Centre for Internet and Society

Election Experiment Proves Facebook Just Doesn't Care About Fake News In India

Admin — 2018-05-31T22:56:48Z

Much-hyped fact-checking initiative identified only 30 bits of fake news in month-long Karnataka campaign. Yup — 30!

The article by Visvak was published in Huffington Post on May 30, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

On April 16, a little less than a month before Karnataka went to the polls, Facebook announced a partnership with Boom Live, an Indian fact-checking website, to fight fake news during the Karnataka assembly polls.

Five days before the partnership was announced, an embattled Mark Zuckerberg stood before the the US Congress. Under fire for having allowed his platform to be used to manipulate elections, he declared that his company would do everything it could to protect the integrity of elections in India and elsewhere.

Facebook's press-release promised as much:

We have learned that once a story is rated as false, we have been able to reduce its distribution by 80%, and thereby improve accuracy of information on Facebook and reduce misinformation.

Yet, the pilot project in Karnataka suggests Facebook has a long way to go to keep Zuckerberg's promise. In an election cycle widely acknowledged as rife with misinformation, fake polls and surveys, communally coloured rumours, and blatant lies peddled by campaigners, rating stories as "false" proved to be so difficult and time consuming that the Facebook partnership was only able to debunk 30 pieces of misinformation — 25 in the run-up to the polls, and 5 in the immediate aftermath — in the month long campaign.

The much-ballyhooed partnership added up to a small financial contribution from Facebook that allowed Boom to hire two fact-checkers, one in its offices in Mumbai and one based on the ground in Bengaluru, specifically to track the election. The fact-checkers were also given access to a Facebook dashboard that could be used to discover and counter misinformation on the platform.

Boom did not reveal the sum involved or allow HuffPost India access to the dashboard, citing a non-disclosure agreement. Facebook's representatives declined comment on a detailed questionnaire sent to them.

A Gushing Sewer of Fake News

Globally, Facebook's fact-checking initiative is a little over a year old, but the partnership with Boom marks its advent in India, the company's largest market.

"It's a late start, a very late start." says Pratik Sinha, co-founder of AltNews, another prominent fact-checking website. "But they're doing something now, which is good."

Yet Govindraj Ethiraj, Founder-Editor of Boom Live, said the social networking giant's contribution to their fact-checking efforts was of limited utility. "Facebook's involvement didn't really help us," he said. "This was more about us helping them."

Ethiraj identified Facebook-owned WhatsApp as the primary medium for the propagation of fake news during the Karnataka election. Each of the three major parties in the fray reportedly set up tens of thousands of groups on the platform in an effort to spread their message. Facebook is yet to figure out a way to allow fact-checkers into the platform without breaking the end-to-end encryption which makes it impossible for messages to be tracked.

But even on Facebook, which lends itself far more easily to tracking and monitoring, the tools that the company has built to track fake news are not particularly effective.

Facebook allows advertisers to micro-target content at users using specific attributes, and users are unlikely to report content that agrees with their ideological biases.

In his office in the aging Sun Mill Compound in Mumbai's Lower Parel, Jency Jacob, Managing Editor of Boom logged into the dashboard and scrolled through the gushing sewer of user-flagged content pouring in from around the world: stories about dinosaur remains and ancient caves, tales of celebrities battling mysterious diseases, and ordinary people undergoing plastic surgeries to look like celebrities, mixed in with news – both real and fake – that users found objectionable. There's one about the rise in fuel prices and there's even a Huffpost India story, about a Dalit being flogged to death in Gujarat. (The HuffPost India story, the editorial board can affirm, is true.)

"I can't claim that it doesn't affect me," admitted Jacob. "This morning, the first thing I saw after waking up was a video of a woman kicking a 3-year-old baby and slamming her on the ground. We are in the rush of it right now, but I don't think we will enjoy doing this all our lives."

"A lot of it is dependent on how users are reporting," Jacob continued, explaining that the dashboard tool relies on users to flag potentially "fake" news. "If the users aren't reporting it, it isn't going to come into the queue."

This is a blind spot as Facebook allows advertisers to micro-target content at users using specific attributes, and users are unlikely to report content that agrees with their ideological biases.

Everything But English

Facebook's dashboard cannot be used to report non-English content. In India, local language users outnumber English language users and more are coming online every day. The dashboard is also unable to filter stories relevant to a specific location, despite Facebook allowing advertisers to geo-target their advertisements with reasonable accuracy.

Jacob reckons the tool will get better at dealing with the Indian context over time. "This was always intended to be a pilot project. It will take them time to figure out how to get us more relevant leads," he said.

With not much help forthcoming from Facebook, Boom relied on its own tried and tested methods of tracking misinformation. Its fact-checkers monitored pages and websites known to be potential sources of fake news, told friends and family to forward anything suspicious they came across, and maintained their own reporting channel - a dedicated WhatsApp helpline for users to direct suspicious looking links.

These methods threw up about 4-5 actionable leads every day. To fact-check them, Boom deployed a combination of old school journalistic practices, such as getting fact-checkers to call sources, and tech tools like video and image matching software.

Fact-checking is a painstaking process that involves a great deal of manual effort.

"The way we measure virality is a bit of a crude method. We check whether several of us have received it or not, and whether it is being shared on all three platforms."

"Essentially, we are saying what we are saying is true, don't believe others," said Sinha. "That's a very arrogant position to take. To say that in a world full of information, there has to be a process where we take the audience from the claim to the truth. Gathering the information required to do that takes a lot of time."

According to Jacob, it sometimes takes 2-3 people working all day to fact-check a single video. And Boom only has 6 fact-checkers in all, including the two Facebook-funded hires. Given these constraints, they could act on only a fraction of the tip-offs.

"We were not looking at volume, but at impact," said Jacob, indicating that they focused their attention on misinformation that was going viral. "The way we measure virality is a bit of a crude method. We check whether several of us have received it or not, and whether it is being shared on all three platforms."

Jacob admits that there were many more stories that they could have tackled, but he says that it was impossible to address them all with the limited resources available to them.

Sinha reckons that Facebook already has the technology to significantly alleviate the manpower issue. "If you upload a video to Facebook and there's a copyright violation, they pull the video. So they know how to match videos. If they leverage that technology and apply it to fake news, it'll reduce the mundane work we have to do by half," he said.

While Facebook's contribution to Boom's sourcing and fact-checking processes was minimal, it does seem to have had a significant impact on how fact-checks were disseminated. The Facebook dashboard allows fact-checkers to tag content with ratings ranging from 'true' to 'false' with a few options in between and also attach their fact-check articles to the content. The platform then attempts to reduce distribution of the content and display the fact-check article to users whenever they encounter it on the news feed or attempt to share it.

Major Victory

This system claimed its first major victory within a week of the partnership being announced when several major media outlets including NDTV India, India Today and Republic published a list of purported star campaigners for the Congress party that turned out to be fabricated.

Boom rated the articles false and linked their fact-check. Jacob could not verify if this reduced the articles' distribution by the 80% figure touted by Facebook, but said there was a clear impact.

"NDTV India carried the story and we noticed that their traffic dropped after we linked our fact-check to their article," said Jacob. With traffic plummeting and users being shown fake news warnings when interacting with their content, most of the media houses that published the list either issued clarifications or took their articles down.

After the initial success, Boom quickly ran into the limitations of the ratings system. Fact-checks could only be done on links and not on image, video, or text posts. Facebook eventually granted Boom access to image and video posts, but text posts are still beyond the purview of fact-checkers.

While that change was likely a simple fix that only required a switch to be flipped, there are other restrictions on the ratings system that are unlikely to be lifted as easily.

From the beginning of the election cycle, false statements by prominent politicians - including the Prime Minister - were an everyday affair. As is the norm, they were faithfully reported by most media outlets without critique or context. Misinformation masquerading as opinion, wherein a set of legimitate facts are presented out of context to arrive at a blatantly false conclusion, was also a persistent feature during the polls. Such articles add to the whirlwind of campaign misinformation, but are exempted from the rating system.

"Facebook needs to figure out a more aggressive model of showing the explanatory article to the reader."

Sinha believes that misinformation that falls into these grey areas cannot be laid at Facebook's door.

But Pranesh Prakash, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, said such restrictions were "extraordinarily stupid."

"As long as the distinction is made that the publication isn't msiquoting and the politician is saying something that is false - and that's easy enough to do - I can't think of a possible justification," he said, regarding false statements made by public figures.

As for misleading opinion pieces Prakash said, "Most falsehoods are not just statements that present incorrect facts, but that present facts in an incorrect context. It's clearly the context that speaks to how people interpret facts. Fact checkers can't be people who only look at facts as black and white things."

Facebook's suggested method of dealing with such articles is to attach fact-check articles to them while assigning them a 'not eligible' rating. Jacob reckons that this is yet another blind spot.

"Facebook needs to figure out a more aggressive model of showing the explanatory article to the reader. The way it is designed now, with the article showing up below as a related link, not many people will bother to go and click on that."

The Whatsapp Problem

For all its flaws, the fact-checking initiative appears to be making an attempt at solving the problem of misinformation on Facebook's news feed. But the company hasn't even begun to address the 800-pound gorilla that is WhatsApp.

While Facebook has been castigated for playing fast and loose with privacy on its primary platform, the inherently better privacy features of the fully-encrypted Whatsapp platform have made it lethal when it comes to fake news. The lack of third party access, which has prevented Facebook from monetising WhatsApp chats - thus far - and security agencies from spying on them, has also made Whatsapp messages impossible to fact-check.

In Karnataka, WhatsApp was the primary vector for the spread of a series of fake polls, some of which were eventually picked up and published by mainstream media outlets. Unlike fake news that emerges on the Facebook and Twitter, it is impossible to trace the source of misinformation on Whatsapp.

"Just as spam can be flagged and people can be barred if they're flagged as spammers, similarly, if people have been flagged as serial promoters of fake news, you can use that to nudge people's behaviour."

"If Whatsapp had a trending list, our jobs would've been a lot easier," lamented Jacob. "By and large, we have figured out what goes viral on Facebook and Twitter. It might take a day to reach us, but eventually we catch anything that's going viral on these platforms. But Whatsapp is a black box."

Prakash asserts that while encryption is a barrier, it does not make it impossible to police fake news on WhatApp. "Just as spam can be flagged and people can be barred if they're flagged as spammers, similarly, if people have been flagged as serial promoters of fake news, you can use that to nudge people's behaviour."

There are indications that WhatsApp is attempting to develop features to tackle fake news. The platform has beta-tested features that would clearly identifyforwarded messages and warn users if a message has been forwarded more than 25 times. Jacob said that Facebook was working on a product that would throw up fact-check articles when a user interacts with a fake news URL on WhatsApp. If or when any of these features actually make it to users is a matter of conjecture.

Prakash said the slow pace of progress on WhatsApp is just a reflection of the company's priorities. "It speaks to how American a company a Facebook is. Whatsapp is the real network for fake news in India, but it gets the least amount of attention."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/huffington-post-visvak-may-30-2018-election-experiment-proves-facebook-just-doesnt-care-about-fake-news-in-india

Election Commission to monitor conduct of political parties on Facebook, Twitter and Google

praskrishna — 2013-12-30T07:02:06Z

With Congress and BJP hammering away at each other in the ongoing assembly contests that will set the stage for national polls next year, the Election Commission wants to make sure social media and online platforms run by Google, Facebook and Twitter are not used to breach the code of conduct that governs candidates and parties. The commission's key concerns relate to malicious content and exceeding the campaign expense limit.

The article by Ajmer Singh was published in the Economic Times on November 25, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Election Commission, which summoned the social media companies to a meeting last Monday, directed them to cooperate in monitoring content. They were asked to set up a mechanism that would help prevent posting of material that could vitiate the election atmosphere, according to Election Commission officials who are aware of the development and didn't want to be named. If such content is posted, the mechanism should also allow for its speedy removal, they said.

"It is difficult to monitor and track content on social media or Internet sites, since the servers are based out of the US," said one of the officials cited above. "EC has asked social media giants to cooperate for compliance with the code of conduct, pre-certification of advertisement on the web and monitoring malicious content."

The companies declined to comment and referred ET to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) for a response. "It was a sensitising meeting on the code of conduct with some legal and corporate affairs representatives of Internet firms which are members of IAMAI," said Subho Roy, president of the grouping.

"The Election Commission representatives explained to us the model code of conduct, its importance during the last 48 hours of the election, the pre-certified advertisements and why they were important in accounting of the candidate's expenses. They also wanted to understand from us what are the current methods of removing illegal content from websites under existing laws. The Election Commission also assured us that at no point there would be any attempt to censor social media," said Subho Roy, IAMAI president and one of those present at the November 18 meeting.

The commission has classified social media into five types - collaborative projects such as Wikipedia; blogs and micro blogs such as Twitter; content communities such as Google-owned YouTube; social networking sites such as Facebook; and games and apps.

"We have received many complaints about misuse of social media platforms, and it is becoming unmanageable. So all these sites shall now be strictly monitored and asked to comply with EC's instructions," an official said.

According to Election Commission guidelines, "Legal provisions relating to election campaigning apply to social media in the same manner in which they apply to any other form of election campaigning using any other media."

The social media companies will also need to make sure that any advertising they carry conforms to the rules.

An official said social media companies have been asked to "keep an eye on any breach of model code of conduct, in respect of any party or candidate who posts hate messages or creates hatred or tension between different castes, communities, religions, etc. The social media giants have been directed to ensure pre-certification of advertisement on web/social media (clearance of political advertisement by a committee before being displayed in social media/web by any registered party or by any group or association)".

An executive at one of the companies said it would be difficult to keep a check on what was being posted as this may count as a breach of privacy, besides being impinging on other rules.
"It is a highly contentious issue and (it's) impossible to monitor malicious content," said this person who didn't want to be named. "The diktat issued by EC can't be implemented since it overrides the Information Technology Act. We all comply with the IT Act, and the model code of conduct is not for us but for political parties and candidates."

A privacy advocate pointed out the difficulties that the social media companies may face when it comes to implementing the Election Commission guidelines.

"This is what we call proactive censorship or proactive monitoring and may interfere with the intermediary's immunity from liability, when they have no actual knowledge of content. It may be in conflict with provisions of the IT Act (Section 79) and could have serious privacy implications," said Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet Society, and an expert on privacy laws. "Pre-censorship is required by Indian law and courts only for cinema that is exhibited in theatres. In the case of books, this type of censorship has been held to be unconstitutional. This case is worse because it is private pre-censorship of user-generated content that is not subject to judicial review."

The Election Commission had, on October 25, asked candidates to provide information about social media accounts and expenditure on online campaigns. It had clarified that the provisions of the code of conduct would apply to the Internet, including social media websites.

A Congress member said social media accounts would be difficult to police as these may be in the name of individuals and have no direct links to parties or candidates.

"The biggest problem is that candidates or political parties may not be operating their Twitter handles or posting advertisements on Facebook or the web, but (through) an unknown Internet army, which builds up a social media campaign and posts hate messages," the person said. A senior Congress MP, who didn't want to be named, suggested that such efforts were extensive on behalf of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat.

"More than 90% of Twitter traffic is emanating from Rajkot, Ahmedabad and Baroda, all in Gujarat," this person said. "Who are these people, campaigning and managing an obnoxious campaign?"

BJP denied that its Internet campaigns were in violation of any Election Commission guidelines.
"There is no truth in these allegations and Congress has little understanding of this," said Arvind Gupta, who heads BJP's IT cell. "Narendra Modi has a pan-India presence and is a popular leader, they are just jealous of him. We have a social media cell, which acts responsibly and complies with guidelines."

Election Commission officials said social media companies have been asked to resolve issues related to malicious content and provide details of serious infringements. The ministry of communications and information technology has also been asked to suggest ways of tackling the matter.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/economic-times-november-25-2013-ajmer-singh-election-commission-to-monitor-conduct-of-political-parties-on-facebook-twitter-google

Election campaign: parties draw battle lines on media platforms

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T10:23:41Z

In the run-up to the 2014 polls, parties are drawing up media strategies that have a focus on young voters.

This article by Venkatesh Upadhyay was published in Livemint on August 26, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Major national political parties have begun to sharpen and tweak their tools of public relations and media engagement in the run-up to the 2014 general election, with an eager nod towards a voters list that is expected to be packed by the young.

National parties currently in the process of shortlisting their advertising, public relations and mobile marketing agencies declined to share details.

“The advertising strategy will crystalize by January. We will go for multiple agencies,” said Manish Tewari, spokesperson for the Congress as well as minister for information and broadcasting.

According to people familiar with the selection process, JWT, Crayons Communications and Dentsu India, among others, are all in the race for the Congress business. Home-grown Crayons has worked closely with the Delhi government and Congress in the past.

Refusing to confirm the names on the shortlist, Tewari said it was a line-up of the “usual suspects”.

For social media, the Congress has engaged Delhi-based OMLogic, an online media marketing company, which helped create the website fekuexpress.com that seeks to highlight the supposedly braggart nature of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief campaigner Narendra Modi.

The website ran contests in which winners received film tickets. OMLogic was among three shortlisted agencies from 22 that competed for the same account, a person familiar with the bid said. According to others aware of the developments, senior Congress leaders such as Digvijay Singh and Deepender Singh Hooda helped select the agencies.

OMLogic helps clients enhance their brands across platforms and creates social media applications for them. The company declined to comment for this story.

“I believe these elections will represent the first time that political parties will have a conscious media strategy,” said Sanjaya Baru, communications advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from 2004 to 2008.

	“By conscious I mean that political parties have acknowledged the role of mass media in getting their message across to voters. TV has taken the space of political rallies.” Baru said the media strategy for the coming elections was essentially focused on TV and social media as “both these platforms allow parties to reach out to large parts of the urban and semi-urban demographic”. Close to 60 million new voters have been enrolled for the 2014 election, of whom 17.6 million are 18-19 year-old first-timers. A study by the Iris Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates the number of urban social media users to be around 78 million. The main users were in the age groups of 18-24 and 25-34 years.

“By conscious I mean that political parties have acknowledged the role of mass media in getting their message across to voters. TV has taken the space of political rallies.”

Baru said the media strategy for the coming elections was essentially focused on TV and social media as “both these platforms allow parties to reach out to large parts of the urban and semi-urban demographic”.

Close to 60 million new voters have been enrolled for the 2014 election, of whom 17.6 million are 18-19 year-old first-timers. A study by the Iris Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates the number of urban social media users to be around 78 million. The main users were in the age groups of 18-24 and 25-34 years.

The Congress has already highlighted the role of social media in its communication strategy. The party held a special session on the use of social media by party members on 22 August that was addressed by minister of state for human resources Shashi Tharoor, and Manish Tewari. In a similar meeting last month, party members were briefed on how to comment on key issues, including the state of the economy, and personalities like Modi, who is also Gujarat chief minister.

It also launched an intranet software called Khidki (Hindi for window) for use by Congress members. According to party politicians, another important part of last month’s exercise was to identify young members who would make up a cadre of spokespersons that would then participate across news channels.

The BJP, meanwhile, has drafted Internet entrepreneurs B.G. Mahesh and Rajesh Jain to help the party with its social media operations. Acknowledging the role of social media in the party’s media strategy, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman said, “Our exercise has already taken on board the position which the party enjoys on various social media. We only emphasized the content that such media ought to have,” she added.

Prominent members of the party, led by Modi, have large followings on social media. Modi’s Twitter account is followed by close to 2.1 million people.

Last week, the BJP launched india272.com that would “crowd source” suggestions by the electorate. It also launched a website where its members can upload “chargesheets” on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. Visitors to www.bjp.org/upachargesheet can also make use of different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to register their complaints.

Some Internet activists are sceptical about such strategies. “The average Indian netizen is not that well equipped to critically analyse the content coming from so-called crowdsourced mechanisms,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based Internet policy research organization. “I believe that social media might be one step removed from actual voters and might be more oriented towards opinion makers. In that sense social media (in India) behaves very differently from the way it has been used in the US.”

According to an online media expert familiar with the BJP’s social media campaign, the interactive nature of social media helps build up an image of transparency while making the party more accessible to a young audience that has been switching off television news.

In addition, social media allows political leaders to gauge public response quickly.

Ajay Maken, Congress general secretary and the man who heads the party’s communication strategy, pointed out in an article published this month that subjects that become influential on Twitter during the day tend to turn into full-fledged TV debates by the evening.

But political parties are not giving up on television channels just yet.

According to a report by consulting firm KPMG, the number of Indian households with TV sets is estimated to be 154 million, and is expected to grow to 173 million by 2017. TAM Media research estimated the number of TV households to be 123 million in 2009. Meanwhile, cable- and satellite-owning TV households has in the period 2009-2012 ballooned from 90 million to 126 million, according to TAM.

The Congress has issued guidelines to its members on how to behave on television. According to individuals familiar with the move, the party has also set up a research cell that informs Congress spokespersons about subjects that they are asked to speak on.

Congress members who participate in televised debates have been given strict orders to not go on air without a thorough understanding of the nuances of issues—provided to them by Congress researchers. For instance, spokespersons have been advised to rely on facts and be data-specific when confronted with the twin issues of Gujarat’s high-growth economy and Modi’s governance record.

In order to streamline the process, the party has come up with lists of speakers who are focused on specific issues. It has also constituted media cells in each state capitals with three units—spokespersons, social media cell and research —and a social media division for every urban centre with a population of at least a million.

The BJP has devised a similar strategy. Party spokespersons have been asked to mention chief ministers other than Modi if asked about the leadership for the 2014 elections. Arun Jaitley, in a interview to The Hindu, on 19 August had spoken about the possibility of there being close to 10 prime ministerial candidates in the BJP.

The BJP, which held a closed-door media workshop for party members last week, is also keen on research. “A lot of policy requires specialized understanding which is largely domain-specific. In that regard, members of our party will need to be prepared when they speak on such issues,” said spokesperson Seetharaman.

The Congress has already begun a television ads-blitzkrieg to trumpet its record in government. Begun in May, these ads have sought to showcase the fruits of the welfare state, including schemes aimed at the poor, such as theMahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, as well a long list of rights-based laws. One well-known ad tells the story of a fictional young woman named Priya who lives in a village but makes use of opportunities in education and improved electricity connections to become a successful entrepreneur.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-august-26-2013-venkatesh-upadhyay-election-campaign

Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi

Sarah McKeever — 2015-07-16T08:22:13Z

This post by Sarah McKeever is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Sarah is a PhD candidate at the India Institute, King’s College London, and her work focuses on the impact of social media on contemporary political movements. In this essay, she explores the increasingly hierarchical system of activism on the Internet, based on Western corporate desire for data, and how it is shaping who is seen and heard on the Internet in India.

Background

I will preface this post by stating that as an American, my personal experience of the Internet has been shaped by nearly 18 years as an active user. My experience with digital interfaces, websites, and social media has been formed through my experiences during the Internet revolution in the United States. Academic and personal training have shaped what I determine to be trustworthy, useful, and credible when searching for information. This post is based on field research I am conducting in New Delhi from January through June 2015.

With these preconceptions and standards in mind, I began to research organisations that I felt were credible enough to approach for interviews in January 2015. My current research project investigates the impact that social media has had on the issues of corruption and violence against women in New Delhi, following the social movements on these issues in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 respectively. I started at an organisational level in order to research the impact that social media and the movements themselves had on organisations working on these issues. Areas of interest include any changes in issue engagement and discourse around gender violence and corruption. I focused exclusively on organisations that have an office in New Delhi and engage in activism in an urban context. Many of these organisations also have a presence in other states and include rural as well as urban projects. I conducted semi-structured interviews in order to engage with the changes wrought by the digital on a qualitative rather than quantitative basis.

Activism and Digital Hierarchy: A Divided Internet?

While conducting initial research, I began to investigate two separate but related areas of inquiry. The first was relatively straightforward: what type of differences were there between groups which actively engaging with the affordances of the Internet and Web 2.0? In my research I examined online awareness groups and campaigns as well as more traditional advocacy and awareness groups that were struggling to translate their work onto the Internet and on social media.

While engaging with the first question, I quickly discovered that the divide between how organisations leveraged the affordances of the Internet - and social media in particular - was stark. Earl and Kimport (2011) write that organisations that directly translate previous advocacy on the ground onto the Internet fail to fully leverage the affordances of the Internet. Organisations that effectively utilise the strengths of the Internet - including flash tactics, crowd-sourcing, and networked leadership - have in fact transformed the world of activism. They have created a new type of “digital activism” through the use of an increasingly digital networked society (Castells 2010, Rainie and Wellman 2012). While this is a simplification of the overall argument – and I personally would argue that in actuality organisations work on a range of digital capabilities and the idea of a spectrum rather than a binary division would be more appropriate at this point – it was clear that both sides were struggling to reach some sort of equilibrium between each other’s capabilities when I conducted interviews with them.

The second inquiry stemmed from my engagement with the first: how was the “active” use of the Internet and social media by an organization translating into an interpretation of their effectiveness? In other words, was an “active” social media presence and a slick website contributing to an impression that they were somehow more impactful than the organisations which lacked these features and is this phenomenon creating a new hierarchy of activism in Delhi?

Many of the organisations that I spoke with who used the Internet and social media “well,” attracted foreign attention and funding. It is clear there is a monetary incentive for organisations to be present and easily accessible via search engines and social media platforms. And while social media has become a huge selling point in India - including in last year’s Parliamentary elections - much of the funding and attention appears to come from outside of India in these particular cases. While social media has become a popular tool for outreach in New Delhi, the emphasis placed on it is possibly being driven by forces outside of India in the activist sphere.

Organisations that had been involved in advocacy and grassroots activism before the Internet boom in India discussed the struggle to make effective use of the affordances of the Internet. My participants unilaterally expressed a desire to engage with the digital audience in India – an audience of approximately 310 million users according to Internet Live Stats (2015) – but were often ill equipped to do so. Stated difficulties included a lack of a dedicated communications and media strategist, lack of experience with social media and web design, and difficulty translating nuanced discussion onto social media sites which are not necessarily designed to facilitate complex and controversial discussions. Some participants directly stated that an online presence, whether it was effective or not, had become essential to obtaining foreign funding and attention, as a digital presence represents a tangible deliverable when applying for foreign grants.

It is clear from any cursory examination of social media sites that the mediums demand an increasing amount of content from its users. Simply put, the more you post, the more you are seen and heard above the increasing noise and chaos of social media. And if being seen and heard represents success, the message itself can get lost in translation. Click bait, sponsored posts, and buzzy headlines attract far more attention and gain more traction than any post attempting to create nuance and demand deeper engagement, at least in the cases I have personally observed and in my experience with activist groups.

The growing popularity of social awareness campaigns and organisations designed for the online world were quite obviously far more successful in utilising social media and web pages to draw attention to a specific issue. These campaigns especially were extremely popular with Delhi youth in particular and effectively used visual displays - such as crowd-sourced images and provocative posters - to highlight issues of gender violence and corruption. Occasionally some participants were outwardly dismissive of older advocacy groups, which they felt were out of step with the times and content to stay in their comfort zones.

In spite of the success of many online campaigns on the issues I researched, few were able to translate the momentum generated by the campaign into a broader discussion and deeper engagement on their chosen issue. While some participants stated this was not necessarily what they desired to do - some chose to remain purely as an awareness campaign without moving into advocacy - other participants stated a desire to do more and engage with the complex cultural, societal, and political constructs surrounding gender and corruption in India. When they attempted to engage in this more nuanced conversation, they often lost momentum on social media and occasionally stopped their campaign efforts altogether.

The rift was clear, and the struggle to merge worlds and effectively translate a variety of skill sets into effective advocacy was fairly well delineated. What troubled me was the implicit assumption that was being made around “effective” and “good” use of the Internet and social media. Why did a glossy website and an “active” social media presence appear to translate into organisational effectiveness? What was driving that assumption? It was an assumption I occasionally found myself making when researching organisations and even in some of my earliest interviews. Why did daily Facebook posts, likes, multiple Tweets, and followers translate into an interpretation of success and impact?

As Western, and in the case of Facebook and Twitter, American publically traded companies, there is a clear business prerogative in encouraging ever-increasing usage of their sites. More posts and tweet equals more data, which can then be analyzed or sold to a variety of different entities that want to utilise this data to create wealth. Facebook and Twitter also happen to be sites that can be used to generate conversation around key issues and act as an easy way to aggregate thousands, if not millions, of users behind a cause. The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Delhi Rape case mobilisations are only some of the hundreds of cases where social media sites have played a key role in mobilizing political, social, and cultural change.

However there is a corporate prerogative at work that is often ignored in these narratives. It is in a social media companies’ best interest to encourage frequent usage, as this is how free services generate revenue. Those who post the most win the race to be seen and heard. Those who do not - or do not have the funds to pay for sponsored posts or tweets - get lost in the shuffle, viewed as out of step and struggling to adapt to modern urban India, regardless of the quality work they may be doing offline. The “good” user is the most active user, regardless of what the content actually is. It can easily be termed as a binary between quantity versus quality, but this diminishes the extremely effective and thoughtful work of some digital media campaigns, which demands a different type of quality to actually become an impactful movement. It is therefore a more complex phenomenon than blindly generating massive amounts of content, but this is certainly a critical piece to digital success.

My conclusion, and one which was discussed and inspired by an early participant, was that it was the social media platforms – including key sites like Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent YouTube - were partially generating and multiplying the aura of effectiveness around organisations and groups which had heavily emphasized social media as a core part of their outreach strategy. This is not to deny the very real success that several of these campaigns have had in generating conversation and change around critical issues in India. It instead questions why our notion of success and effectiveness has been altered so quickly, especially in an urban and digital context.

Based on my fieldwork, I encountered a digital hierarchy in three different aspects in activist groups. These divisions emerge at the level of search engines and ranking, web page aesthetics, and finally social media usage and statistical data. I will briefly examine these levels in the following sections.

Level I: Search Engines and Page Rankings

The first was generated at the level of the search engine. Higher ranked and frequently visited websites appear higher on any search engine page, based on the search algorithm. In the first searches I conducted, several organisations with well-developed and easily navigable websites always appeared high on the search page, and were the first organisations I made contact with. As I began to dig deeper into partner organisations and get recommendations from my participants, I discovered new organisations that had never appeared in any search I had conducted, in spite of their clear links to the issues I was researching. These organisations have less of an audience and less of a digital voice from the very beginning. This is not even engaging with the issue of language on the Internet, as all of my searches were in English and not in Hindi or any other language spoken in India and were focussed initially only on organisations with an office in Delhi.

A second issue at the level of the search engine was that the organisations that appeared highest on the list had links to larger partner organisations in Europe and the United States, and occasionally had head offices in New York or London. The larger global presence may have had an impact on page ranking, as they were more likely to be searched for and recognised globally. The dominance of English on the Internet may also play a role, limiting the potential set of results, though again I made this decision consciously. Language choice has had a demonstrable impact on what a person sees on the Internet and what appears using the same search term. The burden of visibility influencing potential digital impact is clear, and practically forces some organisations to invest in a digital presence without a clear digital strategy. This can prove extremely detrimental – especially if the web page proves difficult to navigate and use, which I discuss in the following section - and move investment away from advocacy and programmes on the ground. Visibility is also a key concern for groups that exist purely as a digital campaign, as their potential success is based almost solely on how easy they are to find. Failure leads to diminished searches and lower rankings outside of the first results page from a search engine, which few people click beyond, thus dramatically limiting the impact an organisational webpage can have from the very beginning.

Level II: Webpage Aesthetics

The second area consisted of the content and ease of use of the website. As a researcher, I was compelled to look into every recommended organisation that engaged with the issues I was researching. That being said the organisations with more developed websites caught my attention and implicitly created the impression that it was a more desirable contact. This is quite obviously not the case in reality, and often the organisations that had less advanced websites and appeared technologically less capable proved to be highly credible sources doing commendable work. However the difficulty of navigating some of the websites, which included issues such as broken hyperlinks, difficult interfaces, and offered very little information on the activities of the organisations would prove deeply unappealing to an observer with less motivation than myself. Going against my own training and experience and trusting the power of the network of recommendations on the ground proved to be just as useful as fairly random web searches. In terms of first impressions, it is difficult to move beyond these issues of navigation for an outside observer which expects a quality organisation to have a quality website.

Again, organisations with head offices based in the United States or Europe often were easily navigable and had high quality webpage design, representing a clear trend and highlighting the emphasis placed on the digital aboard. It was also very clearly which organisations had started on the Internet, based purely on design and functionality, though there was a certain bias as the Internet campaigners I spoke too had all had had great success as an online campaign. Finding failed campaigns would have added a key counterpoint to my work, but the difficulty of doing so proved insurmountable for this particular project. Design and navigability are key indicators of skill and investment in digital presence from an outsider’s perspective. It is less than representative of the story on the ground and the success of an organisation, especially if it is not a purely digital entity.

Level III: Social Media Use and Statistics

The third and final level I encountered was determined by social media use. For every organization or participant I met I did cursory research on the various social media platforms they used, how many likes or followers they had near the day of my interview, and roughly how often the organization posted and tweeted. About 90% of my participant organisations had a least a Facebook page and a Twitter account. The number of followers varied widely, from about 200 to nearly 200,000 on Facebook and Twitter. Daily posts and variety of content was a key component to the success of the more widely followed groups online. It was immediately clear that groups that posted sporadically and without immediately stimulating content did not generate or gain nearly as much digital attention.

Many organisations discussed the struggle to move beyond a closed and familiar network, to reach out to the audience they know is there. But without a clear strategy, and even more importantly without a dedicated communications position, their digital engagement often mirrored their offline audience; a closed network of individuals already dedicated to change in the area the organisation was working in. They often failed to meet the incessant demands of the medium for easy content and had difficulties expanding their reach or message beyond their previously established networks of influence.

Those organisations which were able to attract digital attention on social media, while feeling it was an important tool for outreach – especially for youth in Delhi – and places where conversations on key issues could take place, also discussed the importance of social media statistics as a measurable deliverable. Donors, especially foreign funders, placed an emphasis on growth on social media sites as an indicator of success and growing influence. Whether social media growth can actually be an indicator of influence is still up for debate, but it is indicative of the notion that success means quantity, rather than quality, similar to the Western corporate prerogative of growth. That this is the new measure and standard of success for an activist organization is a troubling trend, and one unlikely to change in the near future.

Conclusion

I have argued that corporate strategies and imperatives are creating this new class system of activism in India. I labelled it a “Western” corporate strategy, based on the American origins of the main players Facebook and Twitter, which are the predominate mediums my participants engaged with and have some of the largest audiences in India. Facebook had 108 million users of May 2014 Twitter has around 19 million users (Statista 2015) in India, though these are estimates and in all likelihood there has been an increase in users. The new hierarchy masks the reality that impact and results cannot be measured by likes and retweets. While there is indeed power in these particular sites, the difficulty in documenting what influence actually translates into in the offline world is a well-documented debate. I do not doubt that the Internet and social media, in urban and increasingly in rural India, have great affordances. But these advances do not have to come at the expense of equally important organisations whose ability to translate these messages digitally is more limited than others, especially when this hierarchy is partially generated by corporate sensibilities whose sole aim is profit generation.

While this hierarchy has been explored as an issue of second-level digital divide- where the issue is not lack of access but lack of training and knowledge of the digital world – I do not believe this is the only issue at stake. The increasing power of large companies to determine the way we interact and the rules of effective communication and transmission are deeply troubling, and leaves little room for alternatives. Collaboration can be an effective way of mitigating some of the differences, but this option is not always available to every group.

While these are questions that require further examination, it is clear that there is a divide between organisation’s digital strategies and whether they are able to leverage the affordances of the Internet and social media applications. I have argued that the operational aspects of social media sites increase this divide in particular, as they demand increasing amounts of data to generate profit. A strong digital presence is increasingly linked to an idea of effectiveness and impact, without investigating offline realities. This in turn can lead to a new hierarchy of activism, which limits the voices of some and magnifies the digital voices of others who are clearly better at manipulating the advantages of the Internet. I do not wish to say that offline activism is more effective than online activism and that we should not engage with digital mediums to promote. I only seek to question how this increasingly digital reality is creating a hierarchal system that is not reflective of offline reality, question what knowledge might be left behind in the process, and critically examine the underlying structures and platforms underlying the growing field of digital activism in India.

References

Castells, M. (2010) Networks of Outrage and Networks of Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, Cambridge, MA: Polity Press

Earl, J. and Kimport, K. (2011) Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Internet Live Stats (2015) www.internetlivestats.com Accessed 23 May 2015

Rainie, L. and Wellman, B. (2012) Networked: The New Social Operating System, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Statista (2015) www.statista.com Accessed 25 May 2015

The post is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and copyright is retained by the author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_effective-activism

EC guidelines on social media: Welcome move, but not enough

praskrishna — 2013-11-19T10:18:51Z

With election season close by and the growing ubiquity of social media, the Election Commission of India’s recent guidelines for how candidates and political parties must conduct themselves on social media are a well-intentioned step. But are these guidelines enough to regulate how online media is used by parties and candidates, given the kind of proxy wars that are played online? For now, not really.

This article was published in the First Post on November 1. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

For the first time time, the EC is seeking detailed expenditure records, and disclosure of all authentic social media accounts of every candidate. The guidelines have also looked at online advertising and the EC has asked that all ads by political parties should be pre-certified before they are released online. In fact, Firstpost’s Pallavi Pollanki had reported even before the guidelines were published that the EC was working towards monitoring the use of social media. You can read the full story here.

Currently, however, the guidelines don’t take into account, content posted by persons other than candidates and political parties. The last paragraph of the EC’s order states, “As far as the content posted by persons other than candidates and political parties is concerned, the Commission is considering the matter in consultation with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology on practical ways to deal with the issue, in so far as they relate to, or can be reasonably connected with, the election campaigning of political parties and candidates.”

The nature of the web is such that possible to create many IPs, change Twitter handles, create new user ids on public discussion forums. Thus it becomes very hard to gauge who is a volunteer/ just another ordinary supporter or who is a paid supporter. Even the EC acknowledges that.

Sunil Abraham, Director of the Centre for Internet and Society based in Bangalore, has a valid point on this. He says, “The guidelines only regulate the social media accounts of politicians and their parties. It does not regulate social media content published by others. This basically means that the EC needs to develop sophisticated tools to detect astroturfing, sock puppetry, meat puppetry and other forms of manipulation of the networked public sphere. Without these tools it would not be possible to tell when politicians and political parties use proxies to circumvent the guidelines.”

Astroturfing, for instance is when a site or an independent entity claims to be completely neutral and in favour of a political message without revealing its funding source. Very often software is used to create many online avatars. Sometimes it’s one person with many online identities which is also known as sock puppetry.

So yes, there might be online content or websites that claim to be independent and supports or mocks a particular leader but it might not always be possible to know who is financing them. While the EC might be able to keep a tab on official Twitter handles and Facebook and perhaps other few that are revealed by the party, it will be very hard to pinpoint proxy accounts, websites etc.

For example when it comes to a leader like Modi, there are many websites that are pro and anti-Modi. One in particular which defends Modi is called Godhra Riots the True Story and seeks to tell what it claims is the true tale behind the Godhra riots. When you type Godhra Riots, it is the number two search result in Google. In the About Us section, the website claims to be run by well-wishers of humanity and gives only a vague idea of its owner.

The site tries to absolve Modi, but since it doesn’t claim to be run by any political party, it doesn’t come under the purview of the EC’s guidelines and there is no reason to reveal who runs or funds it.

Counter to that is another website called Truth of Gujarat, which seeks to reveal the truth behind Narendra Modi’s development and other claims. The work published on the site bears bylines prominently but there is no easy way of knowing who finances the site and its research. The fact is that everyone claims to be represent a certain version of the truth on the web and when you don’t know the source, it becomes deeply problematic.

There’s also the question of Internet trolls who are largely un-touched by the guidelines. And there’s no denying that trolls do form a large part of the online political discourse in India.

We asked Ishan Russel, the managing partner for The Image People, a firm that specialises in political campaign management, if the guidelines are insufficient to deal with trolls.

He wrote, “Social media has ensured that a lot more people are expressing their opinion plus the added advantage of anonymity makes it easy for trolling. The days of the political class laying down the agenda are perhaps over… To try and regulate every comment is impossible, the best perhaps the EC can ensure is that no hateful campaigning happens online.”

EC also wants pre-certification for online advertising. But Sunil feels that pre-certification is overkill. He says, “This will greatly reduce the agility required by political parties on social media. Post facto notification would have been a sufficient measure to ensure compliance with the guidelines and other regulations of the EC.”

Ishant however says that pre-certification is good especially for video-based content, “In cases where for example a video ad is used it is good perhaps to pre-screen it so that it does not violate any norms.” He feels it is necessary to ensure that the online space remains fair too.

It would be fair to say that for now while the EC’s guidelines were much-needed but given the way the Internet works, they still have a long way to go.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/firstpost-november-1-2013-shruti-dhapola-ec-guidelines-on-social-media

Draft nonsense

pranesh — 2012-12-03T09:08:10Z

Seriously flawed and dodgily drafted provisions in the IT Act provide the state a stick to beat its citizens with.

Pranesh Prakash's op-ed was published in the Times of India on November 24, 2012.

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act once again finds itself in the middle of a brewing storm. It has been used in cases ranging from the Mamata Banerjee cartoon case, the Aseem Trivedi case, the Karti Chidambaram case, the Chinmayi case, to the current Bal Thackeray-Facebook comments case. In all except the Karti Chidambaram case (which is actually a case of defamation where 's. 66A' is inapplicable), it was used in conjunction with another penal provision, showing that existing laws are more than adequate for regulation of online speech. That everything from online threats wishing sexual assault (the Chinmayi case) to harmless cartoons are sought to be covered under this should give one cause for concern. Importantly, this provision is cognisable (though bailable), meaning an arrest warrant isn't required. This makes it a favourite for those wishing to harass others into not speaking.

Section 66A prohibits the sending "by means of a computer resource or a communication device" certain kinds of messages. These messages are divided into three sub-parts : (a) anything that is "grossly offensive or has menacing character";(b) information known to be false for the purposes of "causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will" and is sent persistently;or (c) "for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages". This carries with it a punishment of up to three years in jail and a fine without an upper limit. As even non-lawyers can see, these are very broadly worded, with use of 'or' everywhere instead of 'and', and the punishment is excessive. The lawyers amongst the readers will note that while some of the words used are familiar from other laws (such as the Indian Penal Code), they are never used this loosely. And all should hopefully be able to conclude that large parts of section 66A are plainly unconstitutional.

If that is so obvious, how did we end up getting this law? We copied (and badly at that) from the UK. The sad part is that the modifications that were introduced while copying are the bits that cause the most trouble. The most noteworthy of these changes are the increase in term of punishment to 3 years (in the UK it's 6 months); the late introduction (on December 16, 2008 by A Raja) of sub-section (c), meant as an anti-spam provision, but covering everything in the world except spam;and the mangling up of sub-section (b) to become a witches brew of all the evil intentions in this world.

Further, we must recognise that our Constitution is much stronger when it comes to issues like free speech than the UK's unwritten constitution, and our high courts and Supreme Court have the power to strike down laws for being unconstitutional, unlike in the UK where Parliament reigns supreme. The most the courts can do there is accommodate the European Convention on Human Rights by 'reading down' laws rather than striking them down.

Lastly, even if we do decide to engage in policy-laundering, we need to do so intelligently. The way the government messed up section 66A should serve as a fine lesson on how not to do so. While one should fault the ministry of communications and IT for messing up the IT Act so badly, it is apparent that the law ministry deserves equal blame as well for being the sleeping partner in this deplorable joint venture. For instance, wrongfully accessing a computer to remove material which one believes can be used for defamation can be considered 'cyber-terrorism'. Where have all our fine legal drafters gone? In a meeting, former SEBI chairman M Damodaran noted how bad drafters make our policies seem far dumber than they are. We wouldn't be in this soup if we had good drafters who clearly understand the fundamental rights guaranteed by our constitution.

There are a great many things flawed in this unconstitutional provision, from the disproportionality of the punishment to the non-existence of the crime. The 2008 amendment to the IT Act was one of eight laws passed in 15 minutes without any debate in the 2008 winter session of Parliament. For far too long the Indian government has spoken about "multi-stakeholder" governance of the internet at international fora (meaning that civil society and industry must be seen as equal to governments when it comes to policymaking for the governance of the internet). It is about time we implemented multi-stakeholder internet governance domestically. The way to go forward in changing this would be to set up a multi-stakeholder body (including civil society and industry) which can remedy this and other ridiculously unconstitutional provisions of our IT Act.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/times-crest-pranesh-prakash-november-24-2012-draft-nonsense

DoT Reportedly Orders Blocking of 32 Websites Including GitHub, Archive.org, SourceForge

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T14:51:39Z

Many users on Twitter are claiming that several websites, including many software development resources such as GitHub and SourceForge, along with research resources like the Internet Archive have all been blocked on order of the Department of Telecom.

The story was published in NDTV on December 31, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

A letter circulating online shows a list of 32 URLs that ISPs have reportedly been ordered to block, with most of these URLs being entire websites, instead of specific webpages that's usually been the case with such blocks in the past.

We tried to verify the users' claims, but on both our office broadband network, and also on Airtel and Vodafone 3G networks, all the sites were opening properly at the time of writing. Interestingly, many of the sites failed the load at the first try, but simply hitting refresh once solved the problem.

This does not mean that blocking is not happening - it is possible that the order has been sent recently, and will take some time to be fully implemented. Here is the email which purportedly shows the list of the 32 blocked URLs, as posted by Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director of the Center for Inernet and Society:

No information is available at present to confirm if blocking is truly happening, or why, but we are trying to ascertain the exact details and will update this story with the information as soon as possible.

However, there is some partial confirmation because both Pastebin and the Internet Archive have tweeted about blocking from India.

Such blocks in the past have been due to John Doe orders but the fact it is targeting software development sites like Github and Sourceforge is strange - the John Doe orders have specifically been used to block piracy of films, and blocking off sites that have no connection to movies makes no sense.

Arvind Gupta, the National Head of the BJP IT cell also took to Twitter, stating that these websites were being blocked for security reasons, based on the advice of the Anti-Terrorism Squad. According to Gupta's Tweets, the sites were being unblocked as soon as they removed "objectionable materials", allegedly related to ISIS.

It's extremely unusual that a government decision is being communicated by a political party official - if the Department of Telecom is blocking sites, then it should be the one to communicate and clarify these events. However, so far, it has not issued any statements, and neither has the IT Ministry.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-december-31-2014-dot-reportedly-orders-blocking-of-32-websites-including-github-archiveorg-sourceforge

Do I Want to Say Happy B’day?

nishant — 2016-08-22T09:53:03Z

When it comes to greeting friends on their birthdays, social media prompts are a great reminder. So why does an online message leave us cold?

This article was published in Indian Express on August 7, 2016

Every morning, I wake up to a Facebook notification that reminds me of the birthdays in my friends group. A simple click takes me to a calendar view that shows me people who are celebrating the day, prompting me to wish them and let them know that I am thinking of them. Just so that I don’t miss the idea, the notifications are surrounded by ribbons and balloons in gold and blue. The message is simple. Somebody I know has a birthday. Social convention says that I should wish them and Facebook has designed a special interface that makes the communication so much simpler, faster, easier.

And yet, every morning I seem to face a small crisis, not sure how to respond to this prompt. Now, I am notorious for forgetting dates and numbers, so I do appreciate this personalised reminder which has enabled me to wish people I love and care for. But I generally find myself hovering tentatively, trying to figure out whether I want to greet these people.

This has perplexed me for a while now. Why would I hesitate in leaving a message on Facebook for people who I have added as “friends”? Why would I not just post on their wall, adding to the chorus of greetings that would have also emerged from the automated reminder on Facebook? I went on to the hive-mind of the social web to figure out if this was a unique problem, customised to specific neuroses, or whether this is more universal. It was a great surprise (and relief) to realise that I’m not alone.

When trying to figure out our conflicted sociality on social media, several conversations pointed to three things worth dwelling on. Almost everybody on that long discussion thread pointed out that the entire process is mechanised.

It feels like Facebook has a script for us, and we are just supposed to follow through. There is very little effort spent in crafting a message, writing something thoughtful, and creating a specific connection because it is going to get submerged in a cacophony of similar messages. Also, the message, though personal, is public. So anything that is personal and affective just gets scrubbed, and most people end up mechanically posting “Happy Birthday” with a few emojis of choice, finding the whole process and the final performance devoid of the personal.

Another emerging concern was that social media sustains itself on reciprocity. However, it is almost impossible to expect the birthday person to respond to every single message and post that comes their way. In fact, as somebody pointed out, if your friend spends their entire day on Facebook, responding to 500 comments and thanking everybody who spent three seconds writing a banal post, you should stage an intervention because it is a clear cry for help. You should have been a better friend and made their day more special by being with them. So the message feels like shouting in a ravine, expecting an echo and getting nothing. This lack of reciprocity, even when expected, is still disconcerting enough for people to shy away from it.

The most frequent experience that was shared was by people who wanted to make the person feel special and cherished. Facebook and the social media sites are now so quotidian and pedestrian that it seems an almost uncaring space. It was intriguing to figure out that people made choices of whom to wish based on their actual proximity and intimacy with the person. If it is a colleague, a distant acquaintance, or just a companion at work, they throw a quick greeting on their wall and move on. But for actual friends, loved ones, families, they take the prompt but then refuse to follow the script. They take that moment to call, to write, to meet, but not perform it on Facebook.

This need for connectivity and the suspicion of its meaning continues to mark our social media interaction. If it were not for social media networks, a lot of us would feel distinctly disconnected, unable to get glimpses in the lives of the large number of people we know.

At the same time, this thinned out connection that characterises most of social media also seems to make us realise that not all friends are the same friends, and that Facebook might be social media, but it isn’t quite personal media.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_do-i-want-to-say-happy-bday

Digital Native: Delete Facebook?

nishant — 2018-05-06T03:08:25Z

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The article was published in Indian Express on April 8, 2018.

One fine day, we all woke up and were told that Facebook sold our data to Cambridge Analytica and then they made dastardly profiles of us to target us with advertisement and political propaganda, so, we made a beeline for #DeleteFacebook. The most surprising part about the expose is how much of a non-event it is. We have been warned, at least since the Edward Snowden revelations, if not earlier, that our data is the new oil, coal and gold. It is being used as a resource, it is being mined from our everyday digital transactions, and it is precious because it can result in a massive social engineering without our consent or knowledge. Ever since Facebook started expanding its domain from being a friends-poke-friends-with-livestock website, we have been warned that the ambition of Facebook was never to connect you with your friends but to be your friend.

Time and again, we have been told that the sapient Facebook algorithm remembers everything you say and do, anticipates all your future needs, and listens to the most banal litany of your life. More than your mom, your partner or your shrink, it’s the Facebook algorithm which is interested in all your quotidian uselessness. It is not the stranger who accesses your post that should worry you. The biggest perpetrator of privacy violations on Facebook is Facebook itself. There is good reason why a company that offers its prime products for free is valuated as one of the richest corporations in the world. The product of Facebook – it has always been known – is us.

Why, then, are we suddenly taken aback at the fact that Facebook sold us? And while we are sharing our thoughts (ironically on Facebook) about deleting our profiles, the question that remains is this: How much of your digital life are you willing to erase? Because, and I am sorry if this pricks your filter bubble, Facebook’s problem is not really a Facebook problem. It is almost the entire World Wide Web, where we lost the battle for data ownership and platform openness more than two decades ago. Name one privately owned free service that you use on the internet and I will show you the section in its “terms and services” where you have surrendered your data. In fact, you can’t even find government services, tied up with their private partners, where your data is safe and stored in privacy vaults where it won’t be abused.

It is time to realise that the popular ’90s meme “All your base are belong to us” is the lived reality of our digital lives. As we forego ownership for convenience, as our governments sold our sovereignty for profits, and as digital corporations became behemoths that now have the capacity to challenge and write our constitutional and fundamental rights, we are waking up to a battle that has already been fought and resolved. A large part of our physical hardware to access the internet is privately owned. This means that almost all our PCs, tablets, phones, servers are owned and open to exploitation by private companies. Every time your phone does an automatic update or your PC goes into house-cleaning mode, you have to realise that you are being stored, somewhere in the cloud in ways that you cannot imagine.

It is tiring to hear this alarm and panic around Facebook’s data trading. Not only is it legal, it is something that has been happening for a while, most of us have been aware of it, and we have resolutely ignored it because, you know, cute cats. If somebody tells you that they are against privately owned physical property and are going to start a revolution to take away all private property and make it equally shared with the public, you would laugh at them because they are arriving at the battle scene after the war is over. This digital wokeness trend to #DeleteFacebook is the digital equivalent of that moment. If you want to fight, fight the governments and nations who can still protect us. Participate in conversations around Internet governance. Take responsibility to educate yourself about the politics of how the digital world operates. But stop trying to feel virtuous because you pulled out of a social media network, pretending that that is the end of the problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-8-2018-digital-native-delete-facebook

Digital India: Did Modi get it wrong in Silicon Valley?

praskrishna — 2015-10-18T04:44:52Z

A bear hug, a photo filter and a new debate on net neutrality - Ayeshea Perera examines the domestic fallout of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook townhall in US.

This was published by BBC News on October 16, 2015. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

It was supposed to be a moment that rocked the virtual world. Mr Modi, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most influential politicians on social media, enveloped a slightly stunned Mark Zuckerberg in a bear hug.

But what was it that really happened in Menlo Park? Why did some people think Mr Modi wasn't acting in India's best digital interests when he hugged Mr Zuckerberg?

India with an internet population of 354 million - which has already grown by 17% in the first six months of 2015 - is an obvious target for not only Facebook, but other Silicon Valley giants. And they have all been more than happy to pledge their support for digital India - a recently launched government initiative aimed at reinvigorating an $18bn (£11.6bn) campaign to strengthen India's digital infrastructure.

Google offered to provide 500 railway stations with free WiFi and Microsoft pledged to connect 500,000 Indian villages with cheap broadband access.

Digitally colonised?

But this huge show of support and the increased interest in India has caused some concern within the country.

"Is Digital India going to only make India a consumer of services offered by global tech companies in lieu of data? Personal data is the currency of the digital world. Are we going to give that away simply to become a giant market for a Facebook or a Google? Look at the way the tech world is skewed. Only China has been able to come up with companies that can take on these MNCs" Prabir Purkayasta, chairman of the Society for Knowledge Commons in India, told the BBC.

"The British ruled the world because they controlled the seas," he said. "Is India going to be content to just be a digital consumer? To being colonised once again?"

And in the aftermath of the Facebook townhall in particular, some talk has begun to surface about what Mr Zuckerberg's real India ambitions are.

Soon after the townhall ended, both Mr Modi and Mr Zuckerberg declared their support for digital India by using a special Facebook filter to tint their profile pictures in the tri-colour of the Indian flag.

Multitudes of Indians followed suit and timelines were awash with snazzy tinted profile pictures, all in support of "Digital India".

'Innocent mistake'

But then a tech website released what it claimed to be a portion of Facebook's source code, which allegedly "proved" that the "Support Digital India" filter was actually a "Support Internet.Org" filter.

Facebook quickly issued a denial, blaming the text in the code on an "engineer mistake" in choosing a shorthand name he used for part of the code.

But the "mistake" which has been coupled with a huge advertising blitz for Internet.Org across television channels and newspapers has raised suspicion about Facebook's motives. A Facebook poll on Internet.Org that frequently appears on Indian user timelines has also been ridiculed for not giving users an option to say no.

Instead the answer options to the poll question "Do you want India to have free basic services?" are "Yes" and "Not now".

Internet.org (now called free basics), aims to extend internet services to the developing world by offering a selection of apps and websites free to consumers.

Facebook's vice-president of infrastructure engineering, Jay Parikh has described the initiative as an "attempt to connect the two-thirds of the world who do not have access to the Internet" by trying to solve issues pertaining to affordability, infrastructure and access.

When Facebook launched the initiative in India in February, it was criticised by Indian activists who expressed concerns that the project threatened freedom of expression, privacy and the principle of net neutrality.

On the other end of the debate, Indian columnist Manu Joseph wrote in the Hindustan Times newspaper, hitting out at the "selfish" stand on net neutrality. He said concerns over the issue should be "subordinate to the fact that the poor have a right to some Internet".

Wrong signal

A massive campaign by India's Save the Internet Coalition exhorting Indians to speak out against initiatives threatening net neutrality caught public imagination and saw more than a million emails to India's regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), demanding a free and fair internet in the country. Internet.Org was one of the initiatives immediately affected.

TRAI since released a draft policy on net neutrality, but a question that has been asked is whether it was appropriate for Mr Modi to visit Facebook given that the policy was still under consideration.

Mr Purkayasta is of the opinion that it could have been avoided. "It was not the time or the place to go. Even if it was simply a publicity gimmick, it still sends a signal to officials involved in drafting the policy," he said.

However, Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet and Society told the BBC he believed that while Facebook's intentions were suspect, Mr Modi's visit had the potential to safeguard net neutrality in India.

"India is a hugely important market for Facebook, and the prime minister has the power to force positive changes to its policies," he said. "We gain nothing by shutting them out."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-october-16-2015-digital-india-did-modi-get-it-wrong-in-silicon-valley

Digital Citizens: Why Cyber Security and Online Privacy are Vital to the Success of Democracy and Freedom of Expression

praskrishna — 2014-01-08T04:59:10Z

Michael Oghia will give a presentation which will show why cyber security and online privacy are vital for democracy and freedom of expression.

In the time when Edward Snowden is fighting for both clemency and to be known as a brave whistle blower that exposed government wrongdoing, cyber security and online privacy have never been more important. As Jacob Applebaum discussed in May last year, and CIS’ Maria Xynou presented recently in December, surveillance throughout the world is increasing. With security apparatus’ likethe NSA and now India’s Central Monitoring System, coupled with corporate data centers around the world storing our e–mails, address books, preferences, and passwords, it is easy to see how our online privacy is increasingly being threatened and often, violated.

Indeed, online privacy is inextricably linked to freedom of expression, and freedom of expression is a fundamental civil liberty imperative to democracy. Moreover, online security and privacy are essential to good, transparent, and accountable democratic governance. This is largely because surveillance, censorship, and monitoring ultimately create environments where self-censorship is the norm, as is the fear of the government instead of spaces that allow for freedom of expression and democratic dialogue and dissent.

What I would like to accomplish my speaking at CIS is not to merely educate about the dangers posed to Internet security or to world democracy, but rather to:

Reiterate the importance of digital privacy and cyber security to the success of democracy and the continued protection of free expression.
Encourage citizens, technology specialists, Internet and privacy advocates, and others to see themselves as part of a larger system of democratic governance and civic participation. This means understanding how technical capabilities intersect with civil society, and then use them to advocate for a more open, accessible, and private cyberspace.
Reinforce that digital media literacy education is vital to ensuring a free, open, accessible, and democratic Internet.

Additionally, I want to present ideas and recommendations for what you can do to engage with these problems, and how we can collaborate together to address them.

About the Public Intelligence Project

The Public Intelligence Project is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit think tank conducting research, education, and advocacy on the importance of diversity, critical thinking, dialogue, and freedom of expression. We seek to promote more robust systems of participatory democracy, civic engagement, and conflict prevention in order to create a culture of democracy.

Michael Oghia

Michael is responsible for a new project at Meta-Culture called the Public Intelligence Project, which focuses on expanding participatory democracy, civic engagement, and conflict prevention by conducting research, education, and advocacy on the intersections between diversity, dialogue, critical thinking, and freedom of expression. While new to the conflict resolution field, as a poet, musician, editor, writer, blogger, and activist, he is well-versed in the importance of freedom of expression and participating in the democratic process. He was born in Kentucky to Lebanese-Syrian parents, and after graduating with a BS in sociology from the University of Louisville, he moved to Lebanon to pursue an MA in sociology from the American University of Beirut. There, he had the opportunity to witness the Arab Revolutions first-hand while research about topics such as Internet ownership in the Middle East, social movements, Arab media, globalization, Arab youth and family, and his thesis subject, romantic love in the Arab world. Michael enjoys engaging Twitter conversations, and has an unnatural affinity for crunchy peanut butter.

Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Time: 6.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Talk by: Michael Oghia
Title: Research & Advocacy Consultant, and Project Manager
Organisation: Meta-Culture / Public Intelligence Project
Websites: www.meta-culture.in <http://www.meta-culture.in> & www.publicintelligenceproject.org <http://www.publicintelligenceproject.org>

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/why-cyber-security-and-online-privacy-are-vital-for-success-of-democracy-and-freedom-of-expression

Delhi government in consultation with Centre to block Uber's Internet address

praskrishna — 2015-03-09T02:12:15Z

The Delhi transport department has started consultation with the central government to block the internet address of taxi hailing app Uber if the San Francisco-based startup does not obtain a radio taxi licence to ply its cabs in the national capital.

The article by Harsimran Julka was published in the Economic Times on February 25, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Blocking Uber's IP will mean the company's website and mobile phone application will no longer be accessible in India, effectively shutting down operations in a country which the startup estimates is its largest market outside the United States.

Uber has operations across 10 cities in India with over 10,000 cabs registered on its platform."We have initiated a process with the central government to block (Uber's) IP address in India if the company doesn't abide by law," said a senior official in the Delhi transport department.

Uber and other taxi app companies were banned from operating in Delhi after the alleged rape of a passenger by a driver on the Uber network in December 2014. Subsequently, the transport department modified radio taxi laws and directed Uber and rivals OlaCabs and Taxiforsure to obtain licences to operate legally in the city. While Ola has obtained a licence, Uber, which terms itself as a technology company and not a transport provider, has been demanding that it be regulated under the Information Technology Act. "There has to be an end to the matter somewhere," said the official quoted above. The department has given Uber time until February 25 to submit a revised application for a radio taxi licence.

"We are waiting to see if they comply and apply for a licence before issuing a written request (to block the IP address),' said a second official who confirmed that the transport department had already begun discussions with the department of IT. Zubeda Begum, the standing counsel for the Delhi government is likely to submit an affidavit on Wednesday in the Delhi High Court on the method to be adopted to block the IP address.

The court, which is hearing the case of the alleged rape, had raised the issue of banning IP addresses of taxi app companies after the state government complained that the companies continued to ply in the national despite the ban.

"It is the central government which will have to block the website. The Delhi government just has to make a request," Begum told ET.

Pawan Duggal, cyber law expert and a Supreme Court advocate, said that the blocking of websites in India can be done under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act but the rules to get them unblocked are unclear.

"A court order may be needed to get it unblocked," said Duggal.

A spokeswoman for Uber said the company will continue to work with the authorities and is "evaluating the perceived deficiencies in the time period provided to us by the government."

This is not the first time that the website of a foreign company will be banned in India. Last December, about 32 websites including SourceForge, Archive, Vimeo, Dailymotion were banned on grounds of national security. Uber itself has had its IP address blocked in countries such as Spain. Last December, a Madrid Court ordered Spain's telcos to block access to Uber.

"Any state government department can request the designated authority to block a website. The authority has to then forward the request to a committee, which takes the decision," said Pranesh Prakash, at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-harsimran-julka-february-25-2015-delhi-government-in-consultation-with-centre-to-block-ubers-internet-address

Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt

praskrishna — 2012-12-31T01:02:44Z

When constable Subhash Tomar collapsed during the anti-rape agitation in New Delhi, the government was keen to say he suffered injuries inflicted by the protesters. But the administration's version of events was challenged soon on social media, and the mainstream media latched onto the mystery and started pressurising the government to come clean.

The article was published in the Times of India on December 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The Tomar episode, when social media set the agenda and put the government on the back foot, is one more example of rise of people's power online. The political class in India has been shaken by the speed and efficiency with which the recent protests were coordinated. Some of them, like Abhijit Mukherjee, have ended up putting their foot in their mouth while others like Congress' youth icon and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi have not even cared to react.

The reason for Tomar's death is still unclear, but the post-mortem report has attributed it to external injuries.

"Frankly, right now, we haven't figured out how to deal with this phenomenon," said Congress Party Spokesman Sandeep Dikshit.

The anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US, and the Arab Spring were all largely organised through social networking sites. Even in neighbouring Pakistan, the raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was first reported on microblogging site Twitter, further highlighting social media's growing importance as a source of information. Such is the influence and impact of social media that many are increasingly referring to it as the "fifth pillar of democracy".

Influence bound to grow

India has over 120 million internet users - Twitter has about 16 million and Facebook over 60 million - but this is still just one-tenth of the population.

Also, as 3G penetration increases, data becomes accessible on more feature phones. While about 221 million mobiles were sold in India in 2012, sales are expected to touch 251 million units in 2013, according to technology market researcher Gartner. With so much of growth still left to come, the influence of social media is only bound to grow.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor, one of the early converts to social media and inveterate tweeter, said the social media space is a "parallel universe to the mainstream media" and that stories on these platforms have a "resonance of their own".

"It is a medium that allows big issues to be made out of issues that mainstream media ignores but politicians cannot," he said.

Brand guru Harish Bijoor is of the view that the political class must pay attention to the information revolution as India is a very young country in terms of demographics. "The political class appears a gerontocracy while 54% of the population is below 25 and 70% below 35. There is a disconnect that must be addressed."

Kedar Gavane, director at Internet analytics company ComScore India, said an average Indian Facebook user has about 300 friends. "That's the kind of reach an individual and his messages have on social networks," he said. "Twitter has helped us identify the common man's feelings. For instance, when a candlelight protest is organised, you get to know what the protesters are thinking."

But the real question, he said, is whether people are actually willing to go beyond these platforms. "Whether it can become the Fifth Estate or not is hard to say because at the end of the day, this is just a channel for communication."

With the government struggling for a credible response to the growing influence of social media, it has often resorted to blocking user accounts and web pages. The government, which blocked 663 webpages in 2012, asked Indian Internet service providers to block 16 Twitter accounts, including those of right-wing leaders and journalists.

In the first half of 2012, the government made 2,319 requests for information on 3,467 user accounts of search engine giant Google. Google complied with 64% of these.

While the influence of social media is not lost on those such as Dikshit, he said the problem is "how to break in with an alternative view". "It is like a community of people who think the same way and validate each others' opinions. The number of people who validate your opinion does not make it the right opinion, but that fine distinction is getting lost somewhere."

There are others who feel the role of social media in protests is often exaggerated. "The agency for change resides first in people and only secondarily in platforms," according to Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

(With inputs from Joji Thomas Philip in New Delhi)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-29-2012-delhi-gang-rape

Daunting task ahead for investigative agencies with WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption

praskrishna — 2016-04-09T09:45:12Z

Messaging service WhatsApp's decision to roll out end-to-end encryption for over 1 billion subscribers has been hailed as a positive step by users across the world, although things are set to get tougher for law enforcement and investigative agencies in India seeking to track terrorists.

The article by Neha Alawadhi was published in Economic Times on April 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

"It was anyway difficult to get any kind of data from WhatsApp and now it is going to be even more difficult," said a person familiar with the working of these agencies who did not wish to be identified.

Encryption scrambles data such as text messages, photos and documents and makes them unintelligible for unintended recipients. A service that is encrypted end-to-end cannot be monitored or intercepted. No one, except the people or group communicating with each other, can access the data. If telecom companies, Internet providers or even companies that run messaging services try to intercept the message, all they would get is garbled data.

While chats will not be accessible, associated information known as metadata will be available, such as when the conversations took place, the identities of senders and recipients, their locations, mobile numbers, profile photos and address books, which may be useful for security agencies.

"Definitely for law enforcement it means a big headache, but the metadata is there and with metadata, if you have a couple of other bits of information, you can piece it together," said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Bengaluru-based research organisation Centre for Internet and Society. "Agencies can get the metadata, but they won't get the payload unless they're able to compromise the device. And that intelligence agencies like NSA (National Security Agency of the US) have been able to do in the past."

While encryption offers privacy and security to users, it is the bane of law enforcement agencies globally, as exemplified most recently and notably by the Apple-FBI dispute in the US. The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI asked Apple to weaken its encryption to access a dead terrorist's iPhone data and after the company refused, hacked into the device with help from a third party.

In India, it is difficult to bring US-based companies to the negotiating table. "We have had minimum cooperation from WhatsApp. All the data is controlled in the US and they rarely hand over the data that we request. We don't ask them for content. We only ask for metadata," said another person familiar with the process who declined to be identified.

While the Indian IT Act gives wide-ranging powers to the government to ask for access to encrypted information, very few requests for information, very few requests for information take the legal route. One reason is the long time that it takes to process such requests - on average, over three years - and the other, especially in the case of WhatsApp, is little or no cooperation, according to government officials.

WhatsApp, based in Mountain View, California, did not respond to an email request for comment. The messaging company was acquired by Facebook in 2014.

How security and investigative agencies in India use the data they access is also a grey area. "We do not have a privacy legislation here which will take care of the concerns that people have with respect to use of data. If the government needs to have access to communications, they also need to ensure there are adequate safeguards in place," said Prasanth Sugathan, counsel at Software Freedom Law Centre.

"In practice, end-to-end encryption will bring the end user and the device into focus, rather than WhatsApp or any particular messaging service. This should be a trigger for greater clarity on India's data protection policy," said Arun Mohan Sukumar, who heads the cyber security and internet governance initiative at think tank Observer Research Foundation.

In India, requests for information from companies such as WhatsApp and Google are handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs or the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team. Emails to both were unanswered at the time of going to print.

The Indian government was involved in a long-standing dispute with BlackBerry over access to encrypted data on its messenger and corporate email service. BlackBerry set up servers in Mumbai to comply with local regulations, but said it could not access encrypted data on its enterprise servers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-april-8-2016-neha-alawadhi-daunting-task-ahead-for-investigative-agencies-with-whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption

Data Breach: How will the biggest scandal that Facebook is mired in affect its credibility in India?

Admin — 2018-03-27T02:09:41Z

Facebook has not been able to catch a break lately.

The article by G. Seetharaman and Shephali Bhatt with additional inputs by Indulekha Aravind was published in the Economic Times on March 26, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Rebuked for the misinformation spread on its platform by Russian agencies during the 2016 US presidential election, aiding Donald Trump’s victory, Facebook was on the defensive for most of 2017. Making matters worse for the Menlo Park, California-headquartered social media behemoth, another one of its past oversights has now come back to haunt it in what is undoubtedly its biggest public relations challenge.

Reports by the New York Times and the Observer of London on March 17 disclosed that a researcher linked to Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm that worked on Trump’s campaign, had accessed details of 50 million Facebook users unbeknownst to them and shared it with CA, which uses online data to reach voters on social media with personalised messages. The reports were based on revelations by whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, who had worked with CA.

This is how it unfolded: in 2014, CA hired Aleksandr Kogan, a Soviet-born American citizen, to mine data on US voters on Facebook, through a personality quiz app. It was downloaded by 2,70,000 users, who logged in with their Facebook credentials. That enabled Kogan to access not just their data on Facebook, but also their friends’ profiles. Facebook says Kogan lied that the data was only for his research, while there was a commercial element to it as CA paid for the app. It is unclear at this point how exactly the data was used or whether it was effective.

In 2015, Facebook removed his app and sought an assurance from him that the data had been destroyed. But it later found out that the information had been passed on to CA. Facebook has since stopped apps from accessing information about a user’s friends and has even limited the data that can be collected about the user.

While the broad details of the issue have been known since 2015, the sheer number of accounts that were compromised was not known till now and has led to calls for Facebook to be deleted, with #DeleteFacebook trending on Twitter. The company, one of the world’s most valuable public companies, has shed $75 billion, or 14% of its market value, since March 16.

As Facebook spends the next few months trying to convince its users that their data is safe, India will be crucial to their plans. India is, after all, its largest market, with 250 million monthly active users, 12% of its global base, according to recent data by We Are Social and Hootsuite, firms involved in social media marketing and management, respectively.

There are other reasons why India is important to Facebook: WhatsApp, the country’s chat app of choice, has 200 million users, again more than any other market, and Instagram has 53 million. Both these apps are owned by Facebook, giving the company an outsize role in how Indians communicate.

Facebook will only grow as smartphone and internet adoption grows — India is set to add 100 million internet users and 250 million smartphone users by 2020. But at the same time, it has to deal with those wondering whether they should sign up or continue being on the network.

Soumya Sinha, a 32-year-old data consultant in Delhi, says FB is quite passive-aggressive when it comes to data. “It gives you a lot of privacy options, makes you feel you are in control of your wall, but buries an ‘unless you don’t want to share’ option at the bottom,” he says. “If you don’t opt out, it assumes you are happy to share. Even if you do, you can never be sure the non-consensual sharing has stopped.”

Privacy controls — not just on Facebook but on social media platforms in general — are not easy to find and even the most tech-savvy have a hard time ensuring the accounts are as secure as they can possibly be. “Indians are very liberal with others accessing their data. A lot of other accounts are linked to my FB account. Who knows which one of them will provide my data to others?” says Prateek Kharangar, a 30-year-old doctor in Rajasthan.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s billionaire chief executive, issued a statement on March 21 admitting that Facebook had made mistakes. He added that Facebook would do a thorough audit of suspicious apps and make its privacy policy stricter by limiting the user information it shares with third-party apps.

Facebook will also revoke permission to apps that a user has not accessed for three months and show an option at the top of the news feed, allowing users to do the same. Zuckerberg also said in a subsequent interview to the New York Times that Facebook would let concerned users know about the CA debacle. Questions sent by ET Magazine to Facebook India went unanswered. The US Federal Trade Commission and the European Union are also scrutinising the issue.

Protect Data
Facebook has faced criticism in the past, including about its facial recognition software In India, it was badly bruised in its fight against net neutrality. Its Free Basics campaign tried to push free access to a few websites, including its own, in partnership with telcos, but the telecom regulator in February 2016 ruled in favour of net neutrality. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, believes sites like Facebook should periodically inform users about the data the apps have access to. “Facebook should also ask you every quarter if you want to revoke permission. It’s required in countries where users are naive, unaware and incapable of protecting their own interests.”

Many experts call for more transparency and clarity. Nayantara Ranganathan, programme manager at the Internet Democracy Project, says privacy policies are tweaked constantly and the changes the companies want us to know about are conveyed through blog posts and such, while there may be changes that we may not be aware of. Nikhil Pahwa, cofounder, Internet Freedom Foundation, says the process of notifying users of changes in terms and conditions needs to be improved. “So often, T&Cs are changed and the company just sends a generic mail to all its users. If they don’t respond, it is assumed they have agreed to the changes. That needs to change.” Some believe online consent agreements are being simplified.

While there have been calls for the privacy notice to be in local languages too, Rama Vedashree, CEO of Data Security Council of India, says that in markets like India, where millions are just being introduced to the internet, websites may have to look at pictorial representations to explain how user data will be used by third-party developers. Regardless of how intelligible tech companies make their privacy policy documents, given the number of websites we use, it is impossible to read every site’s terms. That is where a stringent law becomes necessary. “We don’t have a robust legal framework that acts swiftly, permits class action lawsuits and awards damages in tune with the harm incurred,” says Mishi Choudhary, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center.

WHY FB CAN'T TAKE DATA SECURITY LIGHTLY IN INDIA

Source: Facebook, WhatsApp, We Are Social and Hootsuite, Ministry of Communications, Internet and Mobile Association of India

Abraham says presently only data security is covered under the Information Technology Act, 2000. “A mere infringement of your privacy without financial loss does not allow you to seek remedy.” However, India could have a data protection law sooner than later. A committee was appointed by the government last year to come up with a draft law, an important part of which will be a data protection authority. The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling last year in a case related to Aadhaar, said privacy is a fundamental right.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will come into effect in May, could be emulated in countries, including India. It makes tech companies more accountable for the privacy of those who use their services and has penalties up to £20 million, or 4% of the errant company’s global annual revenues, whichever is higher. This forced Facebook to put all of its privacy settings in one place in January.

“India must go further than Europe did with its General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to get unambiguous consent from users to collect data, to clearly disclose how personal data are being used, and to spell out why data is being collected. It must also ban any form of political advertising and the sale of data to third parties,” wrote Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur and academic, in a column in ET on Friday.

In light of this controversy, there will be pressure on the government to hasten the process of introducing a data protection law, accompanied by a regulator. It is likely the draft document will draw on the European regulation. “The more we adopt from EU GDPR, the better,” says Pahwa, adding that users should also have the right to removal of personal data.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s IT and law minister, has warned Facebook of stringent action if it is found influencing elections “through undesirable means”. The Indian government on Friday issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica asking if any entities engaged its services to harvest data of Indian Facebook users.

India could also take a leaf out of Germany’s playbook while enforcing data protection, especially if it involves tech companies that dominate the segment they operate in, like Google in search and Facebook in social media. Germany’s competition watchdog in December accused Facebook of abusing its dominant position to get users’ consent to access their data from third-party websites. The Competition Commission of India in February imposed a penalty of `136 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position in search to create a bias to favour its own services.

Messing Up Elections?
The ongoing controversy has been exacerbated by the fact that besides data privacy, electoral politics is at the centre of the issue. CA dug itself into a deeper hole when footage emerged of a UK television channel’s sting operation, in which the company’s top officials talk about using bribes and women to entrap their clients’ political opponents. CA has since suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, who was in the video. CA is partly funded by conservative US billionaire Robert Mercer, and Trump’s former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon served on its board.

The issue has had political ramifications in India, with both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition Congress trading charges about each other’s association with CA. The BJP has attacked the Congress by quoting news reports of talks between CA and the Congress ahead of the 2019 general election, while the Congress has hit back with a reference to the 2010 Bihar election on the CA website. The company claims that it worked on the Bihar election, reportedly through its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories, by identifying swing voters.

“Our client achieved a landslide victory, with over 90% of total seats targeted by CA being won,” says the website. The JD(U)-BJP combine was the victorious coalition. Interestingly, the company’s India partner, Ovleno Business Intelligence, is run by Amrish Tyagi, son of JD(U) leader KC Tyagi. When contacted by ET Magazine, Amrish Tyagi declined to comment. Both the Congress and the BJP have denied any ties to CA.

“We have been on social media as long as social media was around and we have always been ethical in our conduct,” says Amit Malviya, head of BJP’s IT Cell. Divya Spandana, who heads the social media team for the Congress, says the party does not engage external agencies. “We only use data with the consent of the individual, emails are subscribed to and WhatsApp is through people who have signed up to receive messages.” The BJP made good use of social media in its 2014 campaign, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and most of his cabinet are quite active on Twitter.

Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp will play an even bigger role in the upcoming assembly polls and the 2019 general election, WhatsApp perhaps more so than the other two, given its popularity and user engagement. “What makes WhatsApp worse than Facebook is Facebook knows what’s being sent around (on its platform). If it comes up with a fake news mitigation strategy, it might work. WhatsApp doesn’t know what’s being sent on its platform,” says Abraham.

In his New York Times interview, Zuckerberg said that after the US presidential election, Facebook developed artificial intelligence tools to identify fake accounts and fake news, which were deployed during the French presidential polls in 2017. “This is a massive focus for us to make sure we’re dialed in for not only the 2018 elections in the US, but the Indian elections, the Brazilian elections, and a number of other elections that are going on this year that are really important,” he was quoted as saying. Both government authorities and the Election Commission of India will keep a close watch on how social media is used in poll campaigns.

While things do not look up for Facebook in the immediate future, some think it will get past the issue. Vineet Sehgal, chief marketing officer of Quikr, says while marketers will take a hard look at Facebook, the company will act swiftly to change its policies.

"There is too much at stake." More and more Indians are using social media, in addition to searching for information on the internet, buying things on ecommerce sites, booking app-based cabs, and making payments and transfers on online payment platforms. They will also buy more devices, including wearables and smart speakers, which gather large amounts of data. So naturally, it is imperative that the sanctity of that data become a top priority for tech companies, consumers and the government. "The emphasis of any (data protection) law needs to be protecting people, not data. Our legislators should ask about relationships of all entities with social media and data analytics companies," says Choudhary of Software Freedom Law Center.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-g-seetharaman-shephali-bhatt-march-25-2018-data-breach-how-will-the-biggest-scandal-that-facebook-is-mired-in-affect-its-credibility-in-india