Govt Will Keep Eye On Remedial Measures Taken By Platforms: Chandrasekhar On Deepfakes & Misinformation

The minister also promised that inaction on their part may prompt amendment to the IT Rules that will be more “prescriptive”.

In an interview with PTI, Chandrasekhar, who is Minister of State for IT and Electronics, counted the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) legislation, setting up of grievances appellate panels and tighter accountability enforced on digital platforms for user safety as being among the big achievements for 2023.

“…The Digital India Act which we put a lot of effort into…spent almost a year on pre-consultations…we ran out of time…these things happen, but certainly, it’s an unfinished, incomplete agenda,” he said.

As India is awaiting general elections in 2024, the DIA is expected to be rolled out post-elections, the minister said. 

According to him, for a huge country like India, deepfake is a matter of serious concern. It is, he said, “certainly a very, very problematic issue to the conducting of safe and free and fair elections.”

This comes close on the heels when the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) rolled out a new advisory to all social media platforms to comply with existing IT rules and ensure deepfakes and the misinformation enabled by them are curbed.

The advisory stated that IT ministry directed intermediaries need to ‘clearly and precisely’ inform their respective users about what kind of content is prohibited, especially the ones specified under Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules. 

The new advisory was framed after consultation with Chandrasekhar and the intermediaries during Digital India dialogues.

Also, MeitY recently rolled out yet another advisory to check the advertisement of fraudulent personal loan apps and betting apps on social media. Chandrasekhar said that such apps are not only misleading but also exploitative to people using the internet.

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