Changing Compliance Landscape

There changes all around. The latest IT Rules 2021 (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code), which was released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in February fits right in it. Social Media companies were given a three-month period to comply with the new rules, and most of them complied with the new rules and even appointed a chief compliance officer right away.

While companies like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Koo, Sharechat, and LinkedIn shared details with MeitY as per the requirement of the new norms

without much delay, Twitter showed some tantrum, opening the doorway to a tug war between Twitter and the government. The micro blogging platform even went on to temporarily block Union Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's account in June, after receiving a complaint for violation of the US copyright law.

After his account was unblocked, Minister took a swing at Twitter, accusing it of violating the Information and Technology Act Rules by not giving him prior notice, and of taking action against the platform. The incident shed more light on the tussle between the Centre and Twitter over the company's failure to comply with the new IT Act Rules. Eventually in July, Twitter India announced the appointment of an interim chief compliance officer and promised to designate two other executives for the time being to comply with the country's new IT rules in a court filing. The events unfolded manifested the need for a compliance officer, especially with the dynamically changing regulatory compliance requirements in the country. This issue of CEO Insights intends to shed more spotlight on this need and the benefits of having a compliance officer.
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