By Sanjay Patil-- Nagpur--
For the first time, India's politicians and political parties will have to ensure their social media accounts comply with official guidelines on "acceptable behaviour".
That means these accounts cannot carry political ads or any other content that could "influence" voters.
Critics say this is hard to enforce.
India will hold elections from 11 April to 19 May. The guidelines were effective from Sunday, when the dates were announced.
Only the official handles of political parties and politicians will be affected, said technology expert Prasanto K Roy.
"But the thing with social media is that there are so many layers of plausible deniability. There are thousands and thousands of accounts that are not 'officially' connected with political parties, but help carry their messages. All of this stuff will happen through them," he told the BBC.
The use of social media to spread misinformation and fake news has been a huge concern in India.
Doctored videos and information have been blamed for a spate of mob lynchings and even riots in India.
Political parties have frequently accused each other of intentionally spreading fake news intended to cause social unrest and given them political points.
What is expected to happen?
In terms of what social media companies are expected to do, experts say they will potentially have to take down offending content much faster than usual, bypassing the standard operating procedure for doing so.
Election commissioner Sunil Arora said on Sunday that representatives from his office would be flagging content that violated guidelines, known as the model code of conduct, and that technology companies - he named Google, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter - would be expected to take it down.
0 comments: