The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on February 3 published draft rules to govern digital, social media, and OTT platforms operating in the country. These rules are modelled after India's Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021, which went into effect from February 2021. Definition of intermediary Bangladesh's rules define an intermediary as "any person who on behalf of another person receives stores or transmits electronic records or provides any service with respect to such records and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web-hosting service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online auction sites, online market places and cyber cafes." There is no definition for social media intermediary, but the rules nevertheless refer to social media intermediaries throughout. These draft rules also don't define significant social media intermediary, but another version in Bengali published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which pertains to OTT regulation, defines them as an intermediary with more than 1 million registered users. India's IT Rules: India's IT Act, 2000, also defines an intermediary as above, but the IT Rules go further and define two sub-categories: Social media intermediary, which is defined as an intermediary that "primary or solely enables online interaction between two or more users and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify or access information using its services" Significant social media intermediary, which is a social media intermediary whose number of registered users in India is more than 50 lakhs. Terms of service of intermediaries Bangladesh's rules require intermediaries, including social media intermediaries, to: Visibly publish…
