Draft rules for what online platforms can and cannot host run the risk of executive overreach

A closer reading, however, suggests that government ‘advisories,’ ‘guidelines’ and ‘clarifications’ could effectively become binding. If so, the proposed framework in its current form may not only increase compliance costs for platforms, but also subtly move away from Parliament-led rule-making towards more immediate executive direction, with correspondingly fewer procedural safeguards.

India has been tightening its digital laws. Frameworks such as its AI Governance Guidelines and Digital Personal Data Protection Act were framed as ‘techno-legal’ tools, meant to test compliance, encourage innovation and nudge companies to build safety by design.

This February, amended IT Rules obliged platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery (deepfakes included) within two hours of a complaint and other unlawful content within three hours of a government or court order. They must also adhere to a seven-day timeline for resolving user complaints, label AI-generated content and provide safeguards against deepfakes in general and posts on explosives or child sexual abuse.

Now, this week’s draft amendments—with a feedback window open till 14 April—have raised the stakes for platforms. Social media apps and search engines could lose safe-harbour protections under the IT Act if they fail to comply with government-issued advisories, exposing them to liability for user content.

The draft proposal to treat guidelines as “enforceable instructions” has drawn concern from bodies such as Internet Freedom Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India, which view it as an overreach and a potential threat to free speech. The fear is that the executive could, in practice, set rules more rapidly and flexibly than formal lawmaking allows. Courts could intervene, of course.

The apex court’s ruling in the Shreya Singhal case, which struck down Section 66A of the IT Act partly because its vague restrictions on speech could too easily be misused, is a touchstone.More recently, the Centre’s attempt to set up fact-checking units raised similar questions about executive overreach and free expression.

Platforms tend to play safe rather than risk run-ins with authority. Large firms may challenge rules, as they’ve done before, but smaller ones usually comply to minimize legal uncertainty.

A comparison with other jurisdictions is instructive. The EU’s Digital Services Act imposes extensive obligations on platforms, but through a legislative framework with clearly defined categories of illegal content, procedural guardrails and avenues for appeal. Regulators merely enforce these rules.

In the US, a safe-harbour law shields user-generated content while letting platforms moderate posts in good faith. The executive plays a limited role in content decisions; judicial scrutiny is expected to keep online excesses in check, not administrative action.

India’s executive approach may enable quick crackdowns on deepfakes, fraud, fake-news campaigns and the like, but we must ensure that speed does not compromise legal certainty. For the sake of free expression and a stable digital economy, it should be crystal clear what’s okay to post online and what isn’t.