Twitter has appointed Resident Grievance Officer in India

Twitter has appointed Resident Grievance Officer – India. The microblogging site has named Vinay Prakash as Resident Grievance Officer for India. He can be contacted on grievance-officer-in @ twitter.com, as per the site details.

The moves comes pursuant to Article 4(d) of India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, wherein Twitter is required to publish a monthly report regarding handling of complaints from users in India, including action taken on them, as well as the number of URLs that Twitter has taken action as a result of proactive monitoring efforts.

Prakash’s appointment follows after the Delhi High Court on July 8 refused to allow any interim protection to Twitter and noted that it is open to the government to pursue any action regarding the social media company in compliance with the IT rules.

The court had also observed that Twitter is facing Contempt of Court for failure in clarifying that the Grievance Officer appointed was interim in nature.

To this, Twitter had then responded saying that it is in the process of appointing Grievance Officer, Nodal Officer and Compliance Officer. It had previously submitted 8 weeks’ time requirement in order to appoint Grievance Officer, Nodal Officer, and Compliance Officer in compliance with the IT rules.

Notably, Twitter’s interim resident grievance officer for India Dharmendra Chatur had quit in June, leaving the micro-blogging site without a grievance official as mandated by the new rules.

India Grievance Data

The social media giant also shared data received via its Grievance Officer – India channel between May 26, 2021 and June 25, 2021. The data includes content on Twitter and complaints received from individual users with accompanying court orders, it added.

It further said that the majority of complaints received during this period relate to account verification, account access, or seeking assistance or information regarding an account or Twitter’s enforcement actions that are not included in the data below.

The data showed that there were 6 abuse and harassment reports for which 38 urls were actioned, while another 20 reports were for defamation – under which 87 urls were actioned. There were also 3 reports of impersonation for which 1 url was actioned and one report each for intellectual property or IP related infringement, and misinformation and manipulated media. Other complaints included 4 reports of sensitive adult content and 3 for privacy infringement.

Besides this, another 56 grievances appealing Twitter account suspensions were also processed. These were all resolved and the appropriate responses were sent. “We overturned 7 of the account suspensions based on the specifics of the situation, but the other accounts remain suspended,” the statement read.