The country, which has more than 830 million users and is home to the largest user base of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, is already the country most at risk for misinformation and disinformation, according to the World Economic Forum. the situation, especially with deepfakes created with generative AI.
Disinformation is only a challenge to fair elections: it can have fatal effects, adding violence in assemblies and greater hatred against minorities.
Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Indian non-profit fact-checking site Alt News, says there has been an increase in the planned creation of misinformation to polarize society. “Ever since social media has been booming, there has been a new trend of misinforming target communities,” he said.
The country’s wonderful linguistic and cultural diversity also makes it difficult for fact-checkers to review and remove misleading content.
“India is a democracy in its size and history,” Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, told TechCrunch in an interview. “When you get a lot of misinformation, you have a wonderful desire to fact-check, and what makes the Indian environment more complex is also the many languages of India. “
The government has taken steps to address the problem, but some critics say enforcement is weak and that big tech platforms are helping enough.
In 2022, the Indian government updated its regulations on IT intermediaries to require social media corporations to remove misleading content from their platforms within 72 hours of reporting it. However, the effects are unclear and some virtual advocacy groups, adding the Internet Freedom Foundation, have detected selective application.
“You don’t need to have laws or regulations that are so vague, so broad that they can be interpreted,” said Prateek Waghre, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation.
Google and Meta made announcements about restricting misleading content on their platforms during the Indian election and prevented their AI bots from responding to election queries, but did not announce any significant product-related adjustments or any strict action against fake news. In addition, just before the Indian elections, Meta would have cut investment in news agencies for fact-checking on WhatsApp.
Now, fake news is proliferating on social media. Doctored videos of celebrities asking citizens to vote for a specific policy and fake news about the code of conduct implemented in public systems and personal discussions circulated widely online before the election began.
Hamsini Hariharan, a subject matter expert at Logicically, a U. K. -based fact-checking startup that also has a local presence in India, spoke to TechCrunch about the trend of “cheapfakes”: content generated with fewer image, video, and audio editing measures. – widely shared on social media platforms in India.
Last week, 11 civil society organizations in India, adding the nonprofit virtual rights teams Internet Freedom Foundation and Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC. in), suggested that India’s election commission hold political applicants and social media platforms accountable for any misuse.
Hariharan noted that the scale and sophistication of disinformation and disinformation have increased, particularly in the last five years since the last general election in India in 2019. The main reasons, he said, are the increase in penetration, from 14% in 2014. to around 50% now, according to the World Bank’s knowledge, and the availability of technologies to manipulate audiovisual messages, poor media literacy, and a loss of credibility of the mainstream media.
Logically, we have detected a specific accumulation in attempts to sow doubts about electronic voting machines. Its analysts have seen older allegations, adding videos and texts from Supreme Court hearings related to voting machines, circulated without sufficient context. There have even been posts about those machines that are banned, defective or tempered, as well as hashtags such as #BanEVM that circulate among Facebook teams with thousands of followers.
Alt News’ Sinha said misleading online content has been expanding in the country. She noted that social media corporations do nothing to restrict this type of content on their platforms.
“Will a single report be published 4 years from now on the effects of your fact-checking business?No, nothing, because they know it doesn’t work. If it had worked, they would have gone to town with him, but they know that. “it doesn’t work,” he told TechCrunch.
Holan believes there is still a lot of room for product tweaks in terms of accuracy and reliability.
“Platforms have invested heavily during COVID in protection and acceptance programs. And since then, there’s obviously been a setback,” he said.
Meta and X didn’t understand why there were no significant product updates to restrict misleading content or the amount of investment made for fact-checking in India. However, a Meta spokesperson pointed to the way of life of a WhatsApp data line, introduced in the past. planned for March, and an awareness crusade on Instagram to identify and prevent erroneous data using the platform’s built-in features.
“We have multiple fronts to counter misinformation, including building an industry-leading network of fact-checkers in the country, as well as educating them to combat AI-generated misinformation,” the Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
X responded to a detailed questionnaire sent to the generic press email address, but said, “Busy now, please come back later. “