A year after setting up three grievance appellate committees to handle user complaints against social media platforms, the government is discussing possible changes to their structure and functioning, including the need to reduce the number of such committees, according to officials.
They said these committees have received less-than-expected number of cases in the past year.
Another area which the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) is looking at is to increase user awareness with regard to their rights and the existence of these committees. Recently, the government has also asked big tech companies to spread awareness regarding user rights under the IT rules to appeal to grievance appellate committees (GACs), officials said.
Any person aggrieved by a decision of the grievance officer of a social media firm relating to blocking of content or accounts can appeal to a GAC within 30 days. Such an appeal could be around complaints regarding sexually explicit content, misinformation, or religious incitement, among others.
“Our experience with GACs has not been as per expectations. We thought there will be a flood of complaints with people complaining about violations by social media companies, but the total number of complaints in the last one year has been insignificant,” an official said, adding the government is trying to find out the reasons behind such a muted response.
According to government data, a total of 1,954 user appeals have been received so far, of which 1,818 have been disposed of.
GACs have issued around 420 orders to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram from March 2023 to September 2024. The number of orders issued by GACs is significantly less than the grievances which go unresolved by these platforms, according to data from Facebook and Instagram India monthly report under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The trend suggests that many users whose complaints go unresolved by social media intermediaries do not appeal to GACs.
In August and September, these platforms did not receive any order from GACs.
Analysts said a reason behind low complaints to GACs is that many users tap consumer redressal forums against harms caused on social media platforms.
The reason for the government to set up GACs was that such committees provide an alternative to an user to file an appeal against the decision of the grievance officer rather than directly going to the court of law. Hence, the user can appeal to the committee in case of his dissatisfaction with the order of the grievance officer and seek an alternative redressal mechanism. However, the user will have the right to seek judicial remedy at any time.
When the GACs were notified last year, a section of legal observers and Internet activists saw it as a case of over-regulation aimed at muzzling criticism of the government on social media platforms.
