The government is considering empowering more ministries to issue takedown orders for social media content amid a rise in fake and misleading posts generated using AI.
The ministries of home affairs, external affairs, defence, and information and broadcasting may soon be allowed to issue content blocking orders to social media platforms under Section 69 (A) of the IT Act, 2000, Indian Express reported, citing sources.
SEBI may also be included as one of the agencies allowed to send takedown notices to social media companies for flagged content, especially as the market regulator has been very vocal about misleading financial information circulated by content creators online.
Currently, the power to issue content takedown notices rests with the IT ministry. With the proposed changes, companies like Meta and Google can expect to receive content removal requests from an array of ministries.
The government is holding inter-ministerial discussions with various stakeholders to iron out the details of the amendment to the IT Act, the report said.
Currently, Section 69 of the Act provides mechanisms to take down content that violates national security, or threatens India’s foreign policy. Nodal officers from various ministries collect information about content violating these norms and forward it to the IT ministry.
Parallely, under Section 79 (3)(b) of the IT Act, various ministries can issue blocking orders to online platforms directly, most commonly through the home ministry’s Sahyog portal. Government officials now feel that such decentralisation of content blocking powers should also happen under Section 69.
This would provide the IT ministry with some breathing space, as it is currently overwhelmed with takedown requests from nodal officers across government agencies.
The government has been trying to broaden its control over social media content, having last month reduced the takedown timeline to 2-3 hours from 24-36 hours earlier. Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, raised concerns at the time that the norms might be “challenging” to comply with from an operational standpoint.
Concerns have also been raised about the platforms’ ability to properly review every piece of flagged content before removal, potentially leading to compliance with every request without internal checks.
Meta’s data earlier indicated that between January and June 2025, it took down three times as much content due to government orders as it did during the same period in 2023. In 2024, the government blocked a record 28,000 URLs across various social media platforms.
Anxieties surrounding social media content and its impact on users have become louder in recent months, especially with the rise of misleading AI content. X was heavily criticised earlier this year after it was flooded with morphed sexually explicit imagery created by its generative AI platform Grok. Additionally, states have been pushing to enforce blanket bans on social media access for minors.
The Karnataka government, earlier this month, issued a proposal to ban social media usage for those under 16 years of age. Andhra Pradesh followed with a similar proposal for under-13s. Goa is also mulling similar restrictions even as social media giants like Meta flag concerns that such blanket bans might push minors to explore more unregulated apps that might potentially be less safe and without any guardrails.
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