Fighting the fake

With an attack on the media underway though out the world, one must wonder what the politics of the commitment made in the UN to stop the spread of fake news online are. Only 20 countries signed up to the said agreement, including France, Britain, South Africa, Canada and India. However, it is clear that many of the signatories themselves come with questionable credentials. For example, India has been part of the larger global crackdown on free media that we have been witnessing in the last half decade. The real question is: what would signing up to this commitment translate into? The BJP government in India runs its own fake social media accounts to spread misinformation, while questioning the credentials of senior journalists and critics of the Modi government. What is true is that independent journalism faces a much more complex environment to operate in. In the old days, censorship was a much more straightforward matter. Today, often state actors themselves have hired armies of fake accounts to spread fake information to counter any reliable source of information.

This means we have entered a dangerous new world where actors with the most resources can distort facts. It is correct that the spread of misinformation has undermined trust in democratic institutions – but this has come at a time when more authoritarian leaders have been coming into power through the same channels. While social media was once a space for activists to spread truth in places where formal media was heavily regulated, powerful actors have been able to control this space without much trouble.

Only last week, Twitter shut down thousands of fake accounts spreading propaganda. Similarly, the social media group was able to identify thousands of fake social media accounts run to sow discord among protesters. Facebook, on the other hand, removed thousands of fake accounts in some countries. But in a world where fake news serves powerful elites, can we really expect countries to protect the truth? That is unlikely – as is evident by the small number of countries willing to sign on to this commitment. It is unlikely that governments will act until fake news begins to challenge their interests. At the moment, they do not feel at risk.