Government looks at scrapping legal immunity for social media platforms

The IT Ministry has begun discussions on a sweeping overhaul of India’s social media regulatory framework, including a proposal to withdraw the legal immunity available to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X for content posted by their users, The Indian Express has learnt.

The move, which could alter how social media companies operate in India, is likely to set up a major confrontation between the government and the technology industry, given that the protection has been central to the business models of some of the world’s largest internet companies.

At the heart of the deliberations is a rethink of the concept of “safe harbour”, a legal protection that shields internet intermediaries from liability for third-party content. According to two senior government officials, the government is exploring whether this protection should be restricted to services that merely transmit or carry information, such as internet service providers (ISPs), telecom service providers (TSPs) and peer-to-peer messaging platforms, rather than social media companies that actively determine what content users see.

The emerging view within the government is that social media platforms can no longer be considered passive carriers of information, given their use of sophisticated algorithms to rank, recommend and amplify content, and their ability to moderate posts based on their own community guidelines, which may not always align with Indian laws.

Such practices, a section of the government believes, amount to exercising editorial control over content, raising questions about whether these companies should continue to enjoy the same legal protections as traditional intermediaries.

“Intermediaries were supposed to be simply carriers of content, and safe harbour in that sense made sense. When you receive a message from someone, the platform’s only responsibility is to carry that message and deliver it to you without making any changes to it.

But with social media platforms deploying complex algorithms to boost engagement and virality, the boundaries have been blurred. They definitely determine what gets shown to users, and are no longer simple carriers of content,” a senior government official said.

The discussions are still at an exploratory stage, and no final decision has been taken on the contours of the proposed changes. To be sure, stripping social media companies of safe harbour would likely require making amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, which would have to be approved by Parliament.

Queries sent to the IT Ministry, Meta, and Google did not elicit any response until publication. Any move to substantially dilute or withdraw the protection for social media companies is likely to face strong opposition from the technology industry and civil society organisations.

Several developments have culminated in the government’s changing thought on safe harbour, including concerns within a section of the establishment that social media algorithms have, on occasion, disproportionately amplified Opposition-led or anti-establishment narratives over official government communication.

The role of Instagram during the students’ protests in July, when the platform emerged as a key vehicle for mobilising online support, is understood to have played a part in these deliberations. The government has been examining how social media platforms determine the reach and visibility of different kinds of content, and whether their recommendation systems can influence public discourse while remaining insulated from legal responsibility for the material they amplify.

The friction between the government and social media companies has intensified in recent months. In July, the IT Ministry summoned Meta’s global policy executives, including its global affairs president Joel Kaplan, after a video uploaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly withheld by Facebook in India during the students’ protests.

The government had also raised concerns about the prevalence of deepfakes and the company’s compliance with Indian laws. The tensions are not limited to Meta. Elon Musk-owned X has challenged the Centre’s online content blocking and takedown framework, including the use of the government’s Sahyog portal to issue removal notices.

In September 2025, the Karnataka High Court dismissed X’s challenge to the mechanism, following which the company filed an appeal. The dispute has become emblematic of the widening disagreements between the government and technology platforms over the boundaries of online speech and the state's authority to regulate it.

The government’s thinking has also received impetus from recent observations by the Supreme Court in the Just Rights for Children Alliance vs S Harish case, where the court raised concerns about social media companies’ failure to adequately prevent the circulation of child sexual exploitation and abuse material.

In its October 15 order, the court observed that Section 79 was inadequate to address persistent regulatory failures, describing the loss of safe harbour as a consequence that was too drastic for routine non-compliance but insufficient to deter violations.

It called for a separate framework of proportionate penalties, including monetary fines, while retaining the loss of safe harbour as a last resort for serious violations. Separately, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, has also pushed for stronger action against social media companies.

In August, Dubey warned that Meta could lose its safe harbour protection following the temporary removal of Modi's video, and said the committee had recommended withdrawing such protections from platforms failing to comply with Indian laws.

Apart from the review of safe harbour, the government is exploring whether social media and messaging platforms should be required to inform authorities before introducing major product changes that could...