Digital rights groups have urged that the decisions made by the government-appointed grievance appellate committees (GAC), where users are permitted to appeal social media intermediary content moderation decisions, be made public.

Since GACs started operating, more than a month and a half has passed. As of Wednesday, when this article went to print, the committees had received 42 appeals, of which 24 had been resolved.

While a press release from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on January 28 said that “periodic reviews of GACs, and reporting and disclosures of GAC orders, will also be part of the process”, there has been no public disclosure of the orders so far, said experts.

According to the rules, GACs should respond to an appeal 30 days after receiving it. The platform allows major social media intermediaries like Google and Facebook to address complaints and submit their responses to grievances through the portal.

One of the three GACs deals with national security matters, while another addresses content and the remainder of the complaints go to the third body.

On April 1, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a group that advocates for digital rights, sent a letter to the heads of the three GACs pleading with them to make public the method and specifics of the periodic reviews. Also, it asked for information on all intermediaries covered by the Information Technology Act of 2000 whose decisions have so far been the subject of appeals.

Constitution of the GAC under the IT Amendment Rules, 2022, allows for user appeals against due diligence actions of intermediaries “to be decided by members of executive-appointed committees with little to no specialised experience in dealing with user harms”, the IFF said

“The IT rules made private platforms the arbiters of permissible speech on the Internet, in the name of making social media intermediaries accountable to their users,” the rights body said. The combination of these provisions could lead to social media intermediaries pre-emptively censoring free speech on the Internet, it said.

It is important to understand the nature of these appeals, the category of the grievances, and the exact time taken for their redressal, said Kazim Rizvi, founder of public policy think tank The Dialogue.

This information will be crucial to ensure greater transparency in the grievance redressal process and the functioning of the GAC, and will enhance the efficiency of the appellate process, he said.