Fact Check Unit: Govt to pick members; nodal officers from ministries

According to the official, the government is close to finalising the contours of the Fact Check Unit and its interplay with social media sites like Meta, YouTube and Twitter. “We aim to notify the Fact Check Unit and related details in about ten days.

The unit will uphold the highest levels of professional and ethical standards to ensure trustworthiness and neutrality in the identification of potentially misleading or fake content,” the official said.

The FCU is expected to require platforms to “prominently display” when they take content down on the basis of the unit’s inputs, allow for an appeal process with a government committee, and maintain a public database of content it deems as misleading, The Indian Express has learnt. Further, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) is also learnt to have finalised the broad-level processes that the FCU will follow, including granting it suo motu powers to identify potentially misleading content, corroborating evidence across various ministries and departments, and communicating its conclusion to social media platforms.

Last week, MeitY notified amendments to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, creating a regulatory regime that will allow a fact check body it appoints to label content related to the government on online platforms as “fake” or “misleading”. Content marked as such by the body will have to be taken down by online intermediaries if they wish to retain their ‘safe harbour,’ which is legal immunity they enjoy against third-party content.

The rules have attracted criticism from a range of stakeholders – the Congress and several other Opposition parties, including the TMC, RJD and CPI(M), have come down heavily on the government over its decision. So have digital rights activists and press associations like the Editors Guild of India – the latter described the rules as draconian; and have called for the rules to be withdrawn.

The rules have already faced a legal challenge, with comedian Kunal Kamra approaching the Bombay High Court questioning its constitutional validity. The Centre’s lawyer in the case, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, has told the court there will be a separate notification regarding the FCU, and there was, therefore, no urgency to hear the plea. The next hearing in the case is scheduled on April 21.

Queries sent to the IT Ministry on the contours of the FCU remained unanswered until publication.

The FCU is also expected to have a designated website of its own where it will publish the links to pieces of content that it has identified as fake or misleading. It is worth noting that under the rules, taking down such content has been specified as due diligence requirements that online intermediaries – social media platforms and internet service providers like Airtel, Jio and Vi – are expected to fulfil in order to preserve safe harbour protections afforded to them under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. If they choose not to take down content flagged by the unit as fake, the government could take them to court.

The government is also planning to establish an appeals mechanism when it notifies the unit. The general understanding so far was that people whose content may have been taken down by platforms after FCU’s inputs would have had to approach the courts to appeal the decision with no other avenue of recourse.

The final notification on the unit is expected to clarify that understanding and allow aggrieved parties to seek recourse at one of three government-appointed appeal committees that the Centre had set up earlier this year. “Any person aggrieved by the action of the intermediaries, based on the information identified as fake or false by the FCU, may take the standard route of appeal as per IT Rules,” the official said.