Most Indians Want 24-Hour Deadline For Social Media Platforms To Remove Deepfakes: Survey

Amid the ongoing debate around deepfakes, a new survey has shed light on the growing menace of fake videos online. 

As per a study conducted by LocalCircles, a majority of the surveyed Indians (53% to be precise) claimed to have seen videos online that later turned out to be fake. 

Of the people who participated in the survey, 24% indicated the proportion of such fake videos to be in the range of 25-50%. Meanwhile, 6% of the respondents said that more than 50% of the videos they encountered online were fake. 

In response to a separate question, a majority (56%) of the surveyed users said that social media platforms should be mandated to remove a deepfake within 24 hours of filing a complaint. The respondents also flagged the ‘poor responsiveness’ of social media platforms with regard to user complaints. 

Curiously, the study also noted that 43% of surveyed individuals watched three or more short videos, on an average, every day. 

The overall survey saw participation from more than 32,000 users spanning 319 districts, primarily Tier-I cities. LocalCircles said that a majority of the respondents, 64%, were men, with women accounting for the rest. 

The survey comes in the wake of growing debate around deepfakes. The matter grabbed national headlines in late September after a synthetic video featuring actor Rashmika Mandanna went viral online, prompting criticism from netizens. 

The aftermath saw the union government cracking the whip on social media platforms, directing them to curb the spread of such content and take down deepfakes within 36 hours of complaint from the user. 

From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, top government leaders batted for regulation of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which appears to have exacerbated the trend of deepfakes. 

Minister of State (MoS) for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar went on to say that the government would even assist the citizens in filing FIR against social media platforms for violating IT rules if such content is not taken down within the set timeframe. 

With elections just around the corner, authorities are also apprehensive of using such fake videos to fuel misinformation. 

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