1 in 2 Indians want deepfakes to be removed within 24 hrs from social media

Nearly one in three (30 per cent) Indians say they are watching a lot of videos they later find to be fake, with more than one in two residents seeking social media platforms to be mandated to remove deepfake videos within 24 hours, a new survey showed on Thursday.

In the recent weeks, multiple Indian actors have featured in deepfake short videos circulating on various social media platforms.

According to the survey by social community platform LocalCircles, 43 per cent of Indians surveyed watch three or more short videos on average each day.

Thirty per cent of them say they later find 25 per cent or more videos they watched to be fake.

About 56 per cent respondents say a deepfake video circulating on a social media platform should be removed within 24 hours of complaint submission, the findings showed.

Many deepfakes have been found in circulation in election-bound states also, leading the government to take serious note of the rising trend of deepfakes, particularly in the light of the popularity of short videos.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has said the government will assist citizens in filing FIR against social media platforms for violation of IT rules in case they are aggrieved from objectionable content like deepfakes.

The minister said the government will come up with new regulations soon to tackle deepfakes. In the meanwhile, the government has mandated that social media companies must promptly and diligently identify misleading and deepfake videos.

According to the survey, very few people know or bother to check the authenticity of a video they watch forwarded to them on social media platforms.

As part of the community discussions, people have expressed the extremely poor responsiveness that platforms have to user complaints when their social media account gets hacked.

People have written that even after a formal police complaint, it has taken 7-10 days for deactivation and without one many are waiting to hear from platforms even after three weeks.

“Not just actors, politicians, celebrities, etc., but anybody can become the target of deepfake videos as new tools emerge globally every month enabling users to create a deepfake video,” the survey noted.