Mumbai police is closely watching social media for fake news around elections

• The Mumbai police cyber cell has joined hands with Logically — a technology startup working out the inaccuracies and bias — to detect fake news.
  
• It is monitoring the social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp — for 20 days now.
  
• Any violations or problematic content will be reported to the Election Commission of India.
  
• A team of 20 fact-checkers and verification experts has been formulated to detect, track and report fake news.

Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections on October 21, the Mumbai police cyber cell has joined hands with Logically — a technology startup working out the inaccuracies and bias — to detect fake news.

It has been monitoring the social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp — for 20 days now to keep a check on any sort of violations to the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). In case it finds any misuse of information or fake news, it will be reported to the Election Commission of India.

During Lok Sabha elections in May, the startup detected 33,000 pieces of fake news. “Our previous experience with General Elections teaches us that this is just a start. The most popular type of content on these days was misinformation about polling booths being moved and dates being changed which could be a possible attempt at voter suppression,” said Lyric Jain, Founder and Promoter at Logically.

Jain says that so far, misinformation regarding EVMs (Electronic Voting Machine) and doctored videos on EVMs being tampered with, are extremely popular.

A team of 20 fact-checkers and verification experts has been formulated to detect, track and report problematic content. It is not political parties and candidates who are pushing misleading content, but third parties like followers and bots that put up misleading content. The most vulnerable of them all are the polling and result days.

“While monitoring candidates can help we realized that more than the candidates themselves, most of the amplification of problematic content is conducted by their followers, bots and bad actors such as foreign governments. We are constantly keeping a watch on these unscrupulous agents who spread misinformation or disinformation,” Lyric added.

The company that claims to have the largest dedicated fact-checking team in the world — also plans on improving the cyber analysis and approach towards it in rest of the states.

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