‘FB, Twitter can curb fake news, if they want to’

On May 19 a couple of days before Twitter marked BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patrarsquos tweet on the now controversial ldquoCongress toolkitrdquo as ldquomanipulated mediardquo Pratik Sinha of the factchecking website AltNews had already put out a story on how this ldquotoolkitrdquo was created on a forged letterheadThe document allegedly prepared by the All India Congress Committee AICC had two parts to itmdashfirst a fourpage COVID19 ldquotoolkitrdquo titled Cornering Narendra Modi and BJP on COVID19 mismanagement and another ldquofour pages of researchrdquo on issues with the Rs 20000crore Central Vista Redevelopment project that looks to rebuild Parliament House residences for the PM and VP and administrative offices from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhavan Apart from Patra several BJP ministers and leaders including Smriti Irani Piyush Goyal Rajyavardhan Rathore Anurag Thakur and Dr Harsh Vardhan had amplified the CongressToolKitExposed tweetWhile AICC Research Department chairman Rajeev Gowda had told AltNews that the first part of the document had been forged and that the original ldquoCentral Vista researchrdquo had been a total of six pages and not four Sinha and his team did a simultaneous factcheck On comparing the ldquotoolkitrdquo and Vista research they were able to identify clear discrepancies in the ldquoletterheadsrdquo and ldquoheader and footerrdquo font They later shared a detailed report about this on their websiteThe document that was allegedly prepared by the AICC and which was shared by BJP leaders on Twitter comprised ldquofour pages of researchrdquo on issues with the Rs 20000 crore Central Vista Redevelopment project that looks to rebuild Parliament House and other administrative offices from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhavan PicNishad AlamWhen Twitter finally flagged Patrarsquos tweet on May 21 Sinha called out the social media platform for its arbitrary move ldquoWhy has Twitter decided to mark those particular posts as lsquoManipulated Mediarsquo That is the question any user will have when they see that tag but therersquos no answer to it How did Twitter determine Have they provided a reference to their findings for their usersrdquo he wrote in a series of tweetsThe most pertinent issue he raised was the work of factcheckers like him who ldquodebunk misinformation on all sides of the ideological spectrum every single day and very often of the kind where original media has been manipulatedrdquo ldquoTwitter doesnrsquot mark thosehelliprdquoAlso ReadInside an IITianrsquos headEven as Sinha and his team continue to unearth new material related to the ldquotoolkitrdquo issue neither Twitter nor the BJP government has been able to provide valid proof for their claims about the manipulation and the toolkit Instead an ugly war is now brewing It began with police presence at Twitterrsquos offices in Delhi and Gurugram last week and quickly escalated into a warning from the Centre asking all big tech companies to comply with their fresh IT rules the deadline for which ended on May 26 Twitter on the other hand has raised concerns about threat to free speechGovindraj Ethiraj Pankaj Jain and Karthik SrinivasanFor fake news crusaders and factcheckers this ongoing war has little purpose or meaning if it doesnrsquot help stem the growing tide of disinformation more problematic in the postpandemic worldlsquoToday we are fighting disinformation alongside COVID19rdquo says Pankaj Jain a computer engineerturned entrepreneur who launched the factchecking portal SMHoaxSlayer in August 2015 ldquoWhen I started out fake news was yet to take on a communal or political colour at least It was just comforting liesmdashlike NASA releasing an aerial photo of India celebrating Diwali or UNESCO declaring Indiarsquos national anthem the best in the worldrdquo he remembersTaking inspiration from factchecking organisations in the West Jain launched SMHoaxSlayer on Facebook Six years on he says that the fake news network has explodedldquoWe have long moved from misinformation Now itrsquos about disinformationrdquo Explaining the difference between the two he says that while misinformation is false news thatrsquos communicated without a real intention to deceive disinformation includes stories manufactured with the sole purpose of spreading lies to push forth an agenda On an average Jain currently a oneman show tackles around five to 10 fake viral posts daily ldquoWhen it comes to tweets or posts of prominent persons I always archive it or do a video recording because screenshots are not valid proofrdquoGovindraj Ethiraj founder of IndiaSpend and FactCheckerin who in 2018 was awarded the McNulty Prize for improving public discourse and transparency in India by debunking fake news says that most of the big tech platforms have always had a ldquovery libertarian approach to freedom of speechrdquo ldquoThey assume that everyone wants that But over the years they too have been forced to changerdquoHe says that when one looks at the evolution of most big social media platforms the early years were fairly smooth ldquoAt least the first eight to nine years were really about doing good like connecting people helping trace lost friends kickstarting initiatives That was the beautiful part of itrdquo Itrsquos only recently where people have started using these platforms for notsonoble objectives he thinks ldquoOne could argue that since the tech platforms started this they should have seen this coming Itrsquos a fair accusation But then I also know that people are always smarter than the platform Itrsquos like building a roadmdashthe builder can never be in absolute control of how this road is going to be usedrdquoEthiraj started IndiaSpend 10 years ago to use open data to inform public understanding on a range of issues and improve accountability in governance But having realised that there was also the need to factcheck statements being made by people in public life he launched a dedicated initiative called FactCheckerin by 2014 The surge of fake news on endtoend encrypted platforms like WhatsApp and Twitter he says necessitated the need to start BOOM Live an online resource to fight misinformationThe changing nature of social media led many tech platforms to employ technology that went against their ldquolibertarianrdquo stance ldquoWhen Saddam Hussein was hanged in 2006 the video of his execution went viral on YouTube Today that video wonrsquot even last five seconds there Most platforms have now acknowledged that itrsquos their role and responsibility to also police their platform to ensure there is no unsavoury content They have also invested hugely into making that possiblerdquo But despite all their efforts Ethiraj feels they are still just about catching up Sinha adds ldquoIf you even compare the average number of employees on these tech platforms to offer support per million of population itrsquos not enoughrdquoSinha who launched AltNews in 2016 says that until 2020 India was predominantly known for political disinformation ldquoBut now we are struck by a double whammy With a raging pandemic therersquos a crazy amount of medical misinformation which can be potentially dangerous People are so insecure that they are willing to try anything and everything This kind of misinformation is not easily manageable and despite our consistent efforts we havenrsquot even touched the tip of the problemrdquoThere are a string of new conditions and regulatory requirements which the government has sought to impose on social media companies Some of them include having a chief compliance officer in India to respond to government demands and needs whenever required and a grievance redressal officer whom social media users will be able to approach directlyCompanies like WhatsApp have been asked to ensure that they can trace a message to the original sender which effectively means breaking the endtoend encryption and privacy on messagesJain feels that tech platforms like Twitter will need to develop effective mechanisms and adopt a similar rigour like factcheckers if they really want to fight disinformation Sinha agrees ldquoThey need to be more transparent and consistent They canrsquot act like overlords waking up once every few months to mark a particular set of posts or videos on their platform as lsquomanipulated mediarsquo and then go back to sleeprdquoHe admits that social media platforms in India have enormous issues ldquoBut my problem is also that the governmentrsquos intentions with the new IT rules are not genuine They also have been asleep the whole timemdashthe only reason they are now charging at Twitter is because a rightwing account got called outrdquoKarthik Srinivasan an independent communications consultant feels that all platforms not just Twitter ldquocan play a very effective role in curbing both misinformation and disinformation if they want tordquo ldquoBut because they want to be treated merely as an intermediary any effort they makehellip may be seen as one where the Langford is taking on a more active role to edit the content posted by usersrdquoInstead of editing or removing content Srinivasan suggests that all platforms add verification tags as opposed to a ldquomanipulated tagrdquo which induces more questions than answers especially when therersquos no evidence on why the tag is added ldquoAn additional tag that sets such content for dated information dismisinformation wrongful attribution etc would make people take note of it within the platform and avoid rampant spread of wrong information But this requires intent setup execution and scaling up on behalf of the platformsmdashthey consider this a nonessential task right nowrdquo he saysOnly last year Twitter tested new prompts for its platformmdashthe ldquoreply promptrdquo asked people to reconsider a possibly offensive reply and the ldquoarticle promptrdquo where it asks you if you may want to read the article before retweeting it ldquoI think this is a good step by Twitterrdquo says Srinivasan ldquoThese prompts cannot be compared to either censorship or withholdingremoval of tweets for legal reasons because they are merely nudges where people have the freedom to ignore the prompt and say what they wanted the way they wantrdquo But whatrsquos most interesting about this says Srinivasan is that Twitter is taking on the role of nudging the users ldquoto do the right thingrdquo