After trial run, Karnataka government to formalise fact-check unit soon
The Information Disorder Tackling Unit had a 90-day trial run from March end through the Lok Sabha election season. Fake news related to politics and elections topped the list of categories under which fact checks were carried out.
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During the IDTU trial run, fake news related to politics and elections topped the list of categories under which fact checks were carried out. (File photo)After a trial run, the Karnataka government is now gearing up to formalise the Information Disorder Tackling Unit (IDTU), a first-of-its-kind government-run programme to tackle fake news emanating online.
According to sources, a proposal to do so is under the home department’s consideration so that IDTU can be integrated with a legal cell and enforcement agency. “Right now, there is no platform to enable all these three factors,” sources said, adding that a final decision was likely in the coming days.
Karnataka IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge told The Indian Express that efforts are on to formalise the IDTU. “Ultimately, the unit will fall under the home department and the IT/BT department is willing to provide the assistance required,” he said.
During the IDTU trial run, fake news related to politics and elections topped the list of categories under which fact checks were carried out, according to government data. More than a third (34 per cent) of all fact checks carried out were related to political developments and a fifth (20 per cent) were regarding elections and voting.
The 90-day trial run took place from the end of March and through the Lok Sabha election season.
Of the remaining fact checks, 18 per cent were related to general events which were deliberately misconstrued while 15 per cent were regarding news regarding ‘communal events’. Digitally altered photographs and videos comprised 10 per cent of the fact checks and the remaining 3 per cent was related to crime.
The IDTU conducted an average of nine fact checks per day during the trial period, bringing the total to 537. Of these, 39 were sent to legal review after which 18 First Information Reports (FIRs) were registered.
The agencies tasked with checking fake news online screened an average of 7,800 articles per day and raised 319 alerts during the period. A total of 79,098 articles were archived for legal purposes.
Recently, during the launch of the Karnataka Cyber Security Policy 2024, Kharge had said that the total number of threats detected since the formation of IDTU exceeded 7.5 lakh. “Rest we could not assess because we were not able to handle the traffic,” he had said.
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