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Journalism of Courage
The Election Commission on Monday issued an advisory to all recognised political parties to not use deepfakes and misinformation in their social media posts and to take down any such fake audios and videos within three hours of coming to know of it.
While the advisory did not mention any specific complaints or posts, it said its attention had been drawn to “certain violations of Model Code of Conduct and the extant legal provisions by political parties/their representatives while using social media for election campaigning, which need to be regulated in the interest of transparency, ethical campaigning and level playing field during the elections.”
“The use of such manipulated, distorted, edited content on social media platforms has the potential to wrongfully sway voter opinions, deepen societal divisions, and erode trust in electioneering process by attacking laid out instrumentalities of the electoral steps in terms of means and material,” the EC wrote.
The EC issued the advisory after the Delhi High Court last week directed it to resolve the issue raised by a petition on the use of deepfakes during the campaign.
Acting on the directions, the EC advisory cited the relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act, the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and the Indian Penal Code regarding fraudulent information being circulated. The advisory also cited Section 505 of the IPC that pertains to publishing or circulating “rumour or report, creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes”.
The advisory asked the parties to “not use social media platforms to disseminate any misinformation or information which is patently false, untrue or misleading in nature and those that impersonate another person, including any information which is synthetically created or generated or modified in a manner that such information reasonably appears to be authentic or true while in actuality dishonestly or fraudulently deceive any person who receives such information.”
The EC advisory also reiterated its earlier advisories prohibiting the use of children in campaigning, as well as advisories not to promote content derogatory towards women. The advisory comes in the wake of a post by BJP Karnataka last week that targeted Muslims, leading to the Congress filing complaints with the Chief Electoral Officer and state police.
“Not allow their respective social media handles to publish and circulate deepfake audios/videos which violate the provisions of extant rules and regulations. Whenever such deepfake audios/videos, come to the notice of political parties, they shall immediately take down the post but maximum within a period of 3 hours and also identify and warn the responsible person within the party,” the advisory said.
The EC also asked the parties to report such content to the social media platform and then approach the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) under Rule 3A of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
“The Commission has been repeatedly directing the political parties and their leaders to maintain decorum and utmost restraint in public campaigning. The Commission once again directs with emphasis that all the political parties and their leaders must refrain from using in their campaigning any technological/ AI based tools which distorts information or spreads misinformation, which resultantly lowers the standards of electioneering,” the advisory read.
