Thursday, March 28, 2024

Centre notifies new rules for media houses, OTT platforms





The Centre has notified the new rules for digital news publishers and OTT (Over The Top) platforms. The new rules aim to bring online news published under the same regulations as the traditional media publishers such as news channels or newspapers. These new rules will apply to social media players such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and OTT players like Zee5, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, among others.

Under these rules, OTT players and digital news publishers will also need to set up a grievance redressal mechanism and furnish the necessary information to the government.

According to the code of ethics, now the OTT players will need to self-classify content on their platforms according to five age-based categories. These include U (Universal), U/A 7+, U/A 13+, U/A 16+, and A (Adult). They are also required to implement parental locks for content classified as U/A 13+ or higher, and reliable age-verification mechanisms for content classified as “A”.

The guidelines are also divided into two broad categories- social media intermediaries and other intermediaries and there are additional responsibilities under social media intermediaries.

The new rules, to control the fake news, also states comprehensive guidelines for social media platforms that make it compulsory to inform their users that they cannot post content which are defamatory, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of others’ privacy and so on. 

A media house has to explicitly mention that the post is an advertisement and promotion. This will help in curbing the promotional social media posts that are often disguised as a personal opinion.


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