How the Indian government aims to take the role of independent fact-checkers

Last week, the Indian government passed a law that grants one of its own agencies the power to determine whether online content is factual.

The fact-checking unit will function similarly to how third-party fact-checking already works at social media companies. Fact-checkers will have the ability to flag content related to the government as false or misleading — which in turn leads to content deamplification, demotion or removal — except the process will be controlled unilaterally by the government’s fact-checking unit.

The unit was set up, in part, in opposition to the International Fact-Checking Network, a global organization of signatories to a code of fact-checking principles, on which social media companies already rely to evaluate the veracity of online content. Some officials in India didn’t like that foreign organizations are in control of that process, The Indian Express reported.

“The Indian government’s recent decision to mandate by law the creation of an official state fact-checking body is not an unexpected move. The government had already set up a unit under its Press Information Bureau, calling itself a ‘fact check unit’,” said Jency Jacob, the managing editor of BOOM Fact Check, an Indian fact-checking organization and signatory to the IFCN code of principles. “This unit often issued press releases calling it fact-checking even when its statements were being disputed by journalists.”

Jacob said the mandate was an effort to create more legal opportunities for the government to enforce content.

“While no one can deny that the spread of misinformation causes real-life harm and disturbances in society and there are valid reasons for it to be dealt by law in some extreme cases, no government can be fully trusted to use it fairly without raising concerns of violation of freedom of speech, especially against those who are critical of the government,” Jacob said.

It remains unclear how the government will use the rules in practice.

“Giving any government body the power to force social media platforms to take down stories that they deem false is fraught with danger and can lead to indirect censorship,” Jacob said. “It may also lead to a chilling effect in some newsrooms, where stories that concern the central government might not get reported to avoid falling foul of the new law.”