Clear indications that the union government is considering moves to scrap Section 79 of the IT Act that strips social media platforms of any legal immunity for publishing content has drawn concern and criticism from organisations advocating freedom of expression and accountability.
The Indian Express had reported yesterday, November 5, that the IT Ministry has begun discussions on a sweeping overhaul of India’s social media regulatory framework, including a proposal to withdraw the legal immunity available to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X for content posted by their users.
The move, which could significantly impact how social media companies operate in India, is likely to raise public future, concern and condemnation as also set the stage for a major confrontation between the government and the technology industry, given that the protection has been central to the business models of some of the world’s largest internet companies. Reported The Indian Express.
Key to these deliberations is a rethink around the concept of “safe harbour”, a legal protection that shields internet intermediaries from liability for third-party content. According to two senior government officials, the government is exploring whether this protection should be restricted to services that merely transmit or carry information, such as internet service providers (ISPs), telecom service providers (TSPs) and peer-to-peer messaging platforms, rather than social media companies that actively determine what content users see.
What discussions centre around is the debate around whether or not social media platforms can continue to be considered “passive carriers of information”, given that they actively use sophisticated algorithms to rank, recommend and amplify content, besides also their ability to moderate posts based on their own community guidelines, which may not always align with Indian laws. According to the orientation of these discussions, such practices, amount to exercising editorial control over content, raising questions about whether these companies should continue to enjoy the same legal protections as traditional intermediaries.
“Intermediaries were supposed to be simply carriers of content, and safe harbour in that sense made sense. When you receive a message from someone, the platform’s only responsibility is to carry that message and deliver it to you without making any changes to it. But with social media platforms deploying complex algorithms to boost engagement and virality, the boundaries have been blurred. They definitely determine what gets shown to users, and are no longer simple carriers of content,” a senior government official told Indian Express.
Responding to these developments today, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has expressed alarm by the Indian Express that the Ministry of Electronics and IT has begun discussions on stripping social media platforms of safe harbour under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000. IFF states that, “Nobody should mistake this for a move against Big Tech for it is a move against the people who use these platforms. Safe harbour is not a gift to Meta, Google or X. It is the legal foundation that lets ordinary Indians speak online without a platform’s lawyers deciding in advance whether their post is worth the risk and taking it down. If it is taken away, and every platform becomes liable for every post, comment and video. The rational response for any company is to remove anything that might draw a complaint, a notice or a summons. Criticism of the government, reporting on protests, satire, and the speech of people without lawyers will be the first casualties which are already being censored by automated filters implemented pursuant to the IT Rules, 2021.”
The statement issued by IFF goes on further to state that it was this very distinction that the Supreme Court recognised exactly this in Shreya Singhal (2015), which is why it read down Section 79 (3) (b) to require a court order or a lawful government direction before platforms must act. Besides, says IFF, the e timing tells its own story as the report says that MEITY’s rethink was shaped by a view within government that platform algorithms have favoured Opposition and anti-establishment narratives over official messaging, and by the role of Instagram during the student protests in July. In other words, the complaint is not that platforms host too much illegal content but it is that they host too much content the government dislikes.
“This is also the latest step in an escalation that has been building for years. The 2023 Fact Check Unit amendment tried to make the government the arbiter of truth about itself, until the Bombay High Court struck it down. The Sahyog portal has turned Section 79(3)(b) into a parallel, opaque takedown channel that sidesteps the safeguards of Section 69A, a practice X is now challenging in court. In August, a Parliamentary Standing Committee gave Mark Zuckerberg three days to apologise personally for the brief removal of the Prime Minister’s video or face the loss of safe harbour. Subsequently advisories were issued on October 8, 2026 and October 10, 2026 pressuring digital platforms to implement pro-active censorship through, “enhanced due diligence”.
The role of Instagram during the students’ protests in July, when the platform emerged as a key vehicle for mobilising online support, is understood to have played a part in these deliberations. The government has been examining how social media platforms determine the reach and visibility of different kinds of content, and whether their recommendation systems can influence public discourse while remaining insulated from legal responsibility for the material they amplify.
The friction between the government and social media companies has intensified in recent months. In July, the IT Ministry summoned Meta’s global policy executives, including its global affairs president Joel Kaplan, after a video uploaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly withheld by Facebook in India during the students’ protests. The government had also raised concerns about the prevalence of deep fakes and the company’s compliance with Indian laws.
The tensions are not limited to Meta. Elon Musk-owned X has challenged the Centre’s online content blocking and takedown framework, including the use of the government’s Sahyog portal to issue removal notices. In September 2025, the Karnataka High Court dismissed X’s challenge to the mechanism, following which the company filed an appeal. The dispute has become emblematic of the widening disagreements between the government and technology platforms over the boundaries of online speech and the state’s authority to regulate it.
The government’s thinking has also received impetus from recent observations by the Supreme Court in the Just Rights for Children Alliance vs S Harish case, where the court raised concerns about social media companies’ failure to adequately prevent the circulation of child sexual exploitation and abuse material.
In its October 15 order, the court observed that Section 79 was inadequate to address persistent regulatory failures, describing the loss of safe harbour as a consequence that was too drastic for routine non-compliance but insufficient to deter violations. It called for a separate framework of proportionate penalties, including monetary fines, while retaining the loss of safe harbour as a last resort for serious violations.
Separately, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, has also pushed for stronger action against social media companies. In August, Dubey warned that Meta could lose its safe harbour protection following the temporary removal of Modi’s video, and said the committee had recommended withdrawing such protections from platforms failing to comply with Indian laws.
Child Sexual Abuse, Deep fakes, Non-consensual Intimate Imagery real problems: IFF
Safe harbour was never meant to be a bargaining chip that MEITY waves at a company to extract compliance, states IFF. While there are real problems on these platforms such as child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery and deep fakes, the Supreme Court’s observations in Just Rights for Children Alliance on October 15 deserve a serious answer. The answer is not blanket censorship argues IFF
“But the answer is targeted, rights-respecting obligations with independent oversight, transparency about takedowns, and a grievance process that works for users. It is not a liability regime that pushes platforms to delete first and never ask. Nor is it a rule that platforms must clear product changes with the government before shipping them, which would hand the state a license raj over the design of the services Indians use every day. Any change of this scale must go through Parliament, with a published draft, a genuine consultation and a full debate. It cannot be settled in closed-door meetings between the Ministry and a handful of companies. What IFF will do IFF will send a detailed representation to the Ministry of Electronics and IT setting out why the proposed changes to Section 79 are unconstitutional and unworkable, and what a rights-respecting approach to platform accountability should look like. We will also write to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology. We are filing RTI applications with MeitY seeking the minutes, agendas, attendance lists and file notings of every meeting held on the review of safe harbour, including the meetings with Meta and other platforms in July and August, and the basis for the Ministry’s assessment of how platform algorithms treat government and Opposition content. The public has a right to know who is in the room when the rules of their speech are being rewritten. We will publish what we receive, and we invite other civil society groups, journalists and platform users to join us in asking the Ministry to put any proposal to open consultation before it goes anywhere near Parliament.”
Government
Meanwhile it appears that the discussions are still at an exploratory stage, and no final decision has been taken on the contours of the proposed changes. To be sure, stripping social media companies of safe harbour would likely require making amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, which would have to be approved by Parliament.
Queries sent by IE to the IT Ministry, Meta, and Google did not elicit any response until publication.
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