India cuts social media takedown window to three hours

India’s government has amended rules first introduced in 2021 to sharply reduce the time social platforms have to remove content deemed unlawful. Where companies previously had roughly 36 hours to act on government notices, the revised directive requires removal within about three hours of receipt. That compressed timetable shifts the emphasis from considered human review to speed‑first decisioning and expanded automation. For global operators with substantial Indian user bases, the change will require faster legal triage, expanded 24/7 moderation capacity and improved notice‑handling workflows. Those adjustments carry direct costs: hiring more staff, investing in advanced detection systems, and building more resilient operations to meet a continuous, accelerated demand for enforcement. The upshot is a higher probability platforms will err on the side of removal to avoid sanctions, increasing the risk of mistaken takedowns and collateral suppression of lawful speech. The amendment also intensifies jurisdictional friction between New Delhi and multinational tech firms, and is likely to prompt more intensive engagement and potentially quicker escalation — fines, blocking orders or other sanctions — for noncompliance. This policy sits alongside other regulatory conversations in India — including renewed debate over age‑based restrictions and technical verification measures — that together signal a broader appetite for granular, enforceable digital rules. Those other proposals highlight practical barriers that also apply to rapid takedowns: technical limitations of geolocation and account verification, disproportionate burdens on smaller platforms, and privacy and security risks from more intrusive data collection. Policymakers and courts elsewhere have faced similar tensions between swift enforcement and rights protections, suggesting India may see litigation and iterative policy experiments rather than immediate, friction‑free compliance. For users, faster takedowns may quickly remove illicit material but also increase erroneous removals, complicating appeals and transparency reporting. From a business continuity and product perspective, firms may reprioritise resources towards India‑specific compliance, potentially diverting effort from other safety or feature work. The broader implication is precedent: enforcing compressed timelines in a major market raises the bar for global moderation norms and could influence other jurisdictions contemplating faster enforcement levers. Observers should expect platforms to invest in automation, expand local teams, test privacy‑preserving attestations where relevant, and engage in sustained legal and policy dialogue with Indian authorities.