X under Musk: Pakistan isn't immune to negative developments
Pakistan
Social media platform is loosening its checks over spread of organised disinformation campaigns
LAHORE (Raja Arsalan Khan) – Some news items, if not many, go unnoticed as we deal with information bombardment. With most of these reported form far away, we feel that they don’t concern us in Pakistan. However, it isn’t the case as we live in global village. And a latest Reuters report about Elon Musk and his X – social media platform – is one of such stories.
According to Reuters, a research organisation said on Wednesday that Musk’s X, formerly called Twitter, disabled a feature that let users report misinformation about elections, throwing fresh concern about false claims spreading just before major US and Australian votes.
After introducing a feature in 2022 for users to report a post they considered misleading about politics, X in the past week removed the "politics" category from its drop-down menu in every jurisdiction but the European Union, said the researcher Reset.Tech Australia.
Users could still report posts to X globally for a host of other complaints such as promoting violence or hate speech, the researcher added.
Removing a way for people to report suspected political misinformation may limit intervention at a time when social media platforms are under pressure to curtail falsehoods about electoral integrity, which have grown rapidly in recent years.
It comes less than three weeks before Australia holds a referendum, its first in a quarter century, on whether to change the constitution to establish an Indigenous advisory body to parliament and 14 months before a US presidential election [please also add the polls in India which are also scheduled for next year].
Since billionaire Musk took Twitter, as it was then known, private in late 2022, the company, which cut most of its workforce, has been accused of allowing the proliferation of antisemitism, hate speech and misinformation, Reuters said.
BUT HOW IT CAN AFFECT PAKISTAN?
General elections aren’t far away in Pakistan – in January or February. We have already witnessed how social media has been used to manipulate minds in an organised manner by spreading disinformation especially when it comes to politics.
Starting with the rise of PTI since 2011 through the 2014 sit-in and general elections in 2018 which culminated with the horrific events on May 9 earlier this year, a large section of our society has been made to believe in lies and deceit repeated again and again.
Will you want to see a repetition of that in the upcoming elections? No sane mind would reply in a AYE.
MODI’S INDIA
India is also preparing for the next year’s general elections where right-wing BJP of Narendra Modi is known for using social media to spread hate and propaganda to achieve their nefarious designs. The success in previous elections under Modi’s leadership are a reminder.
The Washington Post on Tuesday discussed this subject in detail, saying the BJP and the affiliated Hindu nationalist groups have been in the global vanguard of using social media for political aims — to advance their ideology and cement their grip over the world’s largest electoral democracy.
“They have perfected the spread of inflammatory, often false and bigoted material on an industrial scale, earning both envy and condemnation beyond India’s borders.”
About the methodology used, the newspaper says, “Central to the success of the BJP, a party with 180 million members, is a massive messaging machine built on top of US social media platforms. It is part of a wider effort by the right-wing forces aligned with Modi to wield technology in various ways — and restrict its use by opponents — in pursuit of a Hindu nationalist agenda that seeks to marginalize religious minorities and suppress criticism.”
Meanwhile, those managing social media platforms like Musk aren’t doing anything. “As hate speech and disinformation in India have grown in recent years, Silicon Valley giants have at times tried to police this incendiary content. But often they have struggled — or willingly turned a blind eye.”
TRUMP AND BREXIT
The most known examples of using social media for politics and voter manipulation are the US presidential elections and the Brexit referendum in 2016. In both cases, Russia managed to get what it wanted.
But it didn’t stop there as the ultra-right and other nationalist forces across Europe have been among the beneficiaries of these interventions for election manipulation.
A PANDORA’S BOX
Freedom of speech and state regulations are two of the terms that have always remained in conflict. There has never been a meeting point to satisfy all. The Western nations are at least making every attempt to deal with today’s world where social media has become one of the most powerful weapons.
With even these resourceful democratic governments are unable to convince the social media platforms, especially X and Facebook, to arrest the organised spread of disinformation, people like Musk are only complicating the state of affairs by reversing the gains previously made.
How Pakistan will deal with this imminent threat is a serious question. We aren’t in a position to repeat July 25 or May 9.
