DNA Edit: Social Media & Polls - ECI needs a robust mechanism to oversee paid content

Since social media will play an instrumental role in deciding the outcome of the general elections, political parties will spend crores on Facebook and Google to make their presence felt.

This means the tech giants are going to reap a windfall in the coming days. However, a PIL in the Bombay High Court, “seeking restrictions on advertising and paid content pertaining to election matter on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube” 48 hours before a state goes to polls, has forced the behemoths to ensure transparency in the manner they secure ads.

FB and Google will work closely with the Election Commission allowing only India-based advertisers to run political advertisements and releasing a transparency report on the person who purchased the advertisement. FB will mention the name of the advertiser on the advertisement itself.

There will be an intense online battle for 900 crore Indians and paid political content will flood social media and networking sites along with fake news. While a blanket ban on political ads 48 hours before polls may not be possible, the ECI must play a more active role in this regard.

An RTI report had earlier said that the ECI has recommended that social media and online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google only carry political advertisements that have been pre-approved by the commission, and has called for the creation of mechanisms that enable it to rapidly take-down objectionable political content.

These mechanisms need to be robust and the EC should appoint experts to check whether FB and Google are living up to their commitment. It’s not just the Big Brothers, smaller platforms such as ShareChat, which is quite popular in rural India, also needs to be reined in.