India's New Social Media Rules: Remove Unlawful Content in Three Hours, Detect Illegal AI Content Automatically (bbc.com) 23
Bloomberg reports:
India tightened rules governing social media content and platforms, particularly targeting artificially generated and manipulated material, in a bid to crack down on the rapid spread of misinformation and deepfakes. The government on Tuesday (Feb 10) notified new rules under an existing law requiring social media firms to comply with takedown requests from Indian authorities within three hours and prominently label AI-generated content. The rules also require platforms to put in place measures to prevent users from posting unlawful material...
Companies will need to invest in 24-hour monitoring centres as enforcement shifts toward platforms rather than users, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a publication tracking India's digital policy... The onus of identification, removal and enforcement falls on tech firms, which could lose immunity from legal action if they fail to act within the prescribed timeline.
The new rules also require automated tools to detect and prevent illegal AI content, the BBC reports. And they add that India's new three-hour deadline is "a sharp tightening of the existing 36-hour deadline." [C]ritics worry the move is part of a broader tightening of oversight of online content and could lead to censorship in the world's largest democracy with more than a billion internet users... According to transparency reports, more than 28,000 URLs or web links were blocked in 2024 following government requests...
Delhi-based technology analyst Prasanto K Roy described the new regime as "perhaps the most extreme takedown regime in any democracy". He said compliance would be "nearly impossible" without extensive automation and minimal human oversight, adding that the tight timeframe left little room for platforms to assess whether a request was legally appropriate. On AI labelling, Roy said the intention was positive but cautioned that reliable and tamper-proof labelling technologies were still developing.
DW reports that India has also "joined the growing list of countries considering a social media ban for children under 16."
"Young Indians are not happy and are already plotting workarounds."
Companies will need to invest in 24-hour monitoring centres as enforcement shifts toward platforms rather than users, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a publication tracking India's digital policy... The onus of identification, removal and enforcement falls on tech firms, which could lose immunity from legal action if they fail to act within the prescribed timeline.
The new rules also require automated tools to detect and prevent illegal AI content, the BBC reports. And they add that India's new three-hour deadline is "a sharp tightening of the existing 36-hour deadline." [C]ritics worry the move is part of a broader tightening of oversight of online content and could lead to censorship in the world's largest democracy with more than a billion internet users... According to transparency reports, more than 28,000 URLs or web links were blocked in 2024 following government requests...
Delhi-based technology analyst Prasanto K Roy described the new regime as "perhaps the most extreme takedown regime in any democracy". He said compliance would be "nearly impossible" without extensive automation and minimal human oversight, adding that the tight timeframe left little room for platforms to assess whether a request was legally appropriate. On AI labelling, Roy said the intention was positive but cautioned that reliable and tamper-proof labelling technologies were still developing.
DW reports that India has also "joined the growing list of countries considering a social media ban for children under 16."
"Young Indians are not happy and are already plotting workarounds."
Is it really about protecting people? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing happens? So, tens of thousands in the streets every week, hundreds of thousands every month, millions for the big protests, and total election collapses by the GOP in special elections is "nothing"? Really?
What do you expect, guns?
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Such a serious clampdown would probably stifle legitimate criticism of the government or views that are "wrong" to avoid fines. Ultimately, the government can control the message by claiming "manipulation."
You're familiar with India, right?
Modi has no intention of letting go of power. They're a democracy in name only.
As much as I think that Social Media corporations need to be held to account, this is just blatant over-reach and utterly pointless as the government has little power outside their own borders, even China can't police the worlds internet content and not through lack of trying (the US will have exactly the same problem if it tried to do the same). I predict this will just result in the India
Detect illegal AI content "automatically" (Score:5, Interesting)
Too Bad (Score:2)
India's government can suck my dick.
Re: (Score:2)
"India's government can suck my dick."
A good example of such content but you have to post it on Indian Facebook to get FB fined or put down.
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Nah. I'll just create my own social media designed solely to piss off the Indian government.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem always come on how to implement this, and how to do it without having massive authoritarian abuse.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
But they are trying, and it needs to be done.
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There's non authoritarian centralized power ways to do it, such as community notes.
They work wonderfully
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I am so into this, if it or anything works wonderfully. I'm not seeing community notes as being that though, I imagine that whatever telltale signs people are looking for will be non-existent by the end of the year, hell, probably right now if you include the telltale signs into your prompt (don't do this). I think we should take it as a given that the Turing test is defunct, or soon to be.
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You seem to contradict yourself. You say platforms cannot prevent AI (slop), but then say it is helpful when they are required to label it automatically. How are they supposed to label something they cannot detect?
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That's the million dollar question. User verification, account age, karma systems, basically the least intrusive possible way of determining you are a human. S.Korea has a pretty robust system of tying people to online accounts. Is there a way to do that without handing the reins to a possibly corrupt government? Blockchain technology tied to anonymous accounts that have to jump through hoops to be verified on a given site? Something else?
If I truly do not wish not to interact with and/or be scraped
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Doing what they can, labeling obvious slop, is a step in the right direction. But yeah, a better solution is necessary.
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" what value does a giant sack of trash offer?"
You could ask that same question about a great many other things.
People apparently like and enjoy using that "giant sack of trash", so it has value to them even if others can't see it.
I don't like rap music? What value does that giant sack of trash offer? Apparently there are lots of people who disagree with me on that, based on the apparent popularity of that so-called music.
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True, the 'giant sack of trash' could be useful or fun for some people, but people are getting their news and world views from these compromised sources. Lets at least have the option for our classic tiny sacks of trash that are composed of real people. And label the sacks so we know which is which.
Around the world, different flavors of Kremlin (Score:2)