Ad Tech Regulation in India: Modi Govt's Third Term Plans

New Delhi, Feb 6 (PTI) The government plans to come up with regulations for advertisement technology or big platforms that are gatekeepers of online content monetisation in the third term, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Tuesday.

While speaking at Storyboard18 Digital News Publishers Association, the minister said there is a deep asymmetry between those who create content and those who help the content creators monetise that content.

He said the government doesn't want the internet or the monetisation on the internet to be in the purview of or to be controlled by just one or two or three companies.

"Digital India Act during consultation laid out this as one of the issues that we are going to deal with this very pronounced and very visible asymmetry between the small guy or even the medium to the big guy in the Indian content creation ecosystem and these big platforms that are, in a sense, the gatekeepers to monetising the content," the minister said.

The government is certainly not of the opinion that Indian internet space should be catered to by big islands on the internet, whether they are in e-commerce, search, social media or ad tech, he noted.

"That asymmetry, I believe, needs to be legislated, or at least regulated through rules of a new legislation. I am hopeful that after Prime Minister Narendra Modi resumes office, this will be one of his priorities," Chandrasekhar said.

He said the government is not going to appoint a compliance officer to act against social media firms and has categorically informed them about the action that will be taken against them if they violate norms.

The minister said the government acted against deepfakes immediately before the world reacted to it.

"We are surrounded by people who are deeply desiring to slow down India's rise. They see today, is no longer an option to fight us at the border and use terrorism as a tool. They see clearly an option to use the internet to use misinformation to cause law and order and chaos and disturbances in India as a very soft, vulnerable underbelly of Indian democracy," he said.

The government considers that it is a trustee of protecting citizens' fundamental rights, and at the same time, has legislative guardrails to protect citizens from toxicity on the internet, the minister added.