The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) is investigating YouTube for allegedly violating its content policies. The government has invoked Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Rule 15(2) of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 to ask YouTube to block certain content.
Under Section 69A of the IT Act, the Central Government has legal powers to “block public access to any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource” by issuing directions to intermediaries in order to protect the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign countries, maintenance of public order and prevention of incitement to commit any cognizable offence related to the above.
Sources familiar with the matter claimed that there were multiple requests from MIB to remove certain content that violated the country’s content policy norms and laws. Despite this, the Google-owned platform did not remove or restrict the specific content, claiming that it did not violate YouTube’s community guidelines.
Failure to comply with such government directions could see intermediaries such as YouTube and X lose their legal immunity under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000.
In response to questions from Storyboard18, YouTube said: “We have clear policies regarding removal requests from governments around the world. We consider government removal requests when notified through the appropriate legal process. We also review flagged content for violations of our Community Guidelines, and where necessary, after a thorough investigation, we restrict or remove content in accordance with local law and our terms of service. All of these requests are tracked and included in our transparency report.”
In March 2024, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) ordered YouTube to block a CBC News documentary that highlighted the Indian government’s alleged involvement in the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the Canadian territory. Twitter (formerly Twitter) was also reportedly ordered by MeitY to disable posts related to the documentary.
From January to June 2023, Google received 2,191 content removal requests from governments, and from July to December 2023, 1,677 content removal requests were submitted by governments.
Over the past decade, the Indian government has asked Google to remove around 115,500 pieces of content from its platforms, including YouTube and its web browser, and India is now the third-highest country in terms of the number of content removal requests sent to Google, according to Surfshark research.
“Most of the content India requested to be removed was on YouTube (8.8k), Google Play apps (4.3k) and web search (1.4k),” the report said.
Between 2013 and 2022, Indian government agencies requested Google to remove content more than 19,600 times. The analysis found that the most common reason for these requests was “defamation.”