Reddit and India's IT Rules: Blocking Orders and Section 69A

India's Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, expanded obligations on online intermediaries, including grievance mechanisms, compliance officers, and rapid removal of flagged content, layered on top of Section 69A of the IT Act, which empowers the government to order content blocked in the interests of sovereignty, security, public order, and friendly relations with foreign states.

A defining feature of the regime is its opacity. Blocking orders under Section 69A are executive-driven and covered by a strict confidentiality clause that, together with an emergency provision, allows the government to block access to information without providing a reasoned public order or notifying the originator of the content. Legal commentators warned that such opacity creates a chilling effect on online speech, as users self-censor and avoid discussing politically sensitive topics. Although the Supreme Court's Shreya Singhal v. Union of India judgment upheld Section 69A on the strength of its procedural safeguards, in X Corp v. Union of India the Karnataka High Court upheld blocking orders extending to entire user accounts as preventive and proportionate, and in March 2025 the Supreme Court issued notice on a petition challenging Rule 16 and Rule 9 of the Blocking Rules, the provisions that keep orders secret.

Reddit's own transparency reports documented how directly the company was drawn into this regime. In the first half of 2025, Reddit geoblocked four posts under three separate Section 69A Blocking Orders issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and India was its top government requester with 37 removal requests. In the second half of 2025, Reddit received a court order through Pune Police identifying 825 pieces of allegedly defamatory content about an online matrimonial service, accompanied by a warning that failure to comply could result in a countrywide ban; Reddit found no rule violations, took no action, and challenged the order, and the court concurred with its decision. Reddit also temporarily restricted two posts under an order from the High Court of Madhya Pradesh while challenging that order on freedom-of-expression grounds.

Users on some Indian networks additionally reported that Reddit, alongside other sites, became inaccessible at various points at the ISP level, though the confidential nature of blocking orders made it difficult to confirm the specific legal basis or scope.

On 10 February 2026, MeitY notified amendments to the IT Rules that sharply tightened the regime: intermediaries must now act on government or court orders, including takedowns, within three hours of receipt instead of the earlier 36-hour window, and synthetically generated content must be prominently labelled and embedded with permanent provenance markers. The amendments took effect on 20 February 2026, leaving platforms a compliance window of only ten days.