Remove misinfo, deepfakes: MeitY to intermediaries

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) on Tuesday issued an advisory to intermediaries, including Meta and Google, instructing them to take down misinformation and deepfakes.

- Aditi Agrawal

The ministry has also instructed intermediaries to ensure compliance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, in particular with Rule 3(1)(b) which lists eleven categories of content that users cannot upload on any intermediary.

Meity has given intermediaries one week to ensure compliance and to submit an "Action Taken-cum-Status Report". After issuing the advisory, minister of state for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a post on X, "MeitY will closely observe the compliance of intermediaries in the coming weeks and follow this up with further amendments to the IT Rules and/or the law if and when required." In the advisory, the cyber laws division has instructed platforms to "identify and remove misinformation or information which is patently false, untrue or misleading in nature and impersonates another person, including those created using deepfakes", reiterating its November 7 letter to the intermediaries. HT has seen a copy of the letter and the four annexures sent along with it.