Social Media and Activism — Key Changes

Entry	Year	Description	Impact
IT Amendment 2008	2008	Section 40 of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, enacted as Act 10 of 2009, substituted Chapter XII and section 79. It provided conditional protection to intermediaries for third-party information, data and communication links. The section differentiates the intermediary’s role in transmission, its due diligence and conduct such as conspiring in or inducing an unlawful act. In Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015), paragraphs 117–119(c), the Supreme Court upheld section 79 while reading down the knowledge-and-removal provision in section 79(3)(b) by reference to court orders or appropriate government notification concerning Article 19(2) matters.	Consider a hypothetical social-media campaign criticising a public project. The campaigner’s responsibility for a post and the hosting platform’s conditional exemption are separate questions. A complaint alleging offence is not interchangeable with the court or government trigger described in Shreya Singhal; nor does intermediary status excuse participation in unlawful conduct. This distinction helps explain how platforms can carry citizen speech while retaining legal responsibilities. The entry records the amendment and the 2015 constitutional interpretation. It does not treat the 2011 rules discussed in that judgment as a complete account of today’s intermediary rules, or confuse section 79 with the separate blocking power in section 69A.