Micro-blogging system and social networking platform, Twitter Incorporation, said that a PIL petition over Islamophobic posts was not maintainable against it as it was not amenable to the jurisdiction of Telangana High Court.
In a counter affidavit filed in Telangana HC hearing the PIL plea, the social networking platform company said that it was incorporated under the laws of the United States of America. With a registered office at San Francisco, California, USA, the company operates Twitter social media platform for ‘self-expression of its users to communicate and stay connected through small messages of 280 characters or less (Tweet). Sometimes, the posts may contain pictures or videos’.
It said the company would not author or post the tweets/hashtags about which objections were raised by the petitioner in the PIL plea. “It is the user of the platform (twitter) who is the author and publisher of the tweet/hashtag,” the company said. Before availing Twitter services, every user contractually agrees to the ‘terms of service’ which are publicly available at www.twitter.com/en/tos , the company said.
Under this, the user assumes responsibility for the content posted by them. Describing the PIL petition as ‘premature’, it said the petitioner failed to approach the authorities concerned established by law to investigate into the objectionable posts and content.
The petitioner did not lodge any complaint against the company in any police station. No First Information Report too was issued. The petitioner failed to avail such alternate and more efficacious remedy, the company stated. The counter affidavit said the company was an ‘intermediary’ as per Information Technology (IT) Act-2020. The act of posting tweets, including ones with hashtags, is under the control of the authors and originators of the tweets, it said.
The company claimed that legal liability for electronic documents, content or information commonly exchanged over Internet is governed by IT Act. Under this Act, attribution of liability for any electronic record is on the ‘originator’. The liability cannot be shifted onto an intermediary like the company, it said.
