Having had their share of run-ins with the Government, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and its messaging platform WhatsApp are hiring for the roles of nodal contact and grievance officer as well as chief compliance officer as mandated under India's IT rules for large social media companies. Meta has put up advertisements for these positions on LinkedIn over the course of the past few days.
This person will coordinate with law enforcement agencies in India, including facilitating timely responses to valid legal requests under applicable law and our policies, and will also oversee the company's acknowledgement, redressal and response to user complaints and grievances, the post said.
The new IT rules, which came into effect in May this year, mandate that significant social media intermediaries (those with other 50 lakh users) appoint a grievance officer, nodal officer and a chief compliance officer. These personnel are required to be resident in India.
Meta (formerly Facebook) counts India among its biggest markets for its family of apps. According to data cited by the Indian government earlier this year, there are 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers and 21 crore Instagram account holders in the country.
As per the new IT rules, all intermediaries have to prominently publish on their website, app or both, the name of the grievance officer and his/her contact details as well as the mechanism by which a user or a victim may make a complaint. The grievance officer will have to acknowledge the complaint within 24 hours and dispose of such complaint within a period of 15 days from the date of its receipt, and receive and acknowledge any order, notice or direction issued by the authorities.