On April 6, the Union government notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023 (IT Rules). This is the second amendment to the original IT Rules notified in February 2021, which was earlier amended on October 28, 2022.

Along with the soft touch approach of self-regulatory mechanism for the online gaming intermediaries, provisions of fact-checking of the information related to the central government were also notified. Thus, the amended 3(1)(v) of the IT Rules now reads as: “… the intermediary shall inform its rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement to the user in English or any language specified in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution in the language of his choice and shall make reasonable efforts to cause the user of its computer resource not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that,— (v) deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature; or, in respect of any business of the Central Government, is identified as fake or false or misleading by such fact check unit of the Central Government as the Ministry may, by notification published in the Official Gazette, specify.”