CAA protests: 15,000 social media mediators fight to root out fake news

More than 15,000 mediators from social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Helo, ShareChat, and a few others have been working overtime during the past 10 days to curb the spread of any fake, incendiary or communal news on their platforms.

With protests raging all over the country over Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the social media platforms are not taking any chances. According to sources in various such platforms, mediators have been asked to put in more hours to ensure that no communal or fake news spreads.

“More people are being asked to work on the night shifts when content on the platform is generated and shared the most. Mediators, who were on other assignments have been put on CAA duty. Right now, it is all hands on deck,” said a senior vice-president at one of the social media companies.

As a lot of content being generated and created is in local languages, so vernacular mediators have been asked to be extra careful. “We are mostly concentrating on local language posts from states where the protests are happening. Till Monday afternoon, we flagged and removed as many as 2,500 fake news and communal items,” said a mediator with a major vernacular social media platform who, at the moment, is solely concentrating on posts on Assam protests.

According to information technology ministry officials, misuse of these portals has been immense, given their popularity in smaller cities and towns. With many there only recently acquainted with the technology, their susceptibility to fake news is thought to be more.

Various state police forces as well as their counterparts in Delhi are keeping a lookout on social media posts to clamp down on anything they believe is either communal or incendiary. Delhi Police on Monday said they were keeping an eye on social media platforms and are in touch with all these firms to ensure that such news can be taken down quickly.

“We have had several conversations with officials at these companies. We have requested them to immediately take down any type of social media post that might create a law and order problem. We have been assured that they will do the needful,” said a senior Delhi Police official.

Some companies are trying to figure out if more manpower would be needed. “We haven’t actively started monitoring posts or videos yet, but our teams are always on the lookout for any content that may incite violence or lead to an adverse situation. We will consider additional manpower if required but our teams are able to manage the current situation,” said an executive at a large social media firm, who did not wish to be named.

Recently, Chinese social media apps including TikTok, Helo, and Bigo Live, among others, were called by the parliamentary standing committee for empowerment of women, as they make fresh efforts to curb online abuse and trolling against women and young adults.

According to sources in the know, the committee took stock of all the measures these firms were taking to prevent online abuse and trolling. Time and again several government agencies, courts have brought up the issue of safety of young adults on these Chinese apps. The standing committee wants to understand and review the steps these firms have taken on the issue.

Social media messages can be tracked: IIT-Madras professor to High Court

Countering the stand of social media firms, an IIT-Madras professor on Wednesday informed the Madras High Court it was technically possible to trace the original sender of messages shared on platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp.

Professor V Kamakoti made the submissions before a bench of Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad which is hearing a PIL seeking a direction to the authorities to link Aadhaar number with social media accounts of users for easy identification of accused in cyber crime cases.

Countering the contentions of the social media companies, especially WhatsApp, that the original sender of a post can never be traced since all the messages sent through the application were encrypted, Kamakoti said it was technically possible to add an identification tag to messages.

The bench then directed the professor and his team to file their views as a report by July 31 to enable the social media companies to submit their reaction and adjourned the matter to that date.

Facebook, Google face widening crackdown over online content

Tech giants like Facebook and Google came under increasing pressure in Europe on Monday when countries proposed stricter rules to force them to block extreme material such as terrorist propaganda and child porn.

Britain called for a first-of-its-kind watchdog for social media that could fine executives and even ban companies. And a European Union parliamentary committee approved a bill giving internet companies an hour to remove terror-related material or face fines that could reach into the billions.

"We are forcing these firms to clean up their act once and for all," said British Home Secretary Sajid Javid, whose department collaborated on Britain's proposal.

Opponents warned the British and EU measures could stifle innovation and strengthen the dominance of technology giants because smaller companies won't have the money to comply. That, in turn, could turn Google and Facebook into the web's censors, they said.

The push to make the big companies responsible for the torrent of material they carry has largely been driven by Europeans. But it picked up momentum after the March 15 mosque shootings in New Zealand that killed 50 people and were livestreamed for 17 minutes. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the attacks in the 24 hours afterward.

The US, where government action is constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of the press, has taken a more hands-off approach, though on Tuesday, a House committee will press Google and Facebook executives on whether they are doing enough to curb the spread of hate crimes and white nationalism.

Australia last week made it a crime for social media platforms not to quickly remove "abhorrent violent material."

The offense would be punishable by three years in prison and a fine of 10.5 million Australian dollars (USD 7.5 million), or 10% of the platform's annual revenue, whichever is larger. New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner wants his country to so the same.

The British plan would require social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to protect people who use their sites from "harmful content."

The plan, which includes the creation of an independent regulator funded by a tax on internet companies, will be subject to public comment for three months before the government publishes draft legislation.

"No one in the world has done this before, and it's important that we get it right," Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright told the BBC.

Facebook's head of public policy in Britain, Rebecca Stimson, said the goal of the new rules should be to protect society while also supporting innovation and freedom of speech.

"These are complex issues to get right, and we look forward to working with the government and Parliament to ensure new regulations are effective," she said.

Britain will consider imposing financial penalties similar to those under the EU's online data privacy law, which permits fines of up to 4% of a company's annual worldwide revenue, Wright said.

In extreme cases, the government may also seek to fine individual company directors and prevent companies from operating in Britain.

Under the EU legislation that cleared an initial hurdle in Brussels, any internet companies that fail to remove terrorist content within an hour of being notified by authorities would face similar 4% penalties.

EU authorities came up with the idea last year after attacks highlighted the growing trend of online radicalisation.

The bill would apply to companies providing services to EU citizens, whether or not those businesses are based in the EU's 28 member countries. It still needs further approval, including from the full European Parliament.

It faces heavy opposition from digital rights organisations, tech industry groups and some lawmakers, who said the 60-minute deadline is impractical and would lead companies to go too far and remove even lawful material.

"Instead, we call for a more pragmatic approach with removals happening 'as soon as possible,' to protect citizens' rights and competitiveness," said EDIMA, a European trade group for new media and internet companies.

Opponents said the measure also places a bigger burden on smaller internet companies than on giants like Facebook and Google, which already have automated content filters.

To help smaller web companies, the bill was modified to give them an extra 12 hours for their first offense, a measure opponents said didn't go far enough.

Mark Skilton, a professor at England's Warwick Business School, urged regulators to pursue new methods such as artificial intelligence that could do a better job of tackling the problem.

"Issuing large fines and hitting companies with bigger legal threats is taking a 20th-century bullwhip approach to a problem that requires a nuanced solution," he said.

"It needs machine learning tools to manage the 21st-century problems of the internet." Wright said Britain's proposed social-media regulator would be expected to take freedom of speech into account while trying to prevent harm.

"What we're talking about here is user-generated content, what people put online, and companies that facilitate access to that kind of material," he said. "So this is not about journalism. This is about an unregulated space that we need to control better to keep people safer.

Lok Sabha polls: Over 30,000 political ads on Facebook since February

A total of 30,457 advertisements related to politics or issues of national importance have hit the world's largest social media network ahead of the general election. The expenditure on these advertisements was Rs 6.54 crore, shows the data from Facebook's Ad Library Report.
“This report is a weekly summary of the library and includes data for ads that have been viewed by people in India. Making this report available to the public is part of Facebook's efforts to increase transparency in advertising," according to a note on the social media giant's website.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to dominate the space. A page called ‘My First Vote For Modi’ accounts for the largest number of ads by number (2,765). Another one called ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ was second (2,429). ‘Namo Supporters’ was third with 2153 ads.
The ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ page was the highest spender on advertisements. It accounted for nearly one out of every six rupees spent so far on Facebook's political advertisement’s, according to the data. It was also the biggest spender for the latest week. ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ spent over Rs 20 lakh between March 10 and March 16, the latest week for which the data is available.
The Facebook data also provides information on the top search terms. The top search term was the BJP, followed by the Congress. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was third and Congress President Rahul Gandhi was fourth.
The data from Twitter shows that there have been no promoted tweets from the official Congress and BJP account in the past seven days.Social media activity can be a major factor in elections, noted a July 2017 piece in the Journal of Political Marketing entitled, ‘Introduction: Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 US Election’.
“We can gauge the scale of social media's role in the 2016 presidential election from the data reported by the Pew Research Center (July 18, 2016). According to their survey, 44 per cent of US adults received information about the 2016 presidential election from social media. That is more than the percentage cited for either local or national print newspapers,” it said.
It noted that the winning candidate, Donald Trump, had a greater presence on social media than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
“Trump had almost 10 million Twitter followers to Clinton's 7 million, and his 9 million Facebook followers were about double her number,” it said.