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.

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.”

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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.

The December 26 advisory and November 7 letter (attached as an annexure) are a departure from MeitY’s November 6 letter on the issue which asked the platforms to make “reasonable efforts” to identify misinformation and deepfakes, and acknowledged that as per the law, content that violates IT Rules needs to be removed only after receipt of a court order, notification from an authorised government agency, or of a complaint by the impersonated individual or a person on his/her behalf.

MeitY wants platforms to clearly communicate to users in “clear and precise language” about the content that is not allowed. “[T]he same must be expressly informed to the user at the time of first-registration and also as regular reminders, in particular, at every instance of login and while uploading/sharing information onto the platform,” the advisory states.

This advisory follows the meeting on dealing with deepfakes that social media companies, telcos and industry bodies have had with union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and two meetings with Chandrasekhar. After the last meeting on December 5, Chandrasekhar had tweeted, “Many platforms are responding to the decisions taken last month and advisories on ensuring 100% compliance will be issued in the next 2 days.”

In line with what Chandrasekhar had told the intermediaries on December 5, the advisory tells them to inform users about the penal provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act, and other laws if users violate Rule 3(1)(b). Intermediaries are also obligated to inform users that they will report legal violations to law enforcement agencies as and when required.

READ | Govt asks social media firms to identify, remove misinformation, deepfakes within 36 hours

In annexure B of the advisory, MeitY has mapped the eleven types of content not allowed to the relevant sections of IPC, Juvenile Justice Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, Digital Personal Data Protection Act and Copyright Act, amongst others. This annexure is identical to a slide Chandrasekhar showed intermediaries in the December 5 meeting.

Significantly, uploading “unverified or impermissible online games” have not been mapped to any law. MeitY has also instructed all intermediaries to take “additional measures to not permit any advertisement of illegal loan and betting apps having potential to scam and mislead the users”. It said that the “consequences” of this will be the “sole responsibility of the intermediaries/platforms”.

In line with what Chandrasekhar said in the December 5 meeting, the intermediaries have been instructed to treat all content reports and complaints as grievances, and all complaints must be given a ticket number, like all grievances are as per the IT Rules. This is because the GACs reject complaints that have not been dealt with by the grievance officer first.

HT had earlier reported that in the December 5 meeting, multiple companies, including Meta, Sharechat, YouTube and Jio, had argued against this. They had pointed out that the grievance officer and/or the GACs will be flooded with complaints and that in many cases, the companies need additional context from the user to make an informed decision on whether some content violates their policy.