NEW DELHI: New Delhi shop owner Ram Shankar Rai spends at least two hours a day going through political news and videos shared with him on social media.
Rai looked intently at a flurry of videos and photos on WhatsApp about an Indian airstrike in Pakistan, including pictures labeled as militants’ corpses.
There was just one problem: The photos were not of militants but of casualties of a 2005 earthquake that killed thousands of people in Pakistan.
But the 50-year-old didn’t see anything amiss. “It’s news,” he said. “How can it be fake?“
Before the world’s largest democracy starts voting Thursday in a phased election carried out over six weeks, this attitude is posing a problem for election officials seeking to combat the spread of fake news among a population that experts say has proven highly susceptible to believing it.
Despite efforts by India’s Election Commission to work with social media giants, urging them to tackle the spread of misinformation, at least one former top election official is warning that fake news could end up being the deciding factor in some constituencies with extremely tight races.
The election is already taking place in a charged atmosphere as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party seeks a second term by pushing policies that some say have increased religious tensions and undermined multiculturalism.
The opposition Congress party, which is also spending sizable sums of money on social media ads, is trying to revive its past glory and turn around a declining voter base.
Tackling fake news is a huge challenge in India, a nation with 1.14 billion cellphone connections, the most Facebook users in the world at 300 million, and another 240 million users of the messaging service WhatsApp. In such an environment, fake news can spread faster than regulators can act.
Watchdogs say in the run-up to the vote they’ve seen everything from manipulated pictures being picked up by mainstream news media, to misrepresented quotes sparking communal division, false news and hateful propaganda. And it looks like people are buying it.
Indian Internet users, many of whom are relatively new to the web, may lack the awareness of knowing that “just because it’s on a screen does not mean it’s true,” said Apar Gupta, who runs an advocacy group called the Internet Freedom Foundation.
India’s problem with fake news isn’t new, though, and it has already proven to have deadly consequences. In late 2018, at least 20 people were killed in mob attacks that were triggered by rumors on social media of strangers abducting children from villages.
Efforts by social media giants to combat fake news in the country were intensified after executives were called in by the Election Commission earlier this year and told to curb the spread of manipulative political information and adhere to the country’s laws on election campaigning.
Social media companies followed that with a “Voluntary Code of Ethics” for the elections that they submitted to the government. It’s essentially a best practices agreement that they will try to abide by the Election Commission’s suggestions and rules, including prohibiting campaign advertisements for at least 48 hours before polling begins.
But at least two former Election Commission bosses said they don’t believe enough is being done.
“The potential of mischief for subversion of the process of elections represented by social media is immense,” said N. Gopalaswami, who was India’s chief election commissioner from 2006 to 2009.
He said he was concerned fake news could play a huge role in very tight races.
Gupta said the Election Commission should have enforced accountability for political parties and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, with penalties for violations.
“India has clearly not done enough,” he said, adding that some of the responsibility lies with the social media platforms.
“The Internet has grown up and is having to leave its parents’ home and find a job,” he said, suggesting that platforms should tune their search engine algorithms to weigh the credibility of sources more heavily than ads and viral content.
Digital platforms have been scrambling to devise strategies to tackle the spread of false information ahead of the election.
Facebook announced a variety of measures last month, from blocking fake accounts to employing third-party fact-checking organizations for the elections.
WhatsApp has introduced a fact-checking helpline, encouraging users to flag messages for verification. It also started re-circulating an old advertising video urging people to “share joy, not rumors.” The video was first launched after the 2018 mob attacks.
But with new pages and accounts being created daily to push political content, it’s a hefty task.
“It is an adversarial space,” said Kaushik Iyer, a Facebook engineering manager who works on election integrity and safety.
“What that means is that we will always see adaptation. We will always see new threats emerge,” he told The Associated Press in an interview at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
He said Facebook was getting better at tracking down the misrepresented and manipulated videos and audio that form a big chunk of fake content on their platform in India.
And for all its negatives, social media can also play a positive role in an election, especially for young voters who say it has enabled them to better understand candidates and engage with them.
“Rather than campaign rallies where we are just passive observers, social media is a better representation of our opinions,” said Sarthak Singh Dalal, a history student at Delhi University.
Rai, the shop owner, said he has started to take a closer look at the social media content forwarded to him, trying to identify biases hidden in what he had just considered news.
“Obviously, we have to use a bit of sense,” he said.
Before India’s elections, voters feed on false information
Before India’s elections, voters feed on false information
- A former top election official is warning that fake news could end up being the deciding factor in some constituencies with extremely tight races
- Tackling fake news is a huge challenge in India, a nation with 1.14 billion cellphone connections
Instagram’s political content limit could ‘fuel censorship of pro-Palestine voices’
- Accessing political content now requires users to go into their settings and actively opt in via their preferences
- “Social media is an essential platform for people to bear witness and speak out against abuses,” HRW says
LONDON: Meta has found itself again under scrutiny after it quietly rolled out a new feature on Instagram that automatically limits users’ exposure to what it considers “political” content.
The tech giant is being accused of censorship during a global election year, with rights groups telling Arab News that the move risks fueling systematic censorship of pro-Palestinian content.
Instagram users discovered the feature, which was first announced on Feb. 9, was implemented on Friday without directly notifying them.
Accessing political content now requires users to go into their settings and actively opt in via their preferences.
Meta’s definition of political content is ambiguous, describing it as likely to mention “government, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people or society at large.”
Meta referred Arab News to a little-noticed statement from February without providing further detail. In explaining the decision, the company said that it wanted to make its platforms “a great experience for everyone.”
“If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow,” it said.
“Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), companies have a responsibility to avoid infringing on human rights, identify and address the human rights impacts of their operations, and provide meaningful access to a remedy to those whose rights they abused,” Rasha Younes of Human Rights Watch told Arab News.
“For social media companies, including Meta, this responsibility includes aligning their content moderation policies and practices with international human rights standards, ensuring that decisions to take down content are transparent and not overly broad or biased, and enforcing their policies consistently,” Younes said.
The update applies to Explore, Reels, and in-feed recommendations and suggested users that Instagram shows to users.
Meta said that users would still be able to see political content from the accounts they currently followed.
It also stated that accounts flagged by Meta for posting political content could appeal the decision that prevented them from being recommended into the feeds if they believe that it was applied incorrectly.
The announcement of the policy change was also posted on Threads by Adam Mosseri, Meta’s head of Instagram.
Explaining the company’s decision, the American-Israeli businessman said: “Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it.”
This recent policy is part of Meta’s larger strategy to cut off its services from political and news content, signaling a significant shift in how the company views its role in the information ecosystem.
The company plans to remove the news tab from Facebook in Australia and the US by early April.
“One of the top pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during Facebook’s earnings call in January 2021.
However, the implementation of this recent policy has sparked outrage, particularly in light of the war in Gaza.
“Instagram’s move to limit ‘political content’ on the platform risks fueling censorship of content in support of Palestine, at a time of unspeakable atrocities and repression already stifling Palestinians’ expression. Social media is an essential platform for people to bear witness and speak out against abuses,” Younes said.
Earlier in December, Human Rights Watch accused Meta of participating in a wider wave of online censorship, specifically targeting content in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights, against the backdrop of the war.
The report documented 1,049 cases in which peaceful pro-Palestine content was taken down or suppressed.
Younes recommended that Meta, “improve transparency around requests by governments’ Internet referral units, including Israel’s Cyber Unit, to remove content ‘voluntarily’— that is, without a court or administrative order to do so — and about its use of automation and machine learning algorithms to moderate or translate Palestine-related content.
“It should carry out due diligence on the human rights impact of temporary changes to its recommendation algorithms that it introduced in response to the hostilities between Israel and Hamas since Oct. 7.”
EU mulls removal of Iranian firm linked to internet blackout from censorship list
- ArvanCloud was sanctioned in 2022 for its role in censorship Internet in the country
LONDON: The European Union is reportedly contemplating the removal of ArvanCloud from its roster of human rights sanctions.
The company was sanctioned in 2022 due to its involvement in Iran’s internet censorship.
According to Iran International, citing a source close to the matter, the decision to lift the sanctions appears to be driven by claims from ArvanCloud's supporters abroad.
These supporters allege that the company played a significant role in providing millions of Iranian citizens with access to a free internet during the Woman, Life Freedom protests in 2022-2023.
During the nationwide demonstrations, which called for fundamental economic, social, and political changes, ArvanCloud was accused of assisting the Islamic Republic in censoring the internet, given its close ties to Iran’s intelligence services and top officials.
Consequently, the company, along with some of its executives, was also sanctioned by the US.
Subsequently, ArvanCloud announced the termination of its contract with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This development precedes the EU’s annual review of its list of individuals and entities found to be violating human rights in Iran.
Iran has a history of blocking tens of thousands of websites since 2002, including prominent social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
The country is notorious for its strict internet censorship measures, which have included shutting down internet access for most Iranians during nationwide protests. These measures aim to prevent the dissemination of information online and obstruct communication among citizens.
ArvanCloud, which controls 49 percent of Iran’s cloud space market, continues to host many critical websites in the Islamic Republic, including those of the presidency, IRNA news agency, and the Ministry of Islamic Guidance.
Additionally, one of the company’s information centers is installed at Payam Airport, which belongs to the Ministry of Communications.
Doctors Without Borders rejects Israeli army claim of ‘terror activity’ at site of deadly attack in Gaza
- 2 family members of staff member killed and 7 others injured by Israeli forces in February
- Likely a tank shell ‘fired directly into the building,’ according to a media probe
DUBAI: Israeli forces have been accused of intentionally, and without provocation, attacking a Doctors Without Borders aid shelter housing 64 people in Al-Mawasi, Gaza, on Feb. 20 killing two relatives of a staff member and injuring seven others.
The attack came despite Israeli forces being informed of the precise location of the shelter, Doctors Without Borders, or the MSF, reportedly said. The Israeli army has claimed that there was “terror activity” at the site, which the MSF has rejected.
Sky News revealed the findings of its investigation into the incident on Wednesday, prompting the Israeli Defense Forces to initiate its own “examination” into the incident.
The news organization said it visited the site, and used on-the-ground footage, open-source techniques and interviews with witnesses and weapons experts to understand how the incident unfolded.
Witnesses told Sky News they heard loud noises that seemed to come from a tank track, while some also heard gunshots.
The evidence suggests the attack was initiated by a tank shell that entered through a window. “It’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions merely from imagery however I believe the damage is the result of a tank round being fired directly into the building,” said former British army artillery officer and director of Chiron Resources, Chris Cobb-Smith.
He dispelled any notions about it being an attack by Hamas, saying he was “unaware of any direct fire weapons of this caliber being operated by Hamas” and is “doubtful that anything of this size would have been able to be deployed and fired with the amount of IDF activity in the area.”
Witnesses and MSF members said they also heard gunfire before the building was hit.
Meinie Nicolai, general director of the aid organization, who visited the site soon after the attack, said bullets were fired at the front of the shelter.
The investigation further revealed that on the day of the attack, the Israeli army said on its Telegram channel that its forces were operating in northern, central and southern Gaza Strip and continuing “intensive operations in western Khan Younis,” but it did not mention the immediate area around the shelter.
Moreover, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee published an evacuation map on the same day of two neighborhoods further north in and around Gaza City, which did not cover the area where the shelter is located.
Emergency services arrived at the scene at least two-and-a-half hours after the attack due to security concerns, according to the investigation.
The injured were taken to the International Medical Corps Field hospital in Rafah, said the MSF.
“We are outraged and deeply saddened by these killings,” said Nicolai in February.
“These killings underscore the grim reality that nowhere in Gaza is safe, that promises of safe areas are empty and deconfliction mechanisms unreliable,” she added.
The IDF, which has launched its own investigation, said that it “fired at a building that was identified as a building where terror activity is occurring,” but did not provide any evidence.
The MSF said in a statement on Wednesday it “refutes any allegations of terror activity occurring in MSF-run structures.
“The shelter was used by humanitarian personnel and their family members, identified by an MSF flag, and notified to the Israeli authorities.”
In a statement, the IDF added: “After the incident, reports were received of the death of two uninvolved civilians in the area. The IDF regrets any harm to civilians and does everything in its power to operate in a precise and accurate manner.”
Under international humanitarian law, medical facilities and units must be respected and protected in all circumstances.
Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale Law School, told Sky News that medical facilities are “presumed to be civilian objects and not subject to targeting during armed conflict.”
She added that if the IDF intentionally targets a civilian object, it counts as “potentially a war crime.”
Last week, the IDF launched an operation in and around Al-Shifa, saying senior Hamas operatives were based at the sprawling compound. Days of heavy fighting have followed, with the military reporting about 170 Palestinian militants killed and hundreds more arrested or questioned.
US, UK sanction Gaza Now media channel over Hamas fundraising
- “Treasury remains committed to degrading Hamas’ ability to finance its terrorist activities,” US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian Nelson said
- “The UK Government has announced a full asset freeze against two individuals suspected of providing financial support for Gaza Now,” the UK Treasury said
WASHINGTON: US and UK authorities unveiled sanctions Wednesday against two people and three companies related to the popular media channel Gaza Now over its fundraising efforts in support of Hamas.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that Gaza Now, whose popular Telegram channel has more than 1.8 million followers, and its founder Mustafa Ayash, started fundraising for Hamas after its unprecedented attack on October 7.
That attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, and the capture of around 250 hostages, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,414 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
“Treasury remains committed to degrading Hamas’ ability to finance its terrorist activities, including through online fundraising campaigns that seek to funnel money directly to the group,” US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement.
The Treasury Department accused the group of “having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, Hamas.”
The US also unveiled sanctions against Aozma Sultana, the director of two companies that allegedly gave “thousands of dollars to Gaza Now and advertised Gaza Now as a partner during a joint fundraiser shortly after the October 7 terrorist attack.”
The Treasury Department’s actions are being carried out alongside similar actions by the UK authorities.
“The UK Government has announced a full asset freeze against two individuals suspected of providing financial support for Gaza Now — a news agency that promotes the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups,” the UK Treasury said in a statement.
“All funds and economic resources in the UK belonging to or controlled by Sultana and Ayash have been frozen,” they added.
Australia’s ABC staff raise concerns over alleged Israeli bias in Gaza reporting
- Memo from staff meeting indicated network’s over-reliance on Israeli sources, distrust of Palestinian ones
- In January, staff threatened walkout after Antoinette Lattouf dismissed for sharing social media post critical of Israel
LONDON: Staff at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have voiced concerns about what they perceive as biased coverage of the Gaza conflict in favor of Israel.
In a document obtained by Al Jazeera through a freedom-of-information request, staff indicated “an over-reliance on Israeli sources and explicit distrust of Palestinian sources,” as well as language that “favored the Israeli narrative over objective reporting.”
The three-page summary detailed a November meeting involving 200 staff members who expressed concerns about the broadcaster’s coverage.
The document said: “We’re worried the language we’re using in our coverage is askew, favoring the Israeli narrative over objective reporting.
“This is evident in our reluctance to use words such as war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and occupation to describe various aspects of Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank, even when the words are attributed to respectable organizations and sources.”
While ABC acknowledged that it could not make accusations of genocide or war crimes, staff argued that the broadcaster “should be more proactive in reporting them to properly contextualize the conflict,” adding that the correct language to describe Israeli aggression in the region was still lacking.
In response, an ABC spokesperson said: “All major stories are subject to robust internal discussion, and we listen to and respect staff input.”
The spokesperson declined to comment further on internal matters but affirmed that the ABC Ombudsman’s Office had reviewed the coverage of the Gaza conflict and found it to be “professional, wide ranging, and reflective of newsworthy events.”
The latest development followed previous controversies at ABC, including the allegedly unlawful dismissal of Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf after she shared a report on social media from Human Rights Watch alleging that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Staff threatened to stage a walkout unless the organization’s leadership addressed concerns about outside interference.
According to reports, tensions persist at ABC over the Gaza conflict months after the initial staff meeting.