Social media and freedom of speech and expression

In November 2012, a young woman was arrested over a Facebook post questioning why Mumbai had come to a standstill after a political leader's death — and her friend was arrested too, for merely ‘liking’ the post. The provision the police used, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, was so broadly worded that a comment, a like, or a forward could all be treated the same way. A few years later, the Supreme Court struck the entire section down. This topic is about what that case decided, and why it still defines every free-speech question social media raises today.

In two minutes

Article 19(1)(a) protects your freedom of speech and expression on social media exactly as it does offline, subject only to the reasonable restrictions Article 19(2) permits, and Shreya Singhal v. Union of India struck down Section 66A of the IT Act, 2000 precisely because it went beyond those permitted restrictions.

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