Introduction to Social Media

Instagram, X, YouTube and WhatsApp are not neutral pipes carrying your words — they are private companies that decide what stays up, what comes down, and who sees it first. Before you can ask whether the law protects your right to post, you have to understand what kind of thing a social media platform legally is. That question turns out to be surprisingly hard to answer, and this topic is where you learn why.

In two minutes

Social media platforms are “intermediaries” under Indian law — private entities that host and transmit other people's content — and that legal status, rather than any constitutional guarantee, is what decides how far they can be made to answer for what appears on them.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Legal Language and Writing on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.