Plea against action on Insta account: Contradicting Centre, Meta says no need for notice before action

The IT Rules, 2021 specify that the significant social media intermediaries must provide a user with an “opportunity to dispute the action being taken by such intermediary and request for the reinstatement of access to such information”, the company said. “Thus, the 2021 IT Rules make clear that a user is only entitled to an opportunity to be heard after action is taken. The user is not entitled to be heard before the action is taken.”

The Centre in its reply to a batch of petitions challenging the suspension of accounts by Twitter earlier had said, “when a SSMI (significant social media intermediary) platform takes such a decision to suspend the whole or part of the user account ‘on its own account’ due to its policy violation, it should afford a reasonable opportunity to the user to defend his side, except in certain scenarios such as rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material, bot activity or malware, terrorism related content etc”.

Meta further argued that the court’s writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution cannot be invoked against it as it is a private entity and does not discharge a public function. “Petitioner has alternative, and indeed efficacious, remedies but failed to exhaust them. Here, for example, petitioner does not allege, much less demonstrate, that they first raised their concern with Meta directly (e.g., through its grievance mechanism). Petitioner also fails to explain why they could not have pursued their claim in a civil court, rather than seeking to invoke this Hon’ble Court’s writ jurisdiction.”

On the contrary, the Centre in the reply filed in March said that if a social media platform suspends an account without issuing notice, the user can invoke rule 7 of the IT Rules, 2021 and seek action by initiating appropriate proceedings as per law.

“SSMIs must be held accountable for subjugating and supplanting fundamental rights like the right to freedom of speech and expression, otherwise the same would have dire consequences for any democratic nation. It is humbly submitted that liberty and freedom of any individual cannot be waylaid or jettisoned in the slipstream of social and technological advancement,” it argued. The Centre had also told the court that a SSMI may only remove unlawful content, but not take down the account itself.

Meta further told the court that the account in question was reinstated within 72 hours and it has access to the link sticker feature. Instagram service is a free and voluntary platform and the petitioner has no fundamental right to use it, it said.