Naavi.org

The Editor’s Guild was in the news recently calling the Intermediary rules released by the Meity on 7th April 2023 as “Draconian”, “Regrettable” and urging the Ministry to withdraw the notification.

In our set of articles ending with “Fact Check Compliance” we have discussed the details of the said notification and the action required to be taken by Social Media intermediaries consequent to the notification.

It is however necessary to high light why organizations like “Editor’s Guild” need to be exposed for their ignorance and/or malicious attitude born out of their hatred to the political system or a political leader.

Journalism is respected when it is neutral and responsible. But today most media vehicles are funded from vested interests and have lost credibility. A time has come when every news item reported has to be seen along with where was it published and its credibility assessed accordingly. The emergence of George Soros as the global media mughal who has bought over many journalists and media has made the genuine Journalists very uncomfortable to be bracketed with the pseudo journalists and propagandists. A time has come to call out such journalists to preserve the credibility of the genuine journalists.

The Editor’s Guild unfortunately has exposed itself with its “Deeply Disturbed” press release that represents a group of pseudo journalists. I call the attention of the members of Editor’s Guild to introspect and take corrective action before they lose further credibility.

The press release of Editor’s guild issued on April 7th is reproduced below .

This publication has been reproduced in many other media and has been widely published. I however consider that this is a “Patently False” and fits into the description of rule 2(b)(v) which states as follows:

“deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature 1[or is identified as fake or false by the fact check unit at the Press Information Bureau of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or other agency authorised by the Central Government for fact checking or, in respect of any business of the Central Government, by its department in which such business is transacted under the rules of business made under clause (3) of article 77 of the Constitution];”

I am sure that many of the pseudo journalists will jump up and say that my statement itself vindicates why this rule is draconian and can have a chilling effect etc. It is open for Editor’s guild to say that it was not “Intentionally” made and therefore does not come within the definition of this rule. The defence is fine but it admits that Editor’s Guild is ignorant. For the time being let us not debate whether the statement was intentional and accept that it was out of ignorance and let us try to explain why Editor’s Guild was wrong.

The key statements made in the press release are

1. the government has given itself absolute power to determine what is fake or not, in respect of its own work, and order take down
2. the Ministry has given itself the power to constitute a “fact checking unit”, which will have sweeping powers to determine what is “fake or false or misleading”, with respect to “any business of the Central Government”, and with instructions to ‘intermediaries’ (including social media intermediaries, Internet Service Providers, and other service providers), to not host such content
3. There is no mention of what will be the governing mechanism for such a fact checking unit, the judicial oversight, the right to appeal, or adherence to the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court of India in Shreya Singhal v Union of India case, with respect to take down of content or blocking of social media handles. All this is against principles of natural justice, and akin to censorship

The Guild must understand ITA 2000 and Section 79 read along with Section 2(w) and if it has any reasonable intelligence, it will understand that the statement is speculative and erroneous.

The Notification of 7th April apply to entities which are classified as “Intermediaries” including the online media. However since online media exercises an editorial control of accepting what to publish and rejecting what not to publish, such online media will not come within the criteria of Section 79(3) which was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Shreya Singhal case.

(PS: The judgement of Shreya Singhal itself was a result of an erroneous impression by the Court that “Publishing” and “Messaging” are same which has been explained elsewhere) .

The Shreya Singhal judgement stated –

Quote

Section 79 is valid subject to Section 79(3)(b) being read down to mean that an intermediary upon receiving actual knowledge from a court order or on being notified by the appropriate government or its agency that unlawful acts relatable to Article 19(2) are going to be committed then fails to expeditiously remove or disable access to such material. Similarly, the Information Technology “Intermediary Guidelines” Rules, 2011 are valid subject to Rule 3 sub-rule (4) being read down in the same manner as indicated in the judgment.

Unquote

The Supreme Court upheld the Section 79 as a whole and read down 79(3) regarding what it means by “Receiving Actual Knowledge for the purpose of taking down of any content”

I would draw the attention of the Editor’s Guild that Section 79(1) is the benefit that would be denied if the Intermediary guideline is not adhered to by any intermediary who otherwise satisfies the 79(2) criteria.

An editorially controlled website does not meet the criteria of 79(2) and hence online media does not qualify to claim 79(1) benefit. The content published is owned by the media, paid by the media and often used to generate advertisement income. It is content for own use and not for “Transmission by an intermediary like an ISP”.

Additionally, even if the online media is eligible for the “Safe harbor” provision and it has not adhered to the guidelines as prescribed and even if it has received an email from the Government, it has no obligation to take down the information. It can simply ignore until the take down order comes from a Judicial authority. The Fact Check unit when formed is not a judicial authority and there is no indication that it would issue take down or even information notice directly to the concerned online media.

Presently there are many fact checking services (Listed in my previous article) and the Government Fact Checking service will be one more such service. Presently PIB already has a fact check reporting on a twitter hashtag @PIBFactCheck

One of the typical notifications is

I must recall here that Naavi.org has several times in the past called out fake websites but knowing where to report. One example is regarding “Loans through SMS-Fraud” in 2014. The Government did not take any corrective action that time and it was only when a victim of a fraud of Rs 22 lakhs got a relief from Chattisgarh Adjudicator the website was brought down.

If the PIB Fact Check facility had been available in 2014, I could have used the service to spread the message. There are many such alerts I have made during the past 20 years of the existence of Naavi.org which remained as articles in Naavi.org and dependent on the Google search to spread the message..

I therefore am convinced that the Fact Check service from PIB which is a crowd sourced information can be useful to the society.

The first and second charges of the Editor’s Guild on the Government that it has given powers to PIB to take down websites and usurped absolute power to bring down a website etc… are patently false.

In fact most private sector companies including Banks consider it as part of their information security duties to identify phishing websites and take steps to bring them down often without judicial oversight but using only the notice to the hosting company and invoking the hosting or domain name contract.

I can provide another example of a case where Naavi.org was wrongly flagged and taken down because of a mistake done by RSA security team at the behest of Union Bank

Naavi was also a victim long time back when his article on blogger’s news was taken down (See the details in this article and it’s links)

Editor’s Guild should be aware of these kind of developments instead of crying wolf every time Meity comes up with a notification.

As regards the third charge, there was no need for the Government to specifically mention , the judicial oversight, the right to appeal, or adherence to the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court of India in Shreya Singhal v Union of India case, with respect to take down of content or blocking of social media handles etc since they are public knowledge which an organization such as Editor’s Guild ought to know.

It was irresponsible of Editor’s Guild to have put out the “Deeply disturbed” press release and mislead the community to think some thing seriously draconian is being contemplated by the Government that it does not like.

I request that action should be taken on Editor’s Guild for their irresponsible and fake news spread under their special status as an association of journalists. I have gathered information that many journalists just forwarded the Editor’s Guild message and made it viral in their own networks. They will be by the judicial decisions on S V Shekar Case as well as the Shreya Singhal case be liable for the spreading of the fake message.

The first task that Editor’s Guild and all the journalists who made the fake message viral in their own social media networks need to do is to apologize and withdraw their forwards. They can use this article as a forward to give logic on withdrawing their earlier message.

I am forwarding this article to PIBFactCheck for information and also urge the Government to initiate action to extract an apology from Editor’s Guild.

I consider that it is a duty of the Government to take action to bring down phishing websites and fake news in the interest of security of ordinary citizens like me.

I understand that a hue and cry would be raised by the Editor’s Guild in this regard but the Government should at least make efforts to ensure that the Genuine Journalists get a better voice than the pseudo journalists.

I request the genuine journalists also to distance themselves from Editor’s guild and start an alternative forum to Editor’s Guild so that they donot get tainted by the mis adventures of Editor’s Guild.

Naavi

(This is in continuation of the previous articles on this subject)

Consequent to the issue of the Intermediary Guidelines of April 6, 2023, there would be a new requirement related to the compliance of ITA 2000/8. While some activists continue to cry wolf, the community has largely supported the move of the Government to introduce a check on spread of Fake News.

Preventing fake news is essential to preserve the integrity of data on the Internet. Hence it is an obligation for the Government to maintain the security of the Cyber Space of India.

The small group of vested interests in the media want to claim that they are are above law and cannot be touched because of the concept of “Freedom of Press”. But we need to understand that many of these media vehicles who are behind criticism of the guidelines are not “Press” in the right sense. They are political mouth pieces of either Indian opposition parties or the global manipulators like George Soros.

It is not possible to accept the the right of the Social Media to dish out fake news without check. These entities have not implemented the need for “Identifying” their members through a proper system of verification and display of verification. This is the first step they need to take to prevent fake accounts in Twitter or Face Book or YouTube or Google. Just as TRAI is introducing a requirement for display of Caller information on mobiles, every messaging provider should implement a system where the identity of the sender of the message is verified and also revealed on demand by the recipient. (Refer the article Recipient of an E Mail must have the right to know the sender’s IP address)

The current Intermediary guidelines indicate that social media introduces a compliance requirement related to fact check.

We donot as yet know if the Government is introducing a separate agency or expect the PIB to be a reference point for fact check. In the case of the Gaming intermediary the Government has suggested that the industry will set up self regulatory bodies. In the case of Fact Check, the Government is aware that there are several private sector services including Alt News of Zubair Ahmed which are already putting out their views on whether a news is true or false. It is now proposing that one more such agency will come up in the public sector. It could be a separate department or part of CERT IN.

This Fact Check Agency needs to check the correctness of a piece of news either on its own or on receipt of a reference. The output may be made available on a Website.

This data should be public and it should be available for verification similar to the verification of public key of a person in the PKI Digital Signature system. It is not mandatory that the agency should inform the intermediary about its finding.

When an aggrieved person files a complaint with the Judiciary it is for the Judiciary to consider whether the social media is eligible for Section 79 protection or not. At that time the Judiciary may take into account that a public notice was provided on the news being false and the social media continued to host it. In other words, the Fact Check information becomes a “Knowledge” of the intermediary and it is left to them to take proactive action or not.

In view of the above the Social media company needs to introduce a compliance check measure which involve the following.

1. Conduct a periodic check on the Fact Check website of the Government as well as other reliable private sector services through a search algorithm. (This is similar to the reputation management services provided for websites monitoring the news about a company appearing in press and social media)
2. If a news published in the media is referred to in any fact check website, it should be considered as a “Compliance Incident/Alert”. This should be integrated to the Incident Management System.
3. An internal committee under the leadership of the Compliance Officer should verify the incident and record its report whether the incident should be escalated for deletion or de-flagged.
4. The output action can be to remove the news item or ignore the incident.
5. Instead of the binary decision of “Remove” or “Ignore”, the company can adopt Naavi’s old suggestion that a remark can be attached to the article “This news item is flagged as untrue by XYZ fact check agency with a fact check score of xx%”. In most cases this would be a sufficient due diligence since the consumers would be put on notice. This is precisely the method used by Naavi’s “Lookalikes.in” service on confusingly similar domain names.

Naavi was a pioneer in suggesting the “Lookalikes.in” service more than 2 decades back. Naavi has already introduced the ITA 2008 compliance framework with a DTS score which includes compliance of ITA 2000 along with Cert-In Guidelines. Now for Social Media, the need for “Factcheck verification to be considered as an Incident monitoring requirement” and follow up action will be considered as a required compliance measure and will be incorporated in the DTS calculations.

As already indicated, Naavi will start monitoring the presence of fact check services. At present a google search indicates the presence of the following fact check services. This needs to be updated with suggestions from the public. Just as in Virus removal, we look at multiple anti virus programs, we need to check with multiple fact check agencies to compute a “Fact Check Score” on a scale of 0-100% where 0 indicates “Proven to be false” to 100% indicating “Proven to be true” and other ratings in between 0-100 indicating the probability on the basis of credibility of individual fact checking services for which some weightage would be worked out.

1. Wikiepedia
2. Factchecker.in
3. Youturn.in
4. Dfrac.org
5. Boomlive.in
6. The Quint
7. Factcrescendo.com
8. IndiaToday
9. Factly.in
10. thip.media
11. AltNews
12. vishvasnews.com
13. newsmobile.in
14. newschecker.in
15. Mediabias/Factcheck (MBFC News)
16. Factcheck.org
17. TruthOrFiction.com
18. Fullfact.org
19. Politifact
20. snopes
21. Propublica
22. Opensecrets
23. Washingtonpost fact checker
24. Full fact
25. SM hoax slayer
26. International Fact Checking Network
27. Toolbox.google.com
28. PIB factcheck

PS: Some of the above fact check sites needs to be evaluated for reliability. They may be themselves a fraudulent website or committed to some ideological entity. Like fake Anti Virus software, there will be fake fact check websites also. Hence the need for a reliable Fact Check service is essential. The Indian Government initiative should therefore be a welcome choice.

Naavi

Also Refer:

Is Editor’s Guild itself putting out a fake news?

There is no right to fake news

Copy of the New Intermediary Guidelines of April 6, 2023

Also refer:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-fact-check

Yesterday, Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar announced an amendment to Intermediary rules under section 79 of ITA 2000 regarding curbing of Fake news on the Internet. The proposal suggested that a “Fact Checking Agency” would be set up to assist the identification of fake news. The idea is to enable issue of notice to the internet media flagging the fake news published by them. While the full details of the proposal is yet to be announced, it appeared that the agency will act along with PIB and publish its findings from time to time.

Based on the identification of such fake news by an agency, it is open to the relevant media to either remove the content or ignore it or flag the news with the note that it has been identified as fake news by the Fact Checking Agency (FCA) (As suggested by Naavi earlier way back in the year 2000)

Subsequently if any person affected adversely by the said fake news content takes legal action, the media as an intermediary needs to defend itself without access to the safe harbor provision in the Section 79 of ITA 2000/8. If the Court finds that the information does not create any adverse effect on the complainant, or that the news is not fake but is genuine, there is no effect on the intermediary.

The guideline does not block either the publication of fake news nor forces any information to be withdrawn if the media decides not to.

In this scenario, the Editor’s Guild’s press note stating that

“In effect, the government has given itself absolute power to determine what is fake or not, in respect of its own work, and order take down,”

is a patently false and misleading statement which itself qualifies to be called a “Fake News”.

The Economic Times additionally reports that EGI has also raised concerns about the move in an open letter along with Digipub news India foundation which is a well known group that appears to be part of the George Soros network.

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) another organization that frequently comes out with negative views about anything done by the MeiTy, says that the “Move will have a chilling effect on the fundamental right to speech and expression, particularly on news publishers, journalists and activists”. This statement also reveals either the mis-reading of the impact or more realistically a deliberate misinformation.

What we need to appreciate is that “Fake News” is like “Virus” and “Malware”. It is part of an “Information Warfare” launched on India and will intensify as we near the next elections. If this is not called out and curbed, the utility of Internet as a medium of trusted information will be destroyed.

The media which is not willing to take preventive action to curb fake news but supports it in the guise of “Freedom of Press” a danger to the democracy. The Editor’s Guild is supporting such a group which is not part of the “Free Press”.

The identification and flagging of fake news will be like anti-virus action. Just as an anti virus company puts out a report of identification of a virus which some may not agree and some may reject or which some may consider only as a “Potentially Unwanted Program but not a malware”, the agency would put out its report with some logic. It can be agreed or rejected. Today even Twitter and YoutTube team does a similar evaluation and many times they wrongly flag a truthful statement and block an account.

Government therefore has all the right to call out that a particular news item is false, baseless and fake according to their analysis. There is no compulsion for any Court to accept the finding They can rely if they want the Zubair’s Alt news more than the Government Fact checking unit.

Hence the Government agency’s report is not the end of the road for any media to put out a news which it believes is true. Hence calling it as “Absolute Power”, “Draconian”, “Causing Chilling effect” etc is a malicious propaganda which should be rejected.

Further, it is open to the Government backed fact check agency to work in collaboration with private sector agencies working with a similar objective and provide a balanced report. Checking a news report whether it is true of false requires some cross verification which could be undertaken by the Fact Checking Agency. Interested persons in the private sector can collaborate and send their views to this agency and share their knowledge to help clean up the Internet.

Towards this purpose, Naavi.org would like to find out a list of such agencies present now. I understand that many of them are from the Soros stable itself but we should be able to find other genuine fact checking private sector agencies who may not be funded by the Soros network. I request knowledgeable persons to send me a list of such known agencies and let us collate this information.

Having shared my views on this aspect and a strong desire that the Government should go ahead and form the Fact Checking agency forthwith, I must admit that I am not confident that the Meity may be mighty enough to take on this “Pro Fake News Freedom Demanding Group”. It could simply walk away and not do anything more.

But given the danger this group poses to the Country, I urge the Government to prove me wrong and take courage and proceed with their plan.

Naavi

Also view this video:

The Government of India has now come out with a new version of the Information
Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 which was first notified on 25th February 2021. On 28th October 2022, there was an amendment issued vide GSR 794(E). On 6th April 2023, there was another amendment vide GSR 275(E) in which “online gaming” was added to the regulations. Today’s consolidated version has one additional provision regarding “Fake News Verification Authority” to be set up by the Government.

In Part II of the notification, under Rule 3(b) the amended subsection (v) now reads as follows:

……The intermediary shall inform its rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement to the user in English or any language specified in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution in the language of his choice and shall make reasonable efforts to cause the user of its computer resource not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that…..

(v) deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature 1[or is identified as fake or false by the fact check unit at the Press Information Bureau of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or other agency authorised by the Central Government for fact checking or, in respect of any business of the Central Government, by its department in which such business is transacted under the rules of business made under clause (3) of article 77 of the Constitution];”

What this means is that the Government will create a “Fact Check Unit” which will check and declare if any information is fake or false.

The industry therefore need not depend on the private Fact Checking organizations which are controlled by George Soros.

When in doubt the decision of this Fact Checking Unit will determine whether the information is fake and the Intermediary will be losing his Section 79 protection if such news is published and not removed on receiving the knowledge that a news is fake.

This also means that this unit will monitor the private sector fact checking services and give its stamp of approval. It will remove the uncertainty when two fact checking private sector agencies have a difference of opinion.

As could be expected the opposition political parties and the vested media interests have already started their campaign against the provision that it is curbing the “Freedom of Speech”. It should however be remembered that there is “No Right for Spreading Fake News” and hence the objections of the vested interests need to be ignored.

What these media journalists are either unable to understand or are deliberately misrepresenting is that if any fake news is published, it will only mean that Section 79 protection is not available to them and they have to face the law of the land. They are therefore welcome to continue their fake news publication business and face the law.

Crying that this is curbing their freedom of speech is itself a patently false news and will render these media vehicles susceptible to legal action if the intention is to violate any law.

We await the implementation of this system and a link to the content where PIB will maintain the list of reported fake news along with their views. Alternatively we need to see if PIB will start a help center type of service where a query can be raised by public to be answered by the PIB unit asap.

Copy of the Revised Intermediary Guidelines with amendments is available here

Naavi

The Intermediary Guidelines covering the Gaming Intermediaries which had been released for public comments has now been notified. This will be an amendment to the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media EThics Code of 25th February 2021.

Copy of the guidelines is available here.

The guidelines defines an “Online Game” as ” a game that is offered on the Internet and is accessible by a user through a computer resource or an intermediary. The “Online real money game” is defined as an online game where the user makes a deposit in cash or kind with the expectation of earning winnings on that deposit.

Additionally “Internet” for the purpose of this notification means the combination of computer facilities and electromagnetic transmission media, and related equipment and software, comprising the interconnected worldwide network of computer networks that transmits information based on a protocol for controlling such transmission.”

An online gaming self regulatory body will require to be established and should provide a verifiable mark to the relevant platform for “Permissible online real money game”.

The system of self regulation is similar to what Naavi.org had recommended as “Intermediary Dispute Resolution Policy ” for all Section 79 guidelines.

The Government reserves its rights to introduce similar regulations even in the case of online game other than online real money game in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India ..etc.

The guidelines will come to force 3 months after atleast three Self Regulatory body has been established.

The real impact of the regulations on some of the popular gaming platforms need to be assessed. The industry may delay the setting up of self regulatory body to postpone the applicability of the guidelines and this could be a loophole deliberately kept in the guidelines.

Instead, the Government should have provided a time line of say 6 months for the setting up of the self regulatory bodies failing which the “Grievance Appellate Committee” of the Ministry should take over the responsibility envisaged for the self regulatory body till the formation of such bodies.

Naavi