BENGALURU – Social media companies such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will soon have to bear legal responsibility for content on their platforms flagged as misinformation by the Indian government’s proposed Fact Check Unit. 

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar told The Straits Times that the content platforms and Internet service providers are “not compelled to take content down after it is flagged, but if they keep it on, they will no longer be immune from court action by the aggrieved government department”. 

He said the platforms could evolve their own mechanisms to warn the posting user to remove the marked content, or recommend corrections, but they would eventually have to take it down to avoid legal action.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) announced on April 7 that the platforms should “not publish, share or host fake, false or misleading information in respect of any business of the central government”.

The fact-checking unit will identify what is “fake, false or misleading information”. However, that very term has been panned by critics as being too ambiguous, with Internet freedom advocates saying it could lead to the targeting of content critical of the government.

The Editors Guild of India, which monitors press freedom and ethics in the country, called for the “deeply disturbing” plan to be withdrawn, saying it is “akin to censorship”.

Opposition leaders like former IT minister Kapil Sibal have asked why the government did not consult more stakeholders on the changes.

Stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra has petitioned against the Fact Check Unit in the Bombay High Court, saying it will have “a chilling effect on free speech”.

On Saturday, the central government defended the move in court, saying it was in the public interest, as false and misleading information “has the potential to fan separatist movements and intensify social and political conflict”, while also creating “doubts regarding the actions and intentions of the democratically elected government”.

Mr Chandrasekhar, 58, was a mobile phone entrepreneur and major investor in Malayalam news channel Asianet before becoming the spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2006. He was appointed Minister of State for IT in the BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2021. 

He said the new unit is part of the government’s efforts towards creating a “safe and trusted Internet” and would not affect people sharing opinions or satire. 

“If someone writes an opinion, like this minister is bad or that department is ineffectively run, the Fact Check Unit will not counter it. It will intervene only when the information about government is patently false,” he said. 

The Asia Internet Coalition comprising Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon and other tech giants said on April 17 that using a government agency “as the sole source to fact-check government business without giving it a clear definition or providing clear checks and balances may lead to misuse during implementation of the law, which will profoundly infringe on press freedom”.

The unit has to be government-run, Mr Chandrasekhar said, “because no organisation outside the government has access to information about the government” to confirm the veracity of information posted online.

Asked if the platforms would be given reasons when a post is flagged for removal, he said: “You don’t give a reason when something is false. If it’s false, it’s false. One plus one is two; it cannot be three.” 

India has 700 million Internet users, almost half of its population. The country has one of the world’s largest user bases for Facebook and Twitter. 

Mr Prateek Waghre, policy director at New Delhi’s Internet Freedom Foundation advocacy organisation, said: “Social media companies couldn’t have fixed misinformation completely, but could have done a lot more a lot earlier before the impacts went beyond the digital layer, amplifying existing religious divides and tendencies for fraud.

“Now we are seeing governments using this gap to justify their measures to control social media content.” 

India is following in the footsteps of other countries attempting to crack down on misinformation.

In 2018, France passed a law cracking down on fake news, allowing courts to rule on whether reports published during election periods are credible or should be taken down.

In April 2022, the European Union passed the Digital Services Act that compels platforms to more aggressively police illicit content and disclose how their services amplify divisive content, or risk billions of dollars in fines.

In 2019, Singapore passed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), under which ministers can order that a piece of falsehood on the Internet be taken down or for a correction to be put up alongside it with a link to the Government’s clarification. They can also order technology companies to block accounts that spread untruths.

The original post is not removed so that “readers can read both the original post and the facts, and decide for themselves what is the truth”, the Pofma website says. As at December 2022, 97 correction directions and four orders to block access had been issued. 

Mr Chandrasekhar said: “We have studied Pofma and Europe’s laws. There is no common design, but there’s certainly a common thread for all democracies – misinformation represents a threat to safe and trusted use of the Internet.”

Insisting that the government is not being adversarial, he said India had made a big mistake in giving “immunity” to content platforms in its IT Act (2000), which gave “multibillion-dollar platforms with the resources to do the right thing” a free pass instead. 

“We were left saying please do it, please do it,” he said. 

Meity has made executive amendments to the rules of the IT Act since May 2021, the most recent being the Fact Check Unit, “to hold platforms legally accountable in certain no-go areas”, including child sexual abuse material, religious incitement, patent violation and misinformation, he said.

An upcoming Digital India Act, expected to overhaul the current IT Act, is due in three to six months, he said. It will regulate the Internet more strictly to “prevent user harm” such as through doxxing, cybercrime or misinformation operations.