India Declares Emergency After Facebook Role in Mob Attacks

Posted by Rose Molly on December 13th, 2018

INDIA — Facebook, held accountable for a role in wave of mob violence last spring facing criticism for its violence inciting, when it also stated to remove any such misinformation that can lead to folks being physically harmed.

Further, Facebook’ policy explains about the type of misinformation it will remove, largely a response of episodes in India, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar which was reported tolead to real-world attacks on national minorities.

Facebook product manager, Tessa Lyons explained, “We have identified that there is a type of misinformation that is shared in certain countries that can incite underlying tensions and lead to physical harm offline,” “We have a broader responsibility to not just reduce that type of content but remove it.”

Facebook is being bluntly criticized over how the platform has been used to spread false information and hate speech prompting violence. In India, a lot of false rumors has been spread through WhatsApp about child kidnapping that has led to mob violence.

Even after Mark Zuckerberg’s explanation about offensive posts, people have denied the platform and many are shifting to new and more secure platforms — showing a sense of anger about the posts that promoted false information that could lead to a violence act. The terrible situation clearly became a prey to all the people involved in the case.

The social media already has outraged the users with a hate speech or direct threat of violence, but it has brought a storm of reports that explains about violating the technology and media policies.

As per new rules, Facebook even stated that it would form partnerships with civil societies and local groups to remove the false information. But the question is! Is it enough?

Those fake promises by Facebook were best at misleading: No one really knows about how many accounts on social network are of real users. A recent report exposed an advertising agency backed by global tech giants putting damage from ad frauds.
"The time has come for digital users to stop molesting their privacy and start using secure messaging.

In effect, the social media networks like Facebook, WhatsApp, have undermined the traditional media by rolling out to technology providing accessibility to heaps of free content, a giant audience whose private data can be easily manipulated. While social media can exploit the technology for profit, they assume to be exempted from the chief responsibilities of traditional media.

“We need to be more aware” That’s why, with these coming years we have to sift our focus to secure, encrypted applications like Signal, enabling usto be able of securing our privacy, and not influenced by anybody’s posts or misleading information. As a first step, we need a safer and more private platform for communications free from hate speech, nudity or sexual activity, or any sort of graphic violence.

Platforms like Signal are end-to-end encrypted. And, therefore, users can have the complete authority of their communications. The best part is that nobody can access the messages, as it gets automatically removed after a certain period of time. Both the sender and the recipient have a unique key to access the messages without which the communication can’t be accessed.