Twitter appoints interim chief compliance officer for India

Twitter on Tuesday said it had appointed an interim chief compliance officer and details of the official would be shared directly with the IT Ministry soon.

The move came after the government had given one last chance to Twitter to comply with the new IT rules, as the microblogging platform had not made immediate appointments of key personnel, mandated under the new guidelines that came into effect on May 26.

Following this, the US-based company had assured the Indian government last week that it was in advanced stages of finalising the appointment of a chief compliance officer, and that it would submit additional details within a week.

A Twitter spokesperson said the company was continuing to make every effort to comply with the new guidelines, and was keeping the IT Ministry apprised of progress at every step of the process.

An interim chief compliance officer had been retained and details would be shared with the Ministry directly soon, the spokesperson added.

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Greater due diligence

Twitter has had several faceoffs with the Indian government over the past months, including during the farmers' protest and later when it tagged political posts of several leaders of the ruling party BJP as "manipulated media", triggering a sharp rebuke from the Centre.

The last flashpoint was the delay in complying with the IT rules that mandate large digital platforms to undertake greater due diligence as well as appoint a grievance officer, a nodal officer, and a chief compliance officer. These personnel have to be residents in India.

Twitter has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India, as per data cited by the government recently.

The micro-blogging platform has stated on its website that India is an important market for the company and is among the countries where it is piloting a new approach of building an in-market team to locally tailor its global product to the needs of the region.

In its notice on June 5, IT Ministry had confronted Twitter for not providing information about the chief compliance officer as required under the Rules. Also, the resident grievance officer and the nodal contact person nominated by the company is not an employee of Twitter Inc in India as prescribed in the rules, the ministry had said.

The government contended that the office address in India mentioned by Twitter is that of a law firm, which is also not as per rules.

The Ministry had warned Twitter that such non-compliance would lead to "unintended consequences", including Twitter losing exemption from liability as intermediary under the IT Act.

Twitter 'making every effort'

Twitter, in its response on June 7, had sought to assure the government that it was making every effort to comply with the new guidelines, including with respect to hiring personnel in India.

"For example, similar to other significant social media intermediaries operating in India, in order to comply with the underlying intention behind the guidelines, we have appointed a nodal contact person and resident grievance officer on a contractual basis while we recruit to fill the positions on a permanent basis," Twitter had said in its letter to the Ministry last week.

It went on to say that "...we are in advanced stages of finalising the appointment to the role of chief compliance officer and we plan to provide additional details to you in the next several days, and at the latest within a week."

Twitter website shows openings for positions of chief compliance officer, nodal officer, and resident grievance officer. As per the job descriptions for the three positions, these are full-time roles located in India and the candidates must be residents of India.

The chief compliance officer will be responsible for liaising between the company and government agencies on all kinds of legal requests received from various law enforcement organisations and government agencies relating to the platform.

The grievance officer will be responsible for overseeing the grievance redressal mechanism of complaints from people who use Twitter services in India.

The nodal officer will be responsible for coordination with the law enforcement and government agencies in India to oversee the process of responding to reports, orders, and complaints.

The executive will be the primary link for coordination between Twitter and these agencies on all legal requests relating to Twitter's platform, including requests for content removal and user data disclosure.