Twitter, the go-to social media platform to get real-time updates on various topics, is now cracking down on fake news ahead of the Assembly Elections 2021 in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry. The microblogging platform announced on Wednesday new measures to empower democratic conversations and political debate in India whilst keeping the service safe from attempts of manipulation and content that could incite violence, abuse and threats.
The root cause of all problems comes down to misinformation and the wide-spread of fake news. Twitter realizes the importance of credible information, which is why the new update will ensure it is easier for users to find legit information and limit the spread of harmful and misleading content. There's a team just for that.
"A global cross-functional team with local, cultural, and language expertise will run our election integrity work. Their role is to keep the service safe from attempts to manipulate the platform and content that can incite violence, abuse, and threats and trigger the risk of offline harm," Twitter noted.
Twitter cracks down on fake news
As per the new updates in Twitter policy, the company said it would remove content that hampers with the elections in any way or even contain misleading information about the same. If anyone is tweeting false info about how to participate in the election process or dissuade people from voting and misrepresent their affiliation with a political party or a leader will be removed.
"We will continue to strengthen Twitter against attempted manipulation, including malicious automated accounts and spam. Inauthentic engagement, which includes things like selling/purchasing Tweet or account metric inflation (like Retweets, Likes, mentions, Twitter Poll votes), is a violation and we will take action on accounts that engage in this behaviour, which may include permanent suspension," Twitter said in its blog.
Besides limiting the visibility of misleading information, Twitter will also flag such tweets and point users towards credible information while trying retweet such content. Twitter has already banned political ads, saying it is something that should be earned, not bought.
Twitter says it has " zero tolerance for platform manipulation and spam."
