What powers Spoorthi Priya will have as Facebook's grievance officer? check here

Representational Image: Reuters

New Delhi: Social media giant Facebook has named Spoorthi Priya as its grievance officer for India on its website, as the new IT rules coming into effect recently. The company has appointed a grievance officer, nodal officer, and chief compliance officer. These nodal officials would be residing in India.

As per Facebook's website, users can contact Spoorthi Priya - who is the Grievance Officer - through an e-mail ID. They can also contact Facebook in India via post at an address in New Delhi, said a PTI report citing the page information.

The new social media rules enforced in India are reportedly designed to prevent abuse and misuse of digital platforms. It also offers users a robust forum for grievance redressal.

Accordingly, the grievance officer will have to acknowledge the complaint within 24 hours and dispose of such complaint within a period of 15 days from the date of its receipt. The officer will receive and acknowledge any order, notice, or direction issued by the authorities.

Under the new IT rules, social media companies will have to take down flagged content within 36 hours, and remove within 24 hours content that is flagged for nudity, pornography etc.

Non-compliance with the rules would result in these platforms losing the intermediary status that provides them immunity from liabilities over any third-party data hosted by them. 

It may be noted here that India is a major market for global digital platforms. The country has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram clients, while 1.75 crore account holders are on microblogging platform Twitter, according to the government data.

(With Agency Inputs)