At one level, this move appears to be a rational response to a very real problem. In an ecosystem where misinformation travels faster than facts and breaking news is often crowdsourced, the State’s impulse to create a more direct redressal mechanism appears logical. In theory, this could enable quicker intervention against harmful or misleading content.
However, this is where the proposed amendments begin to raise harder questions. Firstly, they place ordinary users on the same footing as intermediaries insofar as news and current affairs content is concerned, overlooking the fundamental differences between these actors and the responsibilities they carry. Intermediary platforms and established news organisations operate with dedicated compliance teams, legal resources and structured grievance redressal mechanisms. Further, professional news outlets, by virtue of being in the business of disseminating information for profit, bear a heightened obligation to ensure accuracy and prevent the spread of misinformation, justifying closer regulatory scrutiny.
An individual user, by contrast, operates without institutional support and is, at best, armed with a comment section and an intuitive sense of what might be flagged. Collapsing these distinct categories into a single regulatory framework risks disregarding this asymmetry and imposing disproportionate burden on users who are neither equipped nor intended to function as formal news publishers.
Secondly, and more fundamentally, extending the IT Rules to cover ordinary users, albeit only in relation to news and current affairs content, raises serious concerns. Ordinary users engage with such content in diverse ways, such as through educational explainers, satire, parody, or commentary. Much of this expression, while in the context of current events, is not intended to function as news in the conventional sense. Yet, given the breadth of the definition of news and current affairs under the IT Rules [Rule 2 (m) of the IT Rules], a wide spectrum of such content could potentially fall within its ambit.