Ministry To Amend IT Rules; Delete Content PIB Flags As ‘Fake News’ On Social Media
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology stated in a proposed amendment to the Information Technology Rules 2021 that news that has been flagged by the Press Information Bureau's fact-checking unit as fraudulent or incorrect needs to be taken down from social media sites.
According to a recent proposal included in the section of the IT Rules 2021 titled "Due Diligence by Intermediaries and Grievance Redressal Mechanism," intermediaries "shall make reasonable" efforts to refrain from "hosting, displaying, uploading, altering, publishing, transmitting" such sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
To take advantage of the safe harbour provisions of the IT Act 2000, which grant intermediaries legal immunity from third-party content they host, the intermediaries must exercise due diligence.
While outlining situations in which content must be removed from social media platforms, the proposed amendment stated that if the content is "identified as fictitious or false by the fact check unit at the Press Information Bureau of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or other organisation approved by the government for checking facts or in respect of any company or organisation of the central government, by its department in which such company is transacted pursuant to the rules of business," then the content must be removed.
Regarding the suppression of news stories, this proposed change is serious and has the potential to have broad implications.
The Internet Freedom Foundation said in a statement that although they will continue to analyse these amended revisions, they are concerned that significant changes to an ongoing consultation process were made on the penultimate day, when many stakeholders would have had the opportunity to make their thoughts.
It added that furthermore, this might negatively affect public faith in any forthcoming consultations in 2023. It is quite concerning that piecemeal revisions are still being made while we wait for the "Digital India Bill" without a clear goal or plan being stated.
Twitter filed a lawsuit in 2022 to challenge a number of the IT ministry's restraining orders. The ministry issues directives to social media intermediaries to block users or remove content from the platform.
Twitter said in its petition that removing certain of the URLs listed in MeitY's blocking order would violate the platform users' right to free speech because they carried "political and journalistic" content.
