Last Tuesday, this newspaper reported that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked whether telecom companies and internet service providers (ISPs) can block social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram and Instagram, if there is a proliferation of fake news on these apps. One week ago, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the onus of curbing fake news lies on the companies that own the apps. So, what is the official regulatory position on fake news and data misuse? State restrictions or self-regulation by app giants themselves? Government controls are not feasible. Two, no government, including the US, has the capacity to monitor the gigantic volume of data on the internet every hour. An algorithm medical researchers use to track the speed of virus propagation has been modified to calculate how fast any item of fake news can spread to every person worldwide: 45 minutes. And fake news travels six times faster than genuine news. Big data companies can be pressurised to crack down on data theft from their servers, and that can help. However, the real solution must be self-regulation. If, say, Facebook and Google see a large drop in advertising revenue, due to a loss of credibility, the profit motive will drive them to regulate and weed out, possibly through algorithms and human editors, what is fake news and eliminate those in near-real time from their servers. And administrators of groups that spread fake, hateful messages should be nailed by the police.