Let's talk about the IT Rules (Second Draft Amendments), 2026

On 30th March 2026, MeitY released the IT Rules (Second Draft Amendments), 2026 for public consultation. If this becomes law, the consequences could be:

1. Your self-hosted Mastodon, Matrix, or Discourse server could be taken down for something a user posted
2. A tweet about an election, a YouTube video explaining policy, an eyewitness post on a riot, all could fall under publisher-level rules meant for news organisations
3. MeitY advisories — currently non-binding — could become law-equivalent, with no parliamentary oversight and no public consultation
4. Your Right to Erasure under the DPDP Act, 2023 gets subordinated to older 180-day retention rules

BigTech can absorb this. Small FOSS projects, student side-projects, and community forums cannot. The compliance burden lands hardest on the smallest players

I'm not a lawyer and this is not my analysis. In this talk, I'll first ask the room what they think, how they read it, then we'll go through the professional comments published by SFLC.in and IFF on the four substantive changes — Rules 3(1)(g)/(h), 3(4), 8(1), and 14(2)/(5) and see how those line up with the room's intuitions.

1. If you self-host anything — Mastodon, Matrix, a forum these rules can put you on the hook for what your users post.
2. The draft lets MeitY make binding content rules via advisory, bypassing Parliament