August 6th, Breaking News! The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has introduced stricter compliance rules for social media platforms, significantly reducing the time available to remove “unlawful” content from 36 hours to 3 hours of receiving a government or court notice, and from 24 hours to 2 hours for sensitive content! (here, here, here) But wait, it seems like a déjà vu! Didn’t the February 2026 amendments to the The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules 2021) already speak about this?
The Déjà Vu
These changes had already been introduced months earlier through amendments to the February 2026 amendments to Rule 3(1)(d), Rule 3(2)(a)(i), and Rule 3(2)(b) of the IT Rules 2021. Some of these amendments have also been unpacked and discussed here by Vikram!
- Amendment to Rule 3(1)(d): This has reduced the time window for an intermediary to disable access to any information on it, that is used to commit an “unlawful act” from 36 hours to 3 hours. This is 3 hours of receiving a court order or a written reasoned intimation from the Appropriate Government to remove such content.
- Amendment to Rule 3(2)(a)(i): When there is a complaint, and a request to remove the information or a communication link is sought, the action has to be taken within 36 hours of the reporting from the earlier 72 hours.
- Amendment to Rule 3(2)(b): This has reduced the time window to remove or disable access to any sensitive content triggered by a complaint from an affected individual from 24 hours to 2 hours.
Pay attention to the difference in triggers for the first one and the latter two. The first one is a due diligence mechanism while the latter two are grievance redressal mechanisms.
Many of these news reports don’t link back to the amendment that actually brought in these changes. The media outlets seems to have discovered this new move based on a press release in which MeitY reiterated the changes on July 22nd, and on August 6th.
On another concerning note, in March 2026, there was even a reporting on considerations to further reduce the time window of disabling access to unlawful content from 3 hours to 1 hour of receiving a government notification or court order! However, this hasn’t been discussed by any of the recent news reports.
Unchecked Amplification
Don’t miss out the timing! Just a day before, on August 5th, in light of the hue and cry of the PM’s video taken down on Facebook, it was reported that the Centre told Meta that it could not claim the status of a neutral “intermediary” under the Information Technology (IT) Act because the company’s algorithm actively curates, recommends and determines which users receive content. Such curated reporting also amplifies political pressure. [Sidenote: Meta representatives did eventually apologise for removing the PM’s video and reportedly, Mark Zuckerberg apologised over child sexual abuse material, deepfake content and other operational lapses.]
On the substance of the argument made: First, “Intermediary” is defined in Section 2(1)(w) of the IT Act, and whether an entity is an intermediary or not is a factual determination for the courts to make, not the executive! This is what a Single Judge Bench of the Delhi High Court did in 2018 in Christian Louboutin Sas v Nakul Bajaj, where it laid down that a platform remains an “intermediary” only so long as it functions as a mere passive transmitter of information, and that mere calling itself an intermediary doesn’t automatically qualify an e-commerce platform or marketplace as one.
Second, if it argued that Meta is not an intermediary, then what is it? A publisher? If so, then why are automated takedown orders still issued to them through Sahyog (centralised takedown portal created by the Home Ministry), which by law was created as a centralised takedown process under Section 79 of the IT Act for “intermediaries”? (You can read more on the chilling effects of Sahyog on free speech here and here). By the way, the constitutionality of Sahyog was challenged by X which in 2025, a Single Judge Bench of the Karnataka High Court in X Corp. v. Union of India ruled as constitutional. Now, the Centre has sought to transfer X’s writ appeal challenge against the Single Judge’s Order, along with three other similar petitions to the Supreme Court, with the next hearing on August 10.
I would also like to draw attention to the threats given to Meta on withdrawing the protections granted to it under the safe harbour provision(Section 79 of IT Act). Section 79 of the IT Act is a soft cushion that exempts intermediaries from liability for any third party information, data, or communication it makes available or hosts, provided certain conditions are fulfilled. (Throwback to an article by Aditi Agrawal, where she very well explains that safe harbour is not a privilege that MeitY grants to intermediaries!) An intermediary can only lose its safe harbour as a legal defence, if it has not complied with the due diligence requirements as per the IT Rules 2021, not a leash in hands of the executive. In 2016, in MySpace Inc. v. Super Cassettes Industries Ltd., the Division Bench of Delhi High Court also called Section 79 an “affirmative defence” and not a blanket ban from immunity.
This two-sided hypocrisy present in the government’s argument, to me looks like nothing more than invisible censorship: political pressure to enable more content takedowns! Meta would deeply care about its safe harbour protection, because of course no platform would want unlimited liability for the content you and I post! Meta is faced with what Vikram analyses as Hobson’s Choice. And the effect! In response to the political pressure, Meta is seen to have been censoring protest posts on Instagram.
That being said Meta isn’t just a victim of pressure. Over the last few months, multiple paid ads run by Meta includes explicit AI- generated child sexual exploitative and abusive material (CSEAM), which hasn’t yet been satisfactorily addressed! The Parliamentary Standing Committee meeting on Aug 4th saw significant discussion about how platforms were not reporting CSEAM to local Indian law enforcement agencies. Safe harbour has now become this exploitative tool used by the platforms to boost their interests, and used by the executive as a tool for political influence . In this tug of war, what gets compromised is user safety and a content creator’s free speech
Unchecked amplification and presentation of news by the mainstream media adds on to this political pressure. Censorship can also show up in what gets circulated widely without being questioned.
Speed Over Scrutiny
These reduced time windows itself are problematic because it is stripping off the intermediary a meaningful chance to review the content. Internet Freedom Foundation has noted that in many of these censorship action, a copy of the notice or hearing was never provided to the person whose content was removed. By way of Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules 2021, the court order or reasoned intimation that forms the basis of “actual knowledge” only makes it necessary for the intermediary to know, not the content creator! These reduced timelines make it worse because now the intermediaries itself don’t have time to review increasing their probability of taking down content quickly. A structural chilling effect is that the intermediary’s cost of being compliant is greater than the cost of being right about the content! Rule 3(1)(n) of the IT Rules 2021 requires the intermediary to respect Article 19 of the Constitution, but the powerful effect of political pressure combined with reduced timelines make it technically challenging for platforms to give effect to this rule. Another problem to note is that these rules meant for Big Tech to comply ends up restricting who gets to enter the market because now it is challenging for any new entrant intermediary to come into existence unless they have the capacity to review and takedown content within the amended time frame.
I couldn’t find any public disclosure of the operationalisation of this reduced timeline after the February amendment, which means that it is possible that these are being quietly operationalised through Sahyog portal. That is the real impact of the déjà vu!
A rule that sat quiet for six months becomes “breaking news” right when it is somebody in power who is affected. Meanwhile for those six months and now beyond, censorship didn’t need to be loud to take away content before it was even realised!
[Thanks to Swaraj sir and Praharsh sir for their comments on this piece]
