The government has added a clause to the proposed IT intermediary guidelines, making social media companies responsible for all nonuser generated content — including sponsored content — published on their platforms, according to senior government officials.
The change is in line with practices in the US and Europe, and will impact platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.
Once the amended guidelines are notified, social media companies will be required to appropriately tag and identify all sponsored content published on their platforms, said the people cited above. “The onus of non-user generated content will now fall on social media platforms,” a senior government official told ET.
Draft norms, which are under consideration of the law ministry, are expected to be notified in a few weeks, said the official, adding, “We have had a few rounds of discussions with the law ministry. These guidelines should be notified by February-end, start of March.”
Social media companies currently claim to be mere platforms, without control on the content posted by users.
Section 79-II of the Information Technology Act, 2000, currently exempts online intermediaries from liability for any third-party content shared on their platform. However, with the new clause, the Act will provide “safe harbour protection” to intermediaries, so long as they only play the role of a facilitator — and not creator or modifier, in any manner — of the content posted.
Intermediary or not
The issue came in focus last year during a dispute over content between social media platform TikTok and Twitter-backed ShareChat. The latter was forced to take down over 100 videos from its platform.
Facilitator versus Ownership Rights
This was a result of ownership claims by the platform owned by Chinese tech giant Bytedance.
ShareChat had then complained that TikTok’s claims of being a social intermediary platform — with no control on content — seemed to be inconsistent in wake of its claims over ownership rights of the content.
Now, with the proposed amendments expected to be notified soon, “they (social media companies) will not be able to take refuge in the safe harbour protection clause of the IT Act,” officials’ privy to developments told ET.
Currently, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have features and tags through which advertisements and paid partnerships are displayed. But advertisers and marketers say brands prefer to push content through influencers to make it look more organic.
There is also no compulsion or onus on these celebrities and influencers to highlight that the content and products they are endorsing are paid for. “At present, there are no stringent rules on people doing paid content on social media,” said Harsh Shah, senior vice-president at digital agency Dentsu Webchutney. “It is at the influencers’ discretion to highlight if the content they show is paid for or not.”
Government officials said such content, produced by influencers without the involvement of the social media platforms, may still not be covered by the latest clause. This clause will pertain to only such non-user generated content in which the platform is in some way involved.
As per the DAN Digital Report 2020 published last month by Dentsu Aegis Network, last year’s advertising spends on digital media were led by social media platforms, which contributed the highest share of Rs 3,835 crore, or 28%, to the overall Indian digital advertising pie, which stood at Rs 13,683 crore.
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