Twitter appoints new India grievance officer; releases IT Rules compliance report

Twitter has appointed a new grievance officer for India days after getting an earful from the Delhi High Court for taking too long to fill the position. The appointment also comes weeks after Twitter’s previous grievance officer had quit as he did not wish to get caught amid the tensions between the microblogging platform and the Indian government. 

On its website, Twitter now shows the name of Vinay Prakash as its new India grievance officer. 

It is worth noting that the company had earlier this week told the Delhi High Court that it will appoint a grievance officer on an interim basis by July 11. 

Twitter confirmed the appointment of Prakash but declined to comment on our queries. 

On Thursday, Twitter had informed the Delhi High Court that it had already appointed an interim compliance officer on July 6 and committed to appointing a nodal officer within two weeks. 

India’s new social media rules mandate significant social media intermediaries like Twitter to appoint chief compliance, nodal and grievance officers. 

Twitter’s previous grievance officer, Dharmendra Chatur, had quit in June, following which the company had told the Delhi High Court that the reason why Chatur resigned from his post was because there was a lot of “precipitation going around” between the microblogging website and the Indian government and he did not want to put himself into that.

Twitter on Sunday also released its compliance report as required under the social media rules. As per the report, between May 26, 2021 and June 25, 2021 the company took action on over 130 links, a majority of which were related to defamation. 

The company said it suspended more than 18,000 accounts for sharing content related to child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity, among others via proactive monitoring. It also suspended over 4,100 accounts for promoting terrorism on the platform, as per its compliance report. 

“A vast majority of all accounts that are suspended for the promotion of terrorism and child sexual exploitation are proactively flagged by a combination of technology and other purpose-built internal proprietary tools,” Twitter said.