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Exclusive: Read the government’s “fake news” advisory to social media companies

The government of India, in a May 7 advisory told social media companies to curb misinformation and fake news, and content that "that may affect public order and [be] unlawful in any way". The advisory, a copy of which MediaNama has obtained in full via Right To Information request, and is published below, tells social media companies to warn users to not spread misinformation, and to "[i]ssue warning to imposters who misuse your platform and indulge in such fraudulent activities." Word of the advisory was first broken by the Economic Times. Going beyond the IT Rules "Social media platforms are intermediaries as defined under section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and are required to follow due diligence as prescribed in the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 notified under section 79 of the IT Act," the advisory points out, referring to the IT Rules that were notified in February. It's worth noting that, as per the due diligence requirements specified in the IT Rules, social media companies don't have to proactively issue warnings to individual users about impersonation: Section 3(1)(b) identifies the terms that "the rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement of the intermediary" should contain, including that users should not impersonate another person. Section 3(1)(c) indicates that an intermediary shall "periodically inform its users, at least once every year, that in case of non-compliance with rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement for access" [...] "it has the right to…

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I cover the digital content ecosystem and telecom for MediaNama.

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