"Your situation is worse than a government department": Delhi High Court pulls up Meta

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday pulled up tech giant Meta for its failure to respond properly to TV Today’s plea against the blocking of Instagram page, Harper's Bazaar India (owned by TV Today). .A Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora remarked that Meta's functioning appeared to be worse than that of a government department.“Your situation is worse than the government department. Please be careful. You have to be alive to the situation. Your system is not working. Your system does not work. It has to work,” the Court said.Meta should put its house in order or the Court may pass an order castigating the platform, the Bench warned. .The Bench made the remarks while dealing with a plea filed by TV Today, which had moved the High Court after Harper's Bazaar India Instagram page (@bazaarindia) was blocked on a third party's complaint that copyright was violated. The blocking has also led TV Today to challenge the constitutionality of Rule 3 (1) (c) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.TV Today has argued that Rule 3 (1)(c) allows an intermediary to block access to accounts without providing a fair opportunity for users to contest such a decision. Certain ambiguities in the IT Rules are being misused to do so, the Court was told..Advocate Hrishikesh Baruah appeared for the news platform and argued that they had written thrice to Meta with their grievance and even approached the grievance redressal officer. Each time, TV Today got a response that it had not written to the right channel, the Court was told. .Advocate Tejas Karia appeared for Meta and told the Bench that the Harper’s Bazaar’s Instagram page was blocked following three copyright strikes.Karia told the Bench that the reply sent to TV Today is not a decision and that the platform needs some time to respond. He added that Meta gets a large number of requests daily and files a report with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) as well.Karia also submitted that TV Today's plea is effectively a challenge to the Information Technology Rules (IT Rules)..However, the Bench said that just because Meta has millions of users, it does not mean that it would not put its house in order.The Court added that the response sent by Meta to TV Today reads like a final order..Karia then asked the Court for time till tomorrow, stating he would come up with a better response by then. The Court allowed the request and said that it would hear the matter on Wednesday.