ONLINE SPEECH, OFFLINE CONSEQUENCES: REGULATING SOCIAL MEDIA IN INDIA

Social media is now one of the main places where Indians talk politics, argue about public issues and take part in civic life. Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution protects this speech. But the same platforms have also brought misinformation, hate speech, deepfakes, cyberbullying and organised disinformation. To deal with these, the Government relies on wide powers under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. These include taking down content, blocking it, intercepting messages and tracing who sent them. Such powers raise fears of censorship, prior restraint, executive overreach and a chilling effect on speech, and they touch Articles 14, 19 and 21. This paper looks at the constitutional and statutory framework, the leading Supreme Court decisions and recent High Court rulings, and the new problems created by deepfakes, bots, encryption and AI-based content moderation. It combines a doctrinal study of the law with a comparison of the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, and a small public survey. The comparison shows that the European and British models build in transparency, independent oversight and a right of appeal for users, which India's blocking and interception scheme does not. In the survey, 75% of respondents had come across fake news or deepfakes, only 39.6% knew of government rules on social media content, and 75% wanted an independent body to decide what is fake or harmful. The paper concludes that India needs independent checks before content is blocked, openness about blocking orders, clear duties for platforms, user rights to notice and appeal, and a law on AI and deepfakes that respects proportionality. It also argues that responsibility is shared, and that digital literacy is part of the answer.