Amid outrage over a plan to give its arm PIB powers to monitor fake news on social media, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said Tuesday the government would hold talks with stakeholders over the next month before implementing the proposal.
The minister said the rules regulating online gambling are expected to be announced by January 31, after which they will be submitted to Parliament.
“We will have a separate consultation (on the PIB fact check) sometime early next month,” Chandrasekhar said when asked for clarification on the proposed 2021 IT regulation change.
Chandrasekhar also said that the consultation on the Digital Personal Data Protection Act has ended and is being processed in government areas for notification.
the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) last week published an amendment to the 2021 draft Information Technology Rules (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Code of Ethics for Digital Media) that it had previously opened for public consultation.
While the consultation is largely on how to shape online gambling rules, it added a small note in the due diligence section on removing content identified as false, fake or misleading by the PIB or any government authorized agency.
Under the proposed amendment, intermediary due diligence includes such efforts not to upload, post, transmit or disclose any information identified as falsified or false by the Press Information Bureau’s fact-checking unit, which takes cognizance of falsified information both suo motu and through requests from Citizens on its portal or by email and Whatsapp and responds with correct information when it concerns the government.
Detecting fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government and will lead to censorship of the press, the guild said in a statement here, expressing “deep concern” about the draft amendment to the information technology (IT) regulations.
An official source, who declined to be named, said the option for fact-checking by PIB or another government-authorized body was included in the proposed change after discussions with industry.
“Intermediaries, primarily social media companies, have asked Meity to provide a reported fact check for misinformation. We are entering a regime where all intermediaries and fact-checkers must be held accountable,” the official said.
He said intermediaries are the ones who need to be regulated and they cannot use fact-checkers.
