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INDIA SIEVES ONLINE DELUGE TO STAMP OUT DISINFORMATION IN WORLD'S BIGGEST
ELECTION

By Munsif Vengattil and Saurabh Sharma
April 25, 20247:13 AM GMT+2Updated 4 days ago
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Officials work inside the monitoring room set up for the second phase of India's
general election at the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Bengaluru, in
Karnataka, India April 23, 2024. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar/File Photo Purchase
Licensing RightsNew Tab, opens new tab
 * Summary
 * Companies

 * Online fake posts, videos a challenge for India poll officials
 * Bengaluru uses external agency to flag problematic content
 * Uttar Pradesh uses repeated manual checks on websites
 * Risks highlighted by AI deepfakes that went viral

BENGALURU/LUCKNOW, April 25 (Reuters) - Indian forest service official Surya Sen
usually manages a city zoo, but during the world's largest general elections, he
has a very different task - rooting out online misinformation to prevent any
disturbances.
As nearly a billion voters head to the polls in a mammoth six-week programme
that began on April 19, officials like Sen counter rapidly spreading online
misinformation from election cells that also monitor television and public
camera images.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

"Social media is the primary ground for misinformation," said Sen, whose team
monitors social media from an office in India's Silicon Valley city of Bengaluru
that goes to the polls on Friday.
Sen works with an external agency, where 30 people use keyword tracking software
and monitor high-profile influencers round the clock. His operation is one of
hundreds of such cells nationwide that co-ordinate with India's election
commission.
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At the same time, Sen's in-house team of 40 sifts online posts by political
parties to detect everything from hate speech to fake news that violates polling
rules.
It is a high-stakes job.
Just last week, two AI-generated deepfake videos of Bollywood stars criticising
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is seeking a rare third term, and asking
people to vote for the opposition Congress went viral, drawing half a million
views.

Many were deleted but some are still online, despite two police investigations
in the financial capital of Mumbai.
In a statement, the Election Commission said its officials across India had
received "instructions to be pro-active in scotching fake news on social media".
Sen showed Reuters his messaging app WhatsApp, which buzzed constantly with
alerts from the external agency flagging content that could disrupt public order
or violate election rules, such as use of hate speech.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

They were among results thrown up by online searches for terms such as "Modi"
and "democracy".
Sen did not identify the external agency, which also tracks posts from a private
list of social media influencers with numerous followers, giving them an
increasingly louder voice in shaping the public narrative in India.
"We cannot do this job ourselves," Sen said, explaining why the work had to be
outsourced. "We do not have the expertise and resources ... (It) is a very, very
difficult job."

Suspect posts are flagged to senior election officials for further action, such
as directives to Facebook or X to remove content, or legal action against the
posters.
Sen added that 36 such cases have so far been registered in Karnataka, the
southern state that is home to Bengaluru.
Since the last general elections in 2019, the number of internet users in India
has swelled 43% to about 820 million, fed by growing use of smartphones and
Facebook, WhatsApp and X.
In a similar office in northern Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with
240 million people, Reuters encountered just two people working on laptops amid
rusting metal racks, tracking online posts by repeatedly refreshing pages.
The team manually reviewed all posts on X that tagged the state election panel's
account, ran keyword searches every 20 minutes and used tools such as Google
image search to run authenticity checks before flagging controversial content.
"We were not given any formal training or any specialized software," said one of
the invigilators, Harsh Vardhan Singh. "We keep an eye on every post."

Coming soon: Get the latest news and expert analysis about the state of the
global economy with Reuters Econ World. Sign up here.

Reporting by Munsif Vengattil, Saurabh Sharma; Additional reporting by Shivangi
Acharya; Editing by Aditya Kalra and Clarence Fernandez

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.New Tab, opens new tab

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Munsif Vengattil

Thomson Reuters

Munsif Vengattil is a Reuters' India technology correspondent, based in New
Delhi. He tracks how policymaking is influencing the business of tech in India,
and how the country is now vying more aggressively to be a powerhouse in the
global electronics supply chain. He also regularly reports on big tech giants,
including Facebook and Google, and their strategies and challenges in the key
Indian market.

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