Social media companies are struggling with fake news in India despite saying they’ve taken steps to tackle the menace ahead of India’s general election by sankalp_sp adityakalra
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI - Two weeks after a suicide bombing in Kashmir in February killed 40 Indian policemen, a Facebook user called Avi Dandiya posted a live video in which he played a recording of a call purportedly involving India’s home minister, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and an unidentified woman.
By the time Facebook took down the post, it had received more than 2.5 million views and 150,000 shares. There is no Indian law that specifically targets fake news, but police in New Delhi registered a case of forgery against Dandiya and an official said investigations were ongoing. With 900 million people eligible to vote and an estimated half-a-billion with access to the internet, fake news can have an enormous impact on the election. Dandiya’s video, for example, could have seriously damaged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP if enough people thought it was true.
On Monday, Facebook said it had deleted 1,126 accounts, groups and pages in India and Pakistan for “inauthentic behavior” and spamming, many linked to India’s opposition Congress party. But even when content has been identified as fake and removed, slightly modified versions of the same images, video or text can escape detection and spread further.
Still, a month later, Reuters found at least two copies of those posts on Facebook with 375 comments and 1,500 shares. “Since Pulwama we’ve been working seven days a week,” said Jency Jacob, managing editor at BOOM, referring to the site of the suicide attack.
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