Social Media’s Commitments for Elections 2019: Can It Stop Abuse?

As online political campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Google and WhatsApp grow louder, wider and often become a cesspool of misinformation, the Election Commission has finally asked these platforms to get their act together.

Therefore, with 3 weeks to the first day of polling, these social media giants along with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) presented a “Voluntary Code of Ethics” to Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora.

The signatories to this code, which also include TikTok, ShareChat and Bigo TV, voluntarily agreed to adhere to a list of 8 commitments to prevent abuse of their platforms before and during the elections.

To read the full code and our piece on it, you can click on the link in the description below.

The question though is: does this “code” a) acknowledge and b) address some of the most problematic concerns regarding political content online?

In answering this let’s understand what this “voluntary code of ethics” means.

It means that the social media and messaging platforms which also include TikTok, ShareChat and Bigo TV have “voluntarily” undertaken to work alongside the EC to primarily achieve 2 things expenditure control and content control.

Expenditure Control: This is meant to ensure greater transparency, that is, tell us WHO is paying for political advertisements, how much they are paying and how many advertisements are they putting up.

Content Control: This aims to tackle misinformation, that is, ensure parties and candidates aren’t peddling fake news, dubious statistics or hate speech as part of their campaigns.

Alright, so how will they be achieving this?

This where a number of questions arise so let’s discuss some of the major concerns.

The “Code of Ethics” contains 8 commitments

These include establishing a high priority communication channel with the Election Commission; If the EC finds an advertisement violating the mandatory 48-hour “silence period” before the end of each phase of polling, it can inform the platform, which shall process this request for takedown within 3 hours. However, 3 hours is long enough for a message to go viral and get shared and commented on thousands of times.

Moreover, the platforms will take action only if the order is “a valid legal request”, in other words how does the EC and platforms decide on what constitutes “objectionable content”? Often, posts are not outright false and messages are nuanced in how they present facts. The Code does not define or elaborate upon this issue or provide specific guidelines.

Next, there is the big question of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is not a social media platform but a private messaging service. Therefore, it isn’t a broadcast but a narrowcast medium because messages aren’t published but messaged from one to another. How will the deluge of political forwards be tackled in a medium where chats are end-to-end encrypted with no traceability?

Moreover, the EC has set up a Media Certification and Monitoring Committee which will certify advertisements by parties and candidates.

BUT what about the lakhs of political ads promoted and paid for by supporters of a party or a regular user of Facebook or Twitter?

For example, Facebook’s political ads library has revealed that in the past 30 days the top political advertisers were privately run pages like Bharat ke Mann ki Baat and Nation with NaMo which together spent nearly Rs 3 crore on six thousand ads. In the past week alone they spent Rs 40 lakh on about 4,000 advertisements.

In conclusion, is this Code of Ethics a case of too little too late? While we hope for a free, fair and transparent elections to the 17th Lok Sabha, we also hope for a free, fair and transparent social media.