India Amends Its IT Law To Prevent Top Social Media Apps From Posting Misleading Data About Government Institutions

India has made some amendments to its IT law to ban leading social media companies from putting out data that it feels is incorrect or misleading.

This information has to do with government-based institutions and includes apps like Twitter, Facebook, and several other popular ones in the country. It also mentioned how the companies would now have to put greater reliance on obeying the nation's own fact-checking division in New Delhi and that is what would outline the authenticity of such claims.

This would surely be a huge blow to so many leading American companies that consider South Asia as its biggest market for users, by far. And considering India’s booming IT sector, the consequences can be detrimental.

Those who choose not to comply with such rules may also see a potential capability of losing safe harbor guardrails. And this includes some internet service providers as well like Airtel and even Jio.

The law was first outlined at the start of the year and it was seen assigning an entire division of the government to regulate which content is authentic on the app and which is not. Moreover, it is also designed to see which end up bypassing the country’s laws linked to the justice system, as stated by New Delhi’s top digital rights forum.

These alerts are a clear reminder of how stringent the country’s laws are regarding the circulation of misinformation and negative images of the government to the outside world. And no journalist, media house, or activist gets spared.

We could even see fact-check divisions set out takedown orders on these apps and other intermediary companies on the web that bypass IT Acts in place.

As it is, the country’s Electronics and IT Ministry emphasized more details about some IT rules that exist and how companies needed to make diligent efforts to put an end to publishing, hosting, and sharing details that could be false and misleading in context.

In case you were not aware, India has always been a key market player for Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The firms have attained close to $15 billion across the Indian market in the last ten years as they continued to excel in their fast-paced market.

Today, the services are reaching out to nearly half a billion social media fans in the country and that has to do with them pushing back a number of proposals brought on the state’s capital.

This new law in place is another type of crackdown against online gaming which entails betting services. It will alter the IT Rules from 2021 and would need more self-regulatory bodies to carry out bans against platforms offering these actions.

As it is, the country’s state minister for electronics has shed light on how much India struggles with curbing online betting and gambling endeavors that continue to arise, time and time again. They are a constant challenge and New Delhi is still trying hard to devise a proper strategy that restricts these.

The end goal seems to be creating a stable and consistent framework for such companies who might be interested in healthy online gaming communities.

Today, India’s gaming industry is worth several billion, and more regulatory bodies are being set up to keep platforms in check. Moreover, some online gaming platforms even mask themselves and carry out illegal behavior like money laundering and other criminal offenses.

So to put those in check, the country’s ministry is planning on verifying customers before they’re allowed to spend huge sums of money while banning third-party online games completely.


H/T: TC

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