Hyderabad: During the recent Lok Sabha elections, Twitter was the platform that was most used to spread fake news and panic, followed by Facebook and YouTube.
The Election Commission’s social media team reported 97 cases against Twitter users for spreading false information leading to panic among the electorate.
As many as 46 Facebook users and 11 YouTube users were also reported to have misused the platforms.
These are among the thousands of complaints against social media being misused during the general election and were selected because they were considered serious violations.
The highest number of misinformation complaints was about illegal transportation and missing EVMs.
In one case, the Election Commission filed a police complaint against news where the user in his social post claimed that he had voted for one party and the EVM glowed for some other party.
Other serious complaints were regarding indelible ink that was intended to mislead voters of a specific community, hacking of EVMs, and transportation of EVMs without security.
All the YouTube videos that were treated as a violation, were on hacking of EVMs.
The ECI informed Parliament that, “in pursuance of voluntary code of ethics several social media platforms were directed to remove content spreading fake/false news/misinformation. In few cases where social media team of the Commission had suo-moto reported cases to social media platforms the ECI is following up these cases with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to remove the content,” Election Commission officials said.
