They have agreed to flag sponsors of political advertisements and amount spent on them. They will also maintain a 48-hour silence period to completely block all political advertisements.
Caravan News
NEW DELHI – Social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter have voluntarily agreed to monitor political advertisements and fake news items during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
They will make public the sponsors of political contents and the amount spent on them. They have also agreed to observe 48-hour silence period before the voting, effectively blocking all political advertisements during the period.
WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, will also be covered under the agreement.
The social media majors will specifically monitor negative campaigning, fake news, personal attacks and inflammatory contents.
They will maintain the special self-censorship program for 12 of the 14 days of election campaign. Two days will be silence period completely blocking political advertisements.
The whole exercise is said to be voluntary.
“EC’s interactions with the three social media companies are complete and they have agreed to monitor all political advertisements during the campaign. Facebook, Twitter, Google and WhatsApp will have posts that involve healthy campaigning while negative/personal campaigns or fake news will be blocked. The action shall be completely voluntary and not enforced by EC,” Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat was quoted as saying by Times of India.
Will TV Channels, Newspapers Follow Social Media?
Now it will be interesting to see if TV channels, newspapers and news websites take any cue from the plan of the social media outlets for a level-playing field. Newspapers have been publishing political ads even on the day of the voting. As elections are held in different phases, voting in a region is massively influenced by live-telecast of political speeches, activities of top politicians including Prime Minister from other regions where elections are to be held later.
