Memorandum — Hon. Sawhney

                                                                 Republic of India

Office of the Secretary of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

 Memorandum

To: Hon. Ajay Prakash Sawhney – Secretary of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, GOI

From: Brian H, Snr. Policy Advisor

Re: Rise in the spread of disinformation leading to mob violence and fatalities; Background – Options

Dear Sir,

As you are aware, the spread of disinformation and the overall polluting of the online information space in our country has been on the rise in recent years. Over the last two months, to highlight the urgency of the matter, more than 20 innocent citizens have been victims of violence that directly correlated to an uptick in malicious rumor and online vitriol.

Your public statements, Mr. Secretary, have been passionate and consistent. Yet, the issue has persisted. With the continuing of violence creating increased public pressure on Prime Minister Modi, as well as the upcoming national elections of 2019, it is now more important that we take highly visible and effective steps to see a decrease in false news proliferation and its resulting violence.

I propose to you, sir, the following recommendations falling largely into two major categories:

Recommendations:

1. Increasing media literacy > Banning services and access

• Today, there are nearly 200 million users of these services everyday and for services like WhatsApp, India is the largest market, something that could certainly be an economic advantage. Services like WhatsApp and facebook are particularly important in rural communities as they connect them to the bigger national identity, politics and economy. No doubt, many votes needed in the next election will depend on the information flow only possible by these services.
• Banning products like WhatsApp and Facebook altogether would prove disastrous to many informal economies on which much of our nation’s people depend. Besides this, it is nearly impossible to completely combat the phenomena this way as we have seen in other countries messages move into direct messaging on other applications, messengers and email services.
• Encourage public awareness campaigns: Similar to a 14 million dollar program that Facebook endeavored on in the United States, we must require them to partner with local media in India to provide awareness. We should encourage acts like taking out pages in newspapers giving insights into identifying fake information, as WhatsApp has recently done. We must both punish companies for poor practices and reward them for good ones.

1. Increasing pressure on apps and services to monitor and control the spread of disinformation and the tools for mobilization.

• Use the law: The Government has issued warnings to WhatsApp CEO and internet (dot) org  VPChris Daniels as well to Facebook itself in the past. Earlier this year in the summer, union minister of law & justice and electronics and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad demanded adherence to Indian law and for the appointment of a ‘grievances officer’ who would be based out of a similarly demanded local office in the country.
• We should introduce formal expectations that require professional competency in positions of influence and relevance to this matter. Facebook recently hired Ajit Mohan (previously of streaming service Hotstar here in India) to run the India division of the company. This should be encouraged as Mr. Mohan is both experienced and competent on the matter, and familiar with regionally specific laws and customs. Issues of truth in online information eco-systems are globally relevant, however the most effective policies for ensuring the integrity of India’s information space will be designed with context and culture in mind.
• We must increase the presence of law enforcement on these services. I recommend a team in the national police infrastructure to be dedicated to sentiment analysis online so as to better predict and mitigate risks of mobilization in light of any new false information outbreaks.
• Increase pressure on companies: In 2016, our Government took a strong stance against Facebook for violating India’s net neutrality with its ‘free basics’ program which favored its own services. The pressure campaign may be a successful framework for inducing stronger control of the information forwarded and shred on its platform in going forward.
• One positive result which received significant international attention arising from recent pressure was the removal of the ‘quick forward’ button from WhatsApp, a move which may have some impact. Additionally, WhatsApp deployed a new feature which labels ‘forwarded’ messages as such and makes forwarding capability limited to only 5 groups at a time, contrasting it with the previous 20 group capability. However, groups may still contain up to 256 members making an individual still able to forward messages to up to 1,280 people at a time.

To reiterate, sir, there is no foolproof one-dimensional strategy for this new and very serious phenomena. We must approach designing policy using all of the tools that we have at our disposal . With hope, the above frameworks for thinking through the issues may be of service to your decision making calculus.