Social media platforms must respect fundamental rights of citizens: Centre

New Delhi: The Centre Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that an individual’s liberty and freedom of cannot be waylaid or jettisoned in the slipstream of social and technological advancement and the social media platforms must respect the fundamental rights of the citizens and conform to the Constitution of India.

In an affidavit filed in response to a petition by a Twitter user against the suspension of his account by the micro-blogging platform, the central government said that social media platforms should not take down the account itself or completely suspend it in all cases.

The centre explained that a platform may give prior notice to the user and seek removal of specific information or content that violates the platform policies or the applicable Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules and only in cases where the majority of the contents/posts/tweets in a user account are unlawful, the platform may take the extreme step of taking down the whole information or suspending the whole account.