Fake videos, audios surface on social media to ‘influence’ electorate

Tribune News Service

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, February 19

As Covid-restricted campaigning drew to a close on Friday, the focus was back on social media as voters were flooded with messages seeking support for a particular party/candidate or spreading “misinformation” about nominees.

The managements of social media platforms as well as the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) have been in an overdrive to remove harmful and hate content.

Real-time response

The company’s election operations centre watches out for potential abuses related to the Assembly elections and it responds in real time. Rajiv Aggarwal, Director, Meta India

Fake videos of several candidates either offering liquor or money were widely circulated on social media today. Some videos have telephone recordings playing in the background, alleging that certain leaders have “accepted” enticements or candidates are “arranging” things to lure voters.

While the EC has special social media teams that monitor online content and ask for any objectionable content to be removed, Meta Platforms that owns Facebook and WhatsApp has set up an election operations centre to keep tabs on “inappropriate content, including hate speeches, misinformation and harmful content”.

Dr S Karuna Raju, CEO, Punjab, told The Tribune that throughout the course of the campaigning, the EC received several complaints about misinformation and harmful content on social media platforms.

“Any complaint from any contestant or political party was referred to the EC’s social media monitoring teams, comprising experts. Based on their assessment, the objectionable content was removed and action initiated against the guilty party,” said the CEO.

Rajiv Aggarwal, Director and Head of Public Policy, Meta India, said: “The company’s election operations centre watches out for potential abuses related to the Assembly elections and it responds in real time. Massive investment has been made in teams and technologies to keep hate speech, misinformation and other forms of harmful content off the platform. Besides ramping up our regional language support, we are funding our fact-checking partners.”

He further said, “The company removed more than 1.38 million pieces of hate speech content in India between May 15, 2021, and December 31, 2021. As a result, the prevalence of hate speech is down to 0.03 per cent on our platforms.”

Audio ‘doctored’

The AAP on Saturday submitted a complaint before the CEO, Punjab, seeking the removal of an audio recording from social media. The party claimed that audio recording purportedly of Sunita Kejriwal, wife of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, was “fake and doctored”. It further said the voice was not of Sunita’s. TNS

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