Centre in final stages of releasing new rules for social media platforms: Report

The Centre is in the final stages of notifying the intermediary guidelines pertaining to social media platforms as an amendment to the Information Technology Act (IT) 2000, ETTech reported on Thursday.

According to the report, the guidelines that being finalized and are currently awaiting approval have undergone minimal changes as compared to the original draft amendments finalised by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).

The draft IT Intermediary Guidelines were formulated in 2018. The guidelines are set to make social media and Internet companies accountable to any government agency and providing time-bound assistance to the centre for the same as per previous reports.

Once the guidelines are in place, IT companies will be liable to remove any “unlawful content” going viral on their respective social media platforms.