IT Ministry notifies body to flag ‘fake’ content about govt, PIB reference removed

The final rules come months after the Ministry, in January, had first proposed that any piece of news that has been identified as “fake” by the fact-checking unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) — the Centre’s nodal agency to share news updates — will not be allowed on online intermediaries. However, the final draft has removed the reference to PIB.

The proposal had earlier drawn criticism. The Editors Guild of India had said that the “determination of fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government and will result in censorship of the press”. The News Broadcasters & Digital Association said it will “have a chilling effect on the media” and should be withdrawn.

On paper, what the final rules now say is that an online intermediary — including social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and internet service providers like Airtel, Jio and Vodafone Idea — should make “reasonable efforts” to not host content related to the Central Government that is “identified as fake or misleading” by a “fact check unit” that may be notified by the IT Ministry.

In essence, if any piece of information is marked as fake by the upcoming fact check unit, intermediaries will be required to take it down, failing which they would risk losing their safe harbour, which protects them from litigation against third-party content. Social media sites will have to take down such posts, and internet service providers will have to block URLs of such content.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar “assured” that the government-backed fact check body will work in a credible way, in a bid to address the concerns. “When we notify the agency, we will certainly be very clear that any doubts in the mind of people that the power will be misused on behalf of the government will be addressed when we notify the agency. There will be a list of dos’ and don’ts that it will have to adhere to,” he told The Indian Express.

“I will assure you that it will not be business as usual, where it will be a government department type of an organisation. We certainly want to conduct fact checks in a credible way and that is not just for the government but also for the intermediary that is going to depend on that particular fact check,” he added.