India’s Information Technology and Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday delivered a strong message to digital and social media platforms: voluntarily accept fair revenue-sharing models for content creators or risk legal action.
Speaking at the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) Conclave 2026, Vaishnaw argued that platforms deriving value from journalistic and creative content must ensure fair remuneration – not just for established news organizations but also for independent creators, researchers and influencers across the country.
“Platforms must strive to share a fair reward for the content they use from publishers and creators. Either they do it voluntarily or there are legal ways to do it,” he said.
Revenue sharing must extend beyond newsrooms
Expanding on the issue of digital monetization, Vaishnaw emphasized that fair revenue sharing must apply across the creator ecosystem.
“Social media platforms must also share revenue fairly with the people who create the content, be it news reporters, conventional media, creators sitting in remote areas, influencers, professors and researchers who disseminate their work using the platforms.
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“Everywhere now the principle must be set right,” he said.
The minister suggested that intellectual property had historically driven economic and cultural progress and warned that unfair monetization could undermine long-term societal growth.
“…The people who created the copyright, the people who created the original content, society grew on the basis of that intellectual property. And if that intellectual property is not well respected and not fairly compensated, then the growth of society, the growth of science, the growth of technology, the growth of art, the growth of literature, will all be stunted, and the human growth that has occurred over the last thousands of years will be stunted and slowed down to create original work. getting that fair reward and fair appreciation from parts of society, from the whole society, it must be respected, it must be appreciated, I will ask all the platforms to review their revenue sharing policy, because this is also one of the main concerns that the whole society is raising today, if it is not done voluntarily, then there are so many countries that have shown the way to do it in a legal way.
While Vaishnaw did not name jurisdictions, several countries have introduced legislation that forces tech companies to compensate news publishers for the use of content.
Deepfakes and the crisis of trust
In addition to economic considerations, the minister paid considerable attention to what he described as the erosion of public confidence fueled by synthetic media and disinformation.
“The basic principle of trust is under threat. It comes in various forms – deepfakes, things that never happened anywhere; disinformation.. creating synthetically generated images of well-respected people, creating videos that have no connection with artificial intelligence; and all that content, so-called content/news, when it reaches the common people – it starts to challenge the basic structure of society,” Vaishnaw said.
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He argued that platforms must take responsibility for the content hosted on their networks and prevent the misuse of emerging technologies.
“… Therefore, I will ask that the platforms wake up to understand the importance of strengthening trust in the institutions that human society has created over thousands of years. The platforms must take responsibility for the content that is hosted. The online safety of children, the online safety of all citizens is the responsibility of the platforms. Failure to follow these principles will definitely make them responsible, because the nature of the content of the Internet should not be changed without the consent of the person whose face is now being used, and was used to create content…”
“Synthetic content should not be generated without the consent of the person whose face, voice or personality was used to create the content. The time has come to make this big change in inflection,” he added.
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He went on to warn of a “disinformation barrage that can create a sense of mistrust that doesn’t exist in real life” and highlighted the social consequences of manipulated images and fabricated videos.
According to the minister, “everything that the so-called content reaches the common citizen will begin to question the very basic structure of society.
A global challenge in the era of AI
Vaishnaw emphasized that these concerns are not limited to India, describing the phenomenon as “happening everywhere, not just in India” and linking it to the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
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The Union minister argued that explicit consent must be the basis of AI-generated content with identifiable individuals, with digital security and individual rights central to future policy interventions.
The DNPA 2026 Conclave, themed “The New News World Order: Rewriting the Playbook for a Resilient Digital Future,” brought together policy makers, media leaders and industry experts to explore the future of digital journalism and platform management.
