A New Chapter, A Wider Mission: The Story Behind Trusted Information Alliance

New Delhi | September 23, 2025

When we began our journey as the Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA), our focus was clear: to tackle the growing tide of false and misleading information that threatened to erode public trust, distort discourse, and fragment communities. Together with fact-checkers, journalists, and civic actors, we built a network dedicated to restoring credibility and clarity in a rapidly changing information space.

But over the years, the information landscape has shifted in deeper, more complex ways.

Today, misinformation doesn’t just arrive in sloppy headlines or viral forwards. It takes the form of AI-generated deepfakes, voice clones, and synthetic narratives that look and sound real. Scams targeting everyday users, especially senior citizens and first-time internet users, are becoming more sophisticated. Social media platforms, advertising systems, and even consumer tools are powered by algorithms we barely understand. And as the ecosystem becomes more interconnected, so do the challenges.

Indians lost around ₹7,000 crore to online scams in the first five months of 2025, an estimate by I4C, which is a unit under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) revealed in a report. The I4C also predicts that Indians will lose over ₹1.2 lakh crore in 2025, as per a report.  As of July 2025, the government of India blocked over 9.42 lakh SIM cards and 2,63,348 IMEIs, as per MHA. While the government does not keep a specific record of complaints registered by senior citizens, independent studies, such as the one conducted by the Safer Internet India reported that 45 per cent of senior citizens in India are not confident in their capabilities to identify fraud and 72 per cent are keen on taking part in capacity building.

We realised that many of our own members were already adapting to these challenges. Some were building tools to detect manipulated media, others were raising awareness about financial fraud, and several were working on digital literacy and consumer education. The scope of our work was expanding—organically, necessarily, and collaboratively.

Our mission and vision evolved too, and it starts with how we are identified.

The Trusted Information Alliance (TIA) reflects not just who we are, but who we need to be. It builds on the foundation of MCA, but broadens the horizon. Fact-checking and misinformation work remains core to our mission, but we now go further by supporting responsible AI use, platform transparency, policy engagement, civic empowerment, and digital safety.

Trust is our throughline.

Whether we’re verifying a claim, safeguarding a user, advocating better platform practices, or educating a community, our goal is to create an information ecosystem where people feel safe, informed, and respected, and more importantly, something they trust.

In line with our mission, we are organising our first-ever annual conference TIACoN 2025 on November 06, 2025. The goal of the conference is to bring together stakeholders from different industries on the same platform to discuss the future of information integrity, misinformation and trust in the AI age. The registrations are open now.

Apply for TIACoN 2025

We invite all of those who believe in our vision, to join hands in this journey. 

About TIA

The Trusted Information Alliance is a cross-sectoral network of organizations working to strengthen the integrity, safety, and accessibility of digital information in India. Our members include media houses, fact-checkers, civil society groups, researchers, and technology partners working on transparency, digital rights, and responsible innovation.

You can read more about our goals and our governing council here.

To learn more about our projects, explore our initiatives page.

If you relate with our mission, join us.

For any questions, discussions or insights that you might want to share with us, feel free to write to us at hello@trustedinfoalliance.in