Online disinformation harming youth, need transparency law, says report

The sheer scale of disinformat­ion on social media platforms is harming youths in India with no serious efforts shown by companies to combat the menace, says a new report.

The report titled Politics of Disinfor­mation, released on Thursday by the Delhi-based non-profit Future of India Found­a­t­ion, follows discussions with youths in eight states to understand their social media habits and the im­pact of harmful content and mis­information on them. Seventy per cent of India’s internet users are aged below 35. They are 65 per cent of its population.

Public discourse, which is the entry point for youths in politics and democracy, has been marred by disinformation, said Ruchi Gupta, co-founder and director of Future of India Foundation that works at the intersection of youth issues, politics and technology.

The discussions with youths were centred on Covid-19. In one instance, a youth in Rajasthan revealed that he stopped buying fruits from a vendor while admitting that he may have accepted misinformation on how the disease spreads, said Saurabh Sharma, founder of the non-profit Josh that works with youths on issues of transparency and accountability.

From the discussions it eme­r­ged that anti-minority hate has been mainstreamed and legitimised; communities have bec­ome divided and polarised; and disinformation has confused people’s minds, causing political alienation, the report said.

Social media platforms are the dominant source for information for smartphone users, while TV news in regional languages is the only similar source that is more dominant than them, it said.

A majority of social media users are passive consumers, and even active ones who dem­onstrate agency invariably lapse into passive consumption of information through their platform feed, it added. “Most users do not differentiate between ‘news’ and personal/partisan posts due to low digital literacy and low credibility of institutional media.”

The report said that most users were passive and showed little impetus to fact-check info­r­mation irrespective of their level of digital literacy. This reinforces broad narratives with lim­­ited attention to detail. “Sou­rce of content is a significant driver of how the information is received — users are more rec­eptive to content, especially which runs counter to their wor­ldview, when received through trusted affiliates,” it found.

The report observed that virtually all misinformation could be linked to narratives propagated by organised political and business entities instead of existing in isolation. It also pointed out that efforts by the platforms to combat misinformation were “anaemic”. Gupta explained that fact-checking by social media firms only represents a sliver as the vast amount of content remains unchecked and unreviewed. Bes­ides, there is no distinction between vetted and non-vetted content, as a result of which platforms that play the role of distributors have become more impactful than publishers (such as news organisations), she added.

The report noted that social media’s response to the growing harm in India has been marked by a lack of urgency. This is in contrast to the US, where the platforms rolled out integrity measures during the 2020 US presidential election.

The difference in the companies’ stance in India was made apparent by Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen who leaked internal research that showed increased prevalence of inflammatory content in late 2019 and early 2020, around the time of the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the Delhi Assembly elections and subsequent riots in the national capital.

Eighty-seven per cent of Facebook’s global budget for classifying misinformation is earmarked for the US, while only 13 per cent is allocated for the rest of the world although North American users make up only 10 per cent of the social network’s daily active users, the report cited, adding that the platforms have also created a false binary between getting rid of misinformation and free speech advocacy.

For the social media tech giants, “free speech is a business model”. “Platforms compete with traditional news publishers for advertising revenue while enjoying the double advantage of speed (to get content to users) and protection from liability (for unvetted content). Since advertising revenue is directly proportional to the amount of time users spend on the platforms, platforms have exploited this twin advantage to boost user engagement without caring about the deleterious impact of a surfeit of misinformation on the information ecosystem and wider democracy,” it said.

The report observed that the platforms are moving towards becoming publishers, and are “starting to pay for original content to increase user stickiness, thus completing their transition to a media corporation” and made several recommendations as a way forward (see box).

At the launch, Right to Information activist Nikhil Dey said that the platforms have made it difficult to distinguish between journalism and propaganda, and political parties are unlikely to fight the situation as they cannot afford to alienate social media.

Apar Gupta, executive director, Internet Freedom Foundation, pointed out that unlike in India, the European Union is looking at greater regulation with legislation such as the Digital Markets Act. “Interventions will remain at the policy level if you ignore the political reality,” he added.

WAY FORWARD

(Some of the recommendations of the report)

• Comprehensive transparency law for social media platforms
• Regulator under parliamentary oversight
• Platforms should choose a clear approach to distribution and amplification of content as against a value-neutral stance
• They should label content producers instead of individual posts
• Review super users
• Scale up digital literacy programmes