California-based Jeremy Kessel has now been named as India's grievance redressal officer. Although the appointment does not meet the requirements of new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which clearly mandate key officers including the grievance officer, to be resident in India. This comes after Twitter's interim grievance officer for India, Dharmendra Chatur, stepped down on Sunday within weeks of taking over the key role.
This development comes amid Twitter's standoff with the Centre over the compliance with new IT rules which came into effect on May 26. The rules mandate social media companies to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from the users or victims.
Earlier on June 9, Twitter had written to the government that it was making every effort to comply with new guidelines concerning social media companies and has appointed a nodal contractual person (NCP) and Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) on a contractual basis and was in advanced stages of "finalising the appointment to the role of a chief compliance officer".
Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had on June 5 said that it had given Twitter one last notice to comply with the new rules concerning social media companies. "The provisions for significant social media intermediaries under the Rules have already come into force on May 26 2021 and it has been more than a week but Twitter has refused to comply with the provisions of these Rules. Needless to state, such non-compliance will lead to unintended consequences including Twitter losing exemption from liability as intermediary available under section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. This has clearly been provided under rule 7 of the aforesaid Rules," it said.
All you need to know about Jeremy Kessel:
Jeremy Kessel is a Senior Director of Global Legal Policy at Twitter. According to his Linkedin profile, he has been working with the microblogging platform since December 2009.
He started as a policy executive back in December 2009 and rose through the ranks. He was appointed as the Lead (Legal Policy), Manager (Global Legal Policy), Senior Manager (Global Legal Policy), Director (Global Legal Policy) and Senior Director (Global Legal Policy).
Kessel has also had brief stints at Google and Yahoo.
He specializes in Internet Law & Policy, Intellectual Property Law & Policy, Trust & Safety, Legal Compliance (Privacy and Freedom of Expression), transparency reports. "Driven by diverse ideas and exciting opportunities. Passionate about technology and Internet policy," reads his bio on Linkedin.
Kessel completed his Bachelors in Arts from University of Colorado in 2003. Later, he pursued law at Santa Clara University of Law.
(With ANI inputs)
