The government has talked to social media companies to deal with issues like deepfakes. The government is moving forward strictly in this matter. In this meeting held on 24 November, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has warned social media companies. The ministry said that platforms can be banned in India for regular violations of the country’s laws, especially in relation to deepfakes and other banned content. Companies like Reliance, Google, Facebook-Meta, Apple were present in this meeting.
Banning social media platforms and apps is one of the special points of the meeting held yesterday. Moneycontrol report quoted a senior official of the ministry as saying that measures like banning can also be used for platforms that repeatedly violate the rules.
If this happens then it will really be a big step because till now social media Platforms have been avoiding such cases by taking advantage of ‘intermediary’ status.
Also read- Government’s strictness on Deepfake, FIR can be registered against Facebook-Youtube
These companies participated in the meeting
The meeting between MeitY and social media companies was chaired by Minister of State for IT Rajiv Chandrashekhar. Representatives of companies like Meta, Google, Snap, Sharechat, Telegram, Reliance Jio, Koo, Samsung and Apple were included in this meeting. If these companies repeatedly violate IT rules, their platforms can be temporarily banned in India.
The government can issue orders under Section 69A of the IT Act to block access to public information. If there are any special concerns regarding national security, public order and other grounds included in the IT Act, then the government can take these steps.
Deepfake is a violation of IT rules
During the meeting, a presentation was also given to social media companies. In this, the government explained how deepfake comes under the purview of IT rules, especially Rule 3 (1) (b) (v). Under this rule, spreading misleading or deceptive information, including impersonation or false facts, and spreading false information about the Central Government is a violation of IT rules.
First asked for information about the sender of the message
The government has also asked to disclose the information of the first originator. Rule 7 of the IT rules says that if the platforms do not comply with the provisions, their intermediary status can be removed.
Let us tell you that recently deepfake videos of Indian actresses Rashmika Mandanna and Katrina Kaif had gone viral. Apart from these, deepfake videos of some leaders have also surfaced during the election season.
Also read- Identify Deepfake video like this, you will know whether it is real or fake.
