New Intermediary Guidelines for Social Media in India - The Highlights
                     New Intermediary 
Guidelines for Social 
Media in India - The 
Highlights
You must have heard of the new Intermediary 
Guidelines for Social Media and the Digital 
Media Ethics Code, but what actually is it? It is 
basically a set of new rules meant for all social 
media platforms and outlets for digital news in 
India, that has come into effect since the 27th of 
May, 2021. Let us take a further deep view into 
this matter.
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What Are the New 
Intermediary Guidelines 
For Social Media?
● The Intermediary Guidelines for Social Media were first 
announced back in the February of 2021, which ordered 
all the social media platforms to set up a system of 
grievance redressal as well as a compliance system. This 
system included the appointment for a resident officer 
for grievance, a chief officer for compliance, as well as a 
person for nodal contact.
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● These social media platforms and digital news 
outlets were also instructed by the Ministry of 
Electronics & Information Technology in India 
to make a monthly submission of a report on 
the complaints received by the particular 
platforms, and exactly was an action taken to 
address the complaint.
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● The third requirement of the guideline was directed towards 
instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. It 
required these apps to make provisions to allow tracking of the 
first originator of a specific text message.
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What Will Happen If A 
Platform Fails To Comply 
With Any Of These 
Guidelines?
A failure of compliance with any of these 
guidelines will result in taking away the 
indemnity that was provided to the platforms 
of social media and outlets of news houses, 
under the IPC section of 79 under the 
Information Technology Act.
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What Falls Under The Section 79 
Of The Information Technology 
Act?
● According to Section 79 of the Information 
Technology Act, it is stated that any intermediary 
such as a social media platform or a news outlet 
cannot be legally held responsible or liable for the 
information, communication link, or any form of 
data provided by a third party on its platform.
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● However, this act also further states that this 
section will only be applicable if the intermediary 
themselves are not directly involved, or do not 
themselves start the transmission of the data.
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● This is to say that as long as the social media 
platform or messaging app acts only as a carrier or 
messenger only involved in the carrying of data 
from point A to point B, and has made no 
interference in the whole process in any way, the 
platform itself will be protected against any legal 
prosecution.
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Till now, if a social media platform or a news 
house outlet fails to comply with any of the 
guidelines, nothing is going to change 
overnight. None of the social media giants 
such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram have 
yet appointed either of the resident officers for 
grievance, a chief officer for compliance, or a 
person for nodal contact. Only time will show 
what exactly will be the result of these 
guidelines.
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