Centre Amends IT Rules Again, To Notify Agency To Fact Check Govt-Related Fake News

After much back and forth, the Centre on Thursday (April 6) notified multiple amendments to the IT Rules, 2021. The new norms empower the government to flag and identify the spread of misleading information about it. 

On the same day, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that a new entity will be notified to fact check all online content related to the government.

“Government has decided to notify an entity through MeitY and that organisation then would be the fact checker for all aspects of content online and only those that are related to the government,” Chandrasekhar said at a press conference.

The new agency will operate under the purview of the IT Ministry. Besides, the amended rules also make it obligatory for social media intermediaries to not ‘publish, share or host’ fake news related to the central government. 

Noting that stricter provisions are the need of the hour to deal with disinformation and misinformation, Chandrasekhar said that the velocity of fake news is 8X-20X higher in terms of reach and significance than normal information. He also termed online fake news as a form of internet criminality and called for stricter norms. 

The amended IT rules directly impact social media intermediaries, like Meta, Twitter and Snapchat, and other big tech players, and make it incumbent on them to act against fake news or lose their safe harbour status.

Chandrasekhar said that these technology giants turned the internet into islands of commercial dominance and exploitation in the last decade. Hence, it is the duty of the state to ensure that these big players are held accountable to the ‘smallest of users’ and no user harm, criminality or digital illegality creeps in, he added.

The announcement is expected to ruffle some feathers in the social media industry. The previous iteration of the IT Rules, 2021 already made it incumbent on social media players to make reasonable efforts to not host fake news. This time around the amendments make the Centre the purveyor of all government-related information.

While it still remains to be seen how these platforms implement the move, this piles on similar amendments made to the IT Rules. The IT Rules were last amended in December last year to introduce norms including setting up of grievance appellate tribunals, expeditious removal of banned content and slew of other guidelines for social media intermediaries. 

Last month, Chandrasekhar also said that the Press Information Bureau (PIB) would be the nodal body to fact check ‘inaccurate and fake news’ related to government bodies on social media platforms. However, the government now seems to have cancelled this plan.

Meanwhile, the latest amendments have also laid down the rules for the online gaming industry.