"We could .. face fines, orders restricting or blocking our services in particular geographies, or other government-imposed remedies as a result of content hosted on our services," Meta warned investors in a recent 10-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Alongside Germany, India's past and future IT laws may particularly lead to "the imposition of fines or other penalties for failure to comply with certain content removal, law enforcement cooperation, and disclosure obligations," the tech giant added. India was the top source of growth in Meta-owned Facebook's worldwide daily (2 billion) and monthly (2.96 billion) active users between December 2021-2022. Why it matters: Meta's concerns come after calls from India's top IT brass to do away with safe harbour protections in India's upcoming Digital India Act, which is poised to regulate the Indian Internet. Although safe harbour protects platforms from liability for the third-party content they host, India's Minister of State for IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar has held the protection responsible for "toxicity" on India's Internet. Changing safe harbour tides in the States a cause for concern: The United States has recently seen various federal laws seeking to restrict safe harbour protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the filing added. The United States Supreme Court also recently refused to roll back safe harbour protections for Google and Twitter, arguably leaving that task to the US Congress. Meta's filing, seemingly compiled before the Court's verdict was announced a few weeks ago, warned that these shifting safe harbour tides could…
