Ten days after Twitter officials appeared before a Parliamentary standing committee regarding misuse of the platform and to discuss its compliance with the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the committee has now called representatives from Google and Facebook to appear before it on Tuesday (29 June).
Headed by Shashi Tharoor, the committee will be hearing the views of the two companies about safeguarding the rights of the citizens and how to stop the misuse of social media.
It should be noted that during the deposition, Twitter’s counsel Ayushi Kapoor and public policy manager Shagufta Kamran had told the committee that the company follows its policies. In response, the committee had then told the two that the law of the land is ‘supreme’ and asked the company to abide by them.
Also, days after this, Twitter had deactivated Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account on the platform briefly over an older tweet citing a US law.
The Centre notified the new IT rules on 25 February earlier this year, and the rules have come into effect from 26 May.
