TIACON 2025: Deceptions in the Digital Marketplace

The Trusted Information Alliance (TIA) hosted its inaugural conference, TIACoN 2025 in New Delhi on 6 November 2025, which saw over 160 participants come together to learn more about medical misinformation, tricks of fraudsters in the current digital age, how to tackle the harms of misleading Ai-generated content and what can be regulated for better or for worse.

‘Deception in the Digital Marketplace’, a panel discussion on consumer protection moderated by The Core’s Govindraj Ethiraj, examined how deceit shapes India’s booming online economy, and why consumers, regulators and platforms are still playing catch-up.

The panel featured eminent guests including Saheli Sinha, Director of Operations at the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), Prachi Buchar, Head of Government Relations and Public Policy at Meesho, a content creator on LinkedIn Jayant Mundhra and Amar Deep Singh, CUTS International, a consumer advocacy and public policy organisation.

(From L to R) Govindraj Ethiraj, Jayant Mundhra, Prachi Buchar, Saheli Sinha and Amar Deep Singh

Here are the key-takeaways from our panel discussion:

• The era of slow, corrective regulation is over. “A TV ad once ran for months. Now one appears and disappears in 24 hours,” said a panelist.

• ASCI examined over 6,000 ads this year, nearly 4,500 of them linked to illegal offshore betting. To counter deception, it is focusing on prevention through advertiser training, studying dark patterns like “only four left” scarcity messages and “drip pricing”, and developing tools that help brands self-audit before launch.

• Fake reviews and counterfeit goods remain persistent risks. Many small sellers, unfamiliar with IP rules, assume what is legal offline works online. 

• Meesho, a digital marketplace, now uses optical character recognition to detect fake logos in images and blocks reviews from unverified purchases or identical IP addresses.

• One of the panelists said, “There’s an entire industry that writes reviews and it is very lucrative.”

• For content creators, the incentives seem to be murkier. Agencies routinely pay influencers to push pre-packaged narratives, often attacking rival platforms or brands. “You’re handed statistics and told to post. It’s quick money, zero verification.”

• The flood of online information has outpaced literacy. 

• CUTS International is training 20,000 MSMEs, mostly women-led, in cybersecurity and e-commerce awareness to make both sellers and buyers safer.

Conclusion

The panel’s consensus was clear: design out deception through clearer disclosures, ethical advertising norms and faster enforcement. “Keep advertisers honest, creators transparent and consumers curious,” the panel concluded.

Way Forward

• Shift from reactive fixes to preventive systems

Regulators and platforms must prioritise early detection tools from self-audit mechanisms to automated checks for counterfeit logos and fake reviews to curb deceptive practices before they reach consumers.

• Strengthen digital and commercial literacy

Large-scale training programmes for MSMEs, first-time online sellers, and everyday users are essential to bridge the widening gap between online risks and public awareness.

• Increase transparency in creator and influencer ecosystems

Clear disclosure norms, accountability frameworks, and checks against paid misinformation are needed to ensure creators are not incentivised to spread unverifiable or manipulative content.