Daybreak - India's new IT rules could turn every content creator into a publisher. Without the protections

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

A cartoon reposted. An account restricted. A takedown notice with no warning and no appeal.India's new IT rules give platforms three hours to remove flagged content — the shortest window anywhere in the world. But a draft amendment published last month could go even further, potentially treating anyone who posts about current affairs as a publisher. Without the protections that come with it.For millions of creators, anonymous users, and global tech platforms, the stakes just got harder to ignore.The deadline to push back is April 14th.Tune in.Find the IFF email template here.Buy your tickets for the Zero Shot event here. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Imagine this. After a long day, you're scrolling on X as per usual. You repost a cartoon or a post that's slightly critical of the government. As the scrolling continues, you kind of forget about it. But then, within hours, it's gone. It's been taken down. Soon you get an email from X saying that your post has been withheld because of a legal demand from MAPI or the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. You are simply told to contact a government email address or go to court if you really want to challenge it.

You were not told before it was removed. There is no list of what exactly you violated. You don't even have to be the original creator here. All you have to do is repost flagged content and that is enough to get the same notice. And if you're the one posting something that the government takes offence to, then it's likely that you risk losing your account entirely. What I just told you has been the experience for several social media users over the last couple years in India. But since February, it's been happening with more urgency.

Why? Well, the information technology, intermediary guidelines and digital media ethics code amendment rules 2026 were notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on February 10th, 26. It took effect from the 20th of February. And over March, the scale of those rules has. has just been materializing in full. In a nutshell, here's what the rules did. They gave platforms a compliance window of three hours to take down flat content. All AI content would have to be labelled as such prominently, and if platforms failed to comply,

they would lose their safe harbour status and individual employees would have to face criminal charges. In just the first couple weeks of March, news outlet Media Nama recorded more than 40 such takedown notices. posts of regular users were being geoblocked so that other users in India couldn't see them. Accounts were being restricted and posts were being taken down altogether. And it's not just regular users. Even Caravan, a news publication, had some of its posts taken down on Instagram and X,

though the original article stayed up. At first, there was some dissent. People were pushing back against a democracy that seemed to be curtailing free speech. Critics and activists pointed out that the compliance window was the smallest in the world, and even a US government report mentioned that these rules could be considered a non-tariff trade barrier. But things really started to look even more serious at the end of March. On March 30th, Méti issued a draft amendment for these already existing rules. And this draft is what raised alarm bells everywhere, and especially with

digital rights activist groups like India's Internet Freedom Foundation. The most important suggested amendment to the rule and the one that's a cause for concern is this. Any person posting content that is sociopolitical, economic or cultural in nature where the substance is in the nature of news and current affairs would be subject to the same scrutiny a registered publication would be. What that means in simple language is this. If you were to post something informational about a protest or an event that is in some way political, the government would see you the same way it sees news publications. and hold you to the same standards.

But without the same legal protections as an actual journalist. Your content could be taken down, your account could be blocked, especially if someone thinks your information is fake, and your identity could be disclosed. So you can see where the critique is coming from, and how all of this is set to change how social media platforms fundamentally operate in India and how you use it. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the can.

I'm your host, Retrieuberghese, and every day of the week, my co-host, Snitha Sharma and I bring you one news story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Thursday, the 9th of April. When the Sahya Portal went live in October 2024 24, it marked a sudden shift for platforms. It was an online portal that allowed hundreds of state-level agencies to issue take-down notices directly to the platforms. Earlier, they would have to be navigating through different bureaucratic channels. The thing is, companies like X and Google and Meta all enjoy a legal perk called Safe Harbour status. What this means is that the platform is legally immune to any sort of action that's taken

against illegal content published on the platform and not buy it. Basically, it's not responsible for the user content. But once a government has issued a take down notice, the platform has to comply in some way or another. If they don't, they risk losing safe harbour. And that opens them up to any number of lawsuits based on user content. So, as the volume of notices through Sahoy grew, the moderation did as well. For example, Meta took down 28,000 pieces of content in India in just the first half of 2025. Meanwhile, X received more than 29,000 takedown requests in 2025, out of which it took down more than 26,000.

For meta, that number was three times the amount of content it had taken down just two years ago in 2023. So things were already kind of tough. But then, the 2026 rules that came into effect in February made things even tougher on the platforms. Currently, India's IT rules have the shortest takedown window in the world. It used to be 24 to 36 hours. But now it's three.

A social media executive also. told Reuters that the new rule was never even in consultation with the companies, which means they got no chance to push back. And like I mentioned earlier, missing that narrow window could be catastrophic for platforms. Not only would the company lose safe harbour and open itself up to expensive lawsuits, individual employees working in the compliance teams could face criminal charges and even jail time of up to seven years. This is why it is a requirement for these companies to have a chief compliance officer residing and working in India. And it's kind of part of their job description to be on the hook if a platform does miss a

deadline. That's already pretty intense. And the draft amendment is only increasing the stakes exponentially. Stay tuned. Hi, I'm quickly interrupting this episode to paint you yet another scenario. Picture this. It's big billion days in 2027. You're getting a new phone, but you don't.

don't have to do the hard work of comparing every single option this time. AI agents have already pre-indexed every SKU, every coupon, every bank offer across Flipkart, Amazon, Nishu and Geomart. In about 400 milliseconds, they find you the Samsung phone that's cheaper on Amazon with an HDFC offer. Because of the way agents work, ad impressions have created 70%. The entire festive season playbook, which is built on humans browsing, has stopped working. This is one of the 12 scenarios that we will dissect at Zero Short on 12 April at

Bangal International Centre. If you value sharp opinions, honest disagreements and an experience that will trigger new ideas and you, you should be there. Get your tickets now. The link is in the show notes. Now, back to the episode. The first change the draft amendment suggests is pretty drastic. You know, the one where individuals are going to be considered as news publication. The Métis secretary himself acknowledged that this was a concern. In a report from the print, he agreed that the definition of content covering current affairs was broad enough to include users who had never thought of themselves as publishers or journalists. He said, and I quote,

Today with citizen journalism, this is a grey area. And that should concern you as much as it concerns me. The definition is so vague that it basically includes everyone. from a YouTuber to a commentator on X to another creator on Instagram. All of them could see their content get taken down and their accounts restricted. For those who make their livelihood from content creation, this is terrible news. See, India's creator economy is estimated to be at more than 2 million active digital creators. They generate more than $25 billion in revenue.

And these numbers could be directly impacted by these rules. because a large number of creators do produce opinion-driven content and on-ground reportage. And if they're categorized as news, they could quickly become exposed to legal scrutiny. For platforms, this could mean losing out on the very users and creators who make them money. So, with the Sayyok portal increasing the scale of takedown notices and the 3-hour window reducing platform's ability to go through a thorough appraisal process and an increasing number of users being scrutinized is a recipe for disaster.

How do you ensure that your platform remains user-friendly when your entire existence in a geography depends on being decidedly unfriendly to users? What's worse is that the fallout doesn't just end at content disappearing and account suspensions. If you happen to be anonymous online, the platform you use would be required to disclose your identity to whoever flat your post. This could be a government body, law enforcement, or even a third party that identifies as a victim of whatever content you posted.

The draft amendments also require platforms to hold on to your usage data much longer than privacy rules generally allow. This actually takes away your right to erasure, which is a right granted to users under the DPDP or Digital Personal Data Protection Act from 2023. Also, for platforms, government advisories become legally binding. See, currently Métis advisories to platforms are guidance without legal consequences. But this draft would change that. It makes compliance with any clarification, advisory, order, direction, SOP or guideline absolutely compulsory. And failure is what would trigger a loss of safe harbour.

India's three-hour rule is actually a global first. And like I mentioned earlier, it was introduced with no public consultation. For a country famous for dragging its feet through bureaucratic mazes, the rules came into effect in just 10 days after the first notification. Globally speaking, all of this has put India in an uncomfortable limelight. No other country operates in the same way. For example, all EU's Digital Services Act requires its platform transparency and independent audits. The US, meanwhile, has no federal takedown timeline at all.

And while it's in the spotlight, India is also catching some heat from its global peers. More on this in the next segment. Even the US government has flagged these rules as politically motivated and also a non-tariff trade barrier recently. The Office of the United States Trade Representative or USTR is an agency that's responsible for developing, negotiating and promoting US foreign trade policy. Here's what a report from the scroll had to say about the memo published by the USTR. The report said that the IT rules impose several requirements that US stakeholders have identified as concerning.

What it noted as a specific problem was that the IT rules impose personal criminal liability on individual employees in cases where a firm is not in compliance with the rules. For India, this report is a legitimate concern. Because the last time the USTR flagged an Indian digital law implementation, the US ended up threatening, India with retaliatory tariffs. Here's what happened. In 2016 and 2020, India introduced the digital services tax. It's basically a tax that government imposes on the revenue that the large tech companies earn from providing digital services in a country.

Think things like online advertising, digital marketplaces and data services. India announced a 6% tax on online advertising in 2016 and a 2% tax on e-commerce and digital services in 2020. A dispute soon followed. The U.S. flagged India's DST as discriminatory against American technology companies because it left out Indian ones. It threatened a 25% tariff on Indian exports and India soon withdrew the tax and faces completing the process by April 2025.

Considering the fact that India is currently negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with the U.S., this report is not good news. But for the US to also successfully threaten the Indian government, it would actually also need the backing of the very businesses it's trying to protect. But those businesses almost seem to be in a kind of hostage situation. Google and Meta together hold more than 60% of India's digital advertising market. With that kind of market share, they are not going to risk losing their legal protections in India or risk being faced with criminal charges.

So what it comes down to is this. India has built an infrastructure for a censorship regime that's implicating big tech in it. It's also an implication that the companies themselves cannot really afford to contest. As long as they want to keep one of the biggest markets in hand, they will have to be complicit. When the internet boom came, it came with the promise of no boundaries, free speech and access to information. But today, the Indian government is challenging. the very basis of a free internet for its citizens. Still, there is a window.

This is a draft amendment. METI has invited public comments on the draft rules till April 14th. The Internet Freedom Foundation even has a template email on their website that you can use to write to the government. So, if you'd like to let them know your concerns, you will find the link in the show notes. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news. platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the

top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Virgis and edited by Rajiv Sien.