The Centre has also issued a stern warning to the social media companies and the online sites that they must deal harshly with obscene, vulgar, pornographic, paedophilic and other illegal content otherwise they would encounter legal consequences. This advice was given by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on December 29, 2025, following perceived laxity in dealing with such content by platforms by the government.
In its recommendation, MeitY reminded the intermediaries, such as the social media platforms, of their legal responsibilities under the Information Technology Act. The ministry emphasized that platforms need to conduct due diligence as required under Section 79 of the IT Act to have exemption of liability against third-party content on the platform. The inability to follow these requirements may lead to the revocation of legal protection and give way to legal measures in line with the currently existing legislations.
The ministry also warned that failure to comply with the provisions of the IT Act and the IT Rules, 2021, may have severe penalties, and the ministry may initiate prosecution on the provisions of the IT Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and other criminal laws. This can be taken further not only against the platforms but also against the users as observed in the advisory.
MeitY reported that it had noticed social media companies were not always detecting, reporting, and deleting obscene, vulgar, inappropriate, or even illegal content. The ministry has underscored the importance of increased coherence and strength in due diligence frameworks of the intermediaries, particularly in as far as content moderate and prompt takedowns are concerned.
The advisory reiterated the provisions of the IT Act and IT Rules, 2021 and highlighted that platforms must take reasonable efforts to ensure that the content is not hosted, uploaded, published, transmitted, stored, or shared through the platform in forms of obscenity, pornographic, paedophilic, harmful to minors, and other forms of illegal information.
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