YouTuber Alleges Google Violated IT Rules 2021 While Terminating His Accounts: Delhi High Court Seeks Centre's Stand

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice on a plea moved by a YouTuber, claiming to have more than 1 million subscribers, against Google for not complying with the provisions of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 while terminating his two channels.

Justice V Kameswar Rao sought response of Centre and Google while posting the matter next on March 30, on which date a similar issue regarding intermediaries under the IT Rules in Sanjay Hegde's twitter account suspension case is slated to be heard.

The plea has been filed by Rachit Kaushik, having two YouTube Channels popularly known as "Sabloktantra" and "Truth and Dare". The plea has been moved through Advocates Raghav Narayan and Pallavi Dubey. 

During the course of hearing, Senior Advocate N Hooda appearing for the petitioner argued that Google, which owns YouTube, had removed the two YouTube accounts of the petitioner based on an artificial intelligence, thereby not granting any opportunity of being heard to him.

On the other hand, Advocate Mamta Jha appearing for Google argued that there was no question of violation of petitioner's freedom of speech and expression as the termination of accounts was due to violation of the community guidelines against hate speech. She said that the petitioner had made certain videos on Shaheen Bagh and other issues thereby violating the community guidelines of YouTube to which he had agreed while making the user accounts.

In the petition, it has been stated that Google had been indulging in the practise of arbitrary and biased censorship by removing the videos and contents of Petitioner at its whims and fancies, via Artificial intelligence, meaning thereby there was no human interference. Thus, showing utter disregard of the IT Rules.

The petitioner places reliance on Rule 4(8) of the 2021 Rules laying down the procedure to be followed by significant social media intermediary for removal of contents. In this backdrop, the plea avers:

"The said rule mandates that before the significant social media intermediary like Respondent No.2 removes or disables access of any user, it should intimate the user prior to such action being taken with a notification explaining the action being taken and the grounds or reasons for such action. However since the Respondent no.2 has adopted only AI (Artificial intelligence) tool to ascertain the nature of videos, the right to freedom of speech expression have been handed over to robots."

Accordingly, the plea also prays for enactment of a mechanism and constitution of an independent adjudicating authority or redressal forum for redressal of grievances in a time bound manner raised by users against significant social media intermediaries.

The plea also seeks restoration of the two YouTube channels terminated by Google and also to pay a compensation of Rs. 20 lakhs for causing both mental and financial damage to the petitioner by violating his fundamental rights to freedom of speech and expression.

Case Title: RACHIT KAUSHIK v. UNION OF INDIA & ANR