Centre seeks Meta’s action on deepfakes, awaits legal opinion on further steps

Centre examines Meta’s intermediary status, seeks action on deepfakes

Centre has asked Meta to take action against deepfake content, while it examines whether the social media giant is complying with intermediary provisions under Indian law, sources told PTI.A legal opinion on further action is expected after the government reviews the outcome of its meetings with the company.Centre is likely to seek responses from other social media platforms as it examines whether they meet the definition of intermediaries under the country’s law, sources said.Sources also said that if Meta and other social media platforms exercise control over what content is shown to users, their role could be viewed as akin to ‘publishing’, making them responsible for the content and actions on their platforms.The development comes a day after the government held technical discussions with the social media giant, during which Meta outlined its plans to address the Centre’s concerns over deepfakes, child sexual abuse material and unlabelled synthetically generated content on its platforms, sources said.The technical discussions followed two days of meetings in which IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw questioned Meta’s team, led by global affairs head Joel Kaplan, over its content recommendation algorithms and compliance with Indian laws. During the third round of talks, Meta explained how its systems operate and presented proposed measures to tackle the concerns raised by the government. The company said it had solutions to address deepfakes, CSAM and bot accounts, and explained how the measures could be deployed on its platforms, the sources said.Sources had earlier said Meta acknowledged that there were “serious issues” and assured the government that it would take continuous steps to address them. The government, meanwhile, will continue to push the company to undertake sustained measures and improvements to address its concerns, they added.Meta’s global team met IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and IT Secretary S Krishnan on both days after the government summoned the company over the temporary restriction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Facebook post.

During Thursday’s meeting, the Meta team was questioned on its compliance with Indian laws, content recommendation algorithms and the safeguards in place to ensure that constitutional and legal requirements are met.The social media giant assured the government that it was taking the concerns seriously and was “working hard” to address issues related to deepfakes, child sexual abuse material, bot accounts and synthetic content.On Wednesday, Meta apologised for the temporary removal of PM Modi’s post and acknowledged failures related to child sexual abuse content and deepfakes, as well as the promotion of certain content after being paid “a lot of money”.