WhatsApp leads I4C notices; X hit for political content: Data

The Union home ministry’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) issued 426 Section 79(3)(b) notices under the Information Technology Act targeting 110,718 links, accounts, and groups between March 20, 2024 and March 20 this year, with striking variations in both volume and content types across platforms.

The information, submitted by the central government to the Karnataka high court where it argued that Section 79(3)(b) is not a blocking provision but rather a mechanism to notify intermediaries of unlawful content, is the first detailed look at the scale of state-led content moderation outside a different legal framework under Section 69A, but without the safeguards built into the latter provision.

The case involves X suing the government so that it cannot be forced to join the Sahyog portal, which the American company contends is a “censorship portal”. The government, however, said the portal will streamline notification of unlawful content by the state.

According to the data, seen by HT, WhatsApp faced the highest volume of takedowns with 78 notices affecting 83,673 accounts and groups—75% of all content targeted—primarily for trading scams, law enforcement impersonation, and offensive content. Instagram followed with 73 notices targeting 22,150 URLs and accounts for deepfakes, investment scams, and obscene content.

By contrast, Facebook received 57 notices but only 816 URLs were targeted, suggesting more focused enforcement against specific content including deepfakes, electoral manipulation, and false information.

Microsoft’s Skype service saw 23 notices for 2,419 IDs specifically related to “digital arrest” scams, showing a single-issue focus for this platform.

X (Twitter) received 66 notices targeting 802 links, though the court documents revealed 68 notices affecting 1,083 links. Notably, 36 of these notices—covering 809 links—were sent during the general elections (March-June 2024), with many targeting Congress and AAP accounts for content about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah’s reservation stance.

Election-related content and political speech received significant attention on X and Facebook, while child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was cited in notices to X, Telegram, and smaller platforms. Content promoting disharmony or related to separatist movements like Khalistan appeared frequently in notices to Google and multiple other platforms.

YouTube (23 notices/257 URLs) faced diverse content removal requests including reservation-related content, obscenity, “abusiveness”, “tarnishing”, “misinformation” and national security concerns. Google (19 notices/141 URLs) had notices focused on Khalistan content, threat emails, and illegal digital lending apps.

Telegram (23 notices/124 links) was targeted for deepfakes, investment scams, and religious content, while Apple received the fewest major platform notices (9) affecting just 26 apps for impersonation, bomb threats, and illegal digital lending apps.

It is not clear why for content threatening the national security of India, I4C did not make a reference to the IT ministry’s Section 69A blocking committee. Section 69A blocking process is used by the Centre to block content for six specific reasons related to national security and public order.

The Centre gave this information about notices sent to different intermediaries to show how “large number of unlawful information which do not fall under ambit of Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000”. It said that exempting Twitter from needing to join Sahyog harm X’s users due to “the presence of unlawful information causing serious harm to its users”.

Between October 2024 (when the Sahyog portal was operationalised) and March 23, I4C, the financial intelligence unit of the finance ministry, and nine state and union territories have sent 111 Section 79(3)(b) notices through the portal targeting 513 links of which 384 links have been taken down. I4C led with 49 notices targeting 358 URLs of which 287 have been taken down. Karnataka followed with 28 notices targeting 85 URLs of which 61 were taken down followed by Haryana with 10 notices listing 26 URLs of which 10 were taken down.