Social media platforms must share revenue fairly with content creators: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw urged social media platforms to fairly share revenue with content creators, including journalists, influencers, and researchers. Proposed IT rules also mandate labeling AI-generated content, strengthening transparency, accountability, and fairness in India’s digital content ecosystem

New Delhi: Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday said that social media platforms must share revenue in a fair manner with those who create content, including journalists, conventional media houses, influencers, professors and researchers.

He said that people who are creating content — whether they are news professionals, creators sitting in far-flung areas, or academicians sharing their research — deserve a fair share of the revenue generated on digital platforms.

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According to him, the principle of fair revenue sharing must now be set right across the ecosystem.

“Social media platforms must also share revenue in a fair way with the people who are creating the content, whether it is news persons, the conventional media, the creators sitting in far-flung areas, influencers, the professors and researchers who are disseminating their work using the platforms,” Vaishnaw said.

He stressed that platforms benefit significantly from the content uploaded by individuals and organisations, and therefore the creators should also get their rightful share.

He added that ensuring fairness in revenue distribution will help strengthen the digital content economy in India. His remarks come at a time when the government is also tightening rules around digital platforms to ensure accountability and transparency.

In a separate move, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) last year proposed fresh amendments to the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, aimed at tackling the growing threat of deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation. Under the draft rules, social media platforms will be required to clearly label “synthetically generated content” and embed permanent metadata or identifiers in such material.

Major social media intermediaries (SSMIs) — platforms with more than 5 million registered users in India — such as Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, will have to ensure that AI-generated content is prominently marked.

The proposed rules state that the identifier must cover at least 10 per cent of the visual display in case of videos or images, or the first 10 per cent of the duration in case of audio content. The metadata must not be alterable, suppressed or removed.

If a platform knowingly allows unlabelled or falsely declared AI-generated content, it will be considered as failing to exercise due diligence under the IT Act.