The Chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and IT, Nishikant Dubey, posted on the social media platform X, calling on the platform to either disable the “Community Notes” feature or begin to pay tax as a publisher in India. He posted on X that the Parliamentary Committee has shared this unanimous view with the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).
Drawing a parallel with Australia, the four-time MP from Jharkhand posted on X, “Why all the fuss about Community Notes, bro? X Corp keeps printing notes and doesn’t pay any tax to the Indian government—what kind of justice is this? Like Australian law, they should get a publisher’s licence in India and keep paying ₹25,000 crore in tax to the Indian government every year, otherwise shut down Community Notes. X pays ₹7,000 crore in tax to the Australian government every year.”
Community Notes is a crowd-sourced fact-checking feature on X, where users can add notes to a post which may be misleading or inaccurate. The note becomes visible below the original post when users rate the note as “Helpful”.
Interestingly, Nishikant Dubey shared a screenshot of a note on the Australian legal position on criminal trials of sexual abuse and homicide cases.
The screenshot details the use of “witness intermediaries”, who are trained professionals meant to assist a witness in understanding questions and giving clear answers during legal proceedings.
The post by Nishikant Dubey has also attracted a Community Note. It reads, “They are giving a wrong example of Australian law. The Australian law was made to get money for news publishers from digital platforms for using their news content. This code applies only to news content, not to user-generated fact-checking tools like X Community Notes.”
The Internet Freedom Foundation, in a statement, said, “It (Australia’s Treasury Laws Amendment Act, 2021) requires designated digital platforms to negotiate commercial arrangements with registered Australian news businesses for the right to make news content available through feeds and search results.
No Australian statute treats a ‘Community Notes’-style feature as converting a platform into a ‘publisher’ liable to any levy or tax.”
Community Notes on X recently made headlines when UP CM Yogi Adityanath announced on X a ₹25,000 crore MoU with Puch AI to develop AI parks, large-scale data centres, and an AI university.
The Community Note on the CM’s post flagged, “Puch AI is a 1-year-old startup with revenue of less than ₹50 lakh/year. They have no real capability or capacity to execute an MoU of this scale.” Four days later, the UP government cancelled the MoU.
Also Read: BJP’s Nishikant Dubey apologises unconditionally for remarks on ex-Odisha CM Biju Patnaik
