harbour’ status to digital intermediaries. That is, the intermediary will not be held liable for content that is merely hosted by, or transmitted by them, provided they are not the creators or owners of the content. By nature, subordinate legislation, such as the IT Rules 2021, cannot r… more
  • 4 comments
  • Submitted
  • 22 Sep 2021
Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Nadika N

Nadika N

Detailed findings: Ethical concerns

Broad definitions of unlawful content: The government claims the IT Rules are framed as a response to illegal or unlawful content, including hate speech, pornography and Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), among others. Under the Rules, unlawful content will also include content that is deemed against national interest or national security, including those that tarnish the image of the nation. more
  • 2 comments
  • Submitted
  • 19 Sep 2021
Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Nadika N

Nadika N

Detailed findings: Implementation concerns

What we observe in this section can be seen as the continuation of the previous section with issues arising from the lack of ethical considerations playing out in terms of implementation. Vague definitions of organizations, and the broad scope that has been created for the Rules, organizations must now undertake more tasks and activities to comply, irrespective of size or resources. Some of the l… more
  • 1 comment
  • Submitted
  • 21 Sep 2021
Zainab Bawa

Zainab Bawa

Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Anish TP

Anish TP

Nadika N

Nadika N

Impact of IT Rules on tech workers’ ecosystem - professional concerns

Introduction As discussed in the chapter on respondent profiles, a quantitative survey was conducted with tech workers to assess awareness, understanding and impact of the IT Rules. more
  • 2 comments
  • Submitted
  • 19 Sep 2021
Zainab Bawa

Zainab Bawa Author

Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Nadika N

Nadika N

Anish TP

Anish TP

Impact of IT Rules on tech workers’ ecosystem - personal concerns; impact on participation and advocacy

This chapter is divided into two sections: Impact of IT Rules on personal lives, mainly freedom of speech and expression, and privacy. more
  • 0 comments
  • Submitted
  • 02 Oct 2021
Nadika N

Nadika N

Bhavani Seetharaman

Bhavani Seetharaman

Conclusion and Recommendations

In the final analysis, the IT Rules are seen as having a deep, detrimental impact on the social media and digital news sectors, and result in increased work loads for employees, increased cost of operations and compliance for organizations. Along with existing concerns over the potential impact of the Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP) that is currently under advisement by a parliamentary body a… more
  • 0 comments
  • Submitted
  • 30 Sep 2021
Nadika N

Nadika N

IT Rules 2021 Intermediary Guidelines: Concerns and recommendations from the community

Introduction The INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (GUIDELINES FOR INTERMEDIARIES AND DIGITAL MEDIA ETHICS CODE) RULES, 2021 notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), together with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), Government of India has a significant impact on what was perceived as the ‘safe harbour’ for organizations providing communications and informa… more
  • 1 comment
  • Submitted
  • 25 May 2021
IT Rules 2021 Report: Annexure

Udbhav Tiwari

IT Rules 2021: law, legalese and impact on open source communities

The Government of India (GoI), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) jointly released the new IT Rules 2021, with significant impact on Intermediaries. The new rules impact OTT and digital media streaming services, online news outlets, social media and platforms, messaging services, among others. The new rules are availa… more
  • 0 comments
  • Confirmed & scheduled
  • 01 Jul 2021
IT Rules 2021 Report: Annexure

Satyavrat KK

User privacy and the litigation between WhatsApp and the Indian Government over the IT Rules

On 27 May 2021, WhatsApp took the Government of India to court over the IT Rules 2021. The IT Rules 2021 mandate WhatsApp to implement traceability i.e. the ability to trace the origins of “unlawful” messages. This effectively breaks WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption technology implemented to safeguard user privacy. WhatsApp argues that this mandate (in the IT Rules) violates citizens’ fundamental… more
  • 0 comments
  • Submitted
  • 15 Jun 2021
IT Rules 2021 Report: Additional material

Satyavrat KK

The Wages Of Fear: A Compendium Of Global and Domestic Encryption Debates

This submission is part of a compendium on encryption. I would implore readers to first watch a short primer where Matt Green takes us through the specific technological developments that surround the history mentioned in this compendium. Better still, check out Matt Green’s submission End-to-end encryption: State of the Technical and Policy Debate for a deeper dive into the history of global enc… more
  • 0 comments
  • Submitted
  • 19 May 2021
IT Rules 2021 Report: Additional material

Satyavrat KK

U.K's Online Safety Bill: An Overview

A Brief History Of The Online Safety Bill In May 2021, the U.K government published the ‘Online Safety Bill’, comprising a 145-page document, along with 123 pages of explanatory notes and a 146-page impact assessment on the ramifications of the bill. The U.K government positions the Bill as one which ushers in “a new age of accountability for tech and brings fairness and accountability to the onl… more
  • 0 comments
  • Submitted
  • 18 Jun 2021
IT Rules 2021 Report: Additional material

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Deep dives into privacy and security, and understanding needs of the Indian tech ecosystem through guides, research, collaboration, events and conferences. Sponsors: Privacy Mode’s programmes are sponsored by: more

Supported by

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. more

Promoted

GitHub is the developer company. As the home to more than 65 million developers from across the globe, GitHub is where developers can create, share, and ship the best code possible. GitHub makes it easier to work together, solve challenging problems, and create the world’s most important technologi… more

Promoted