-The Hindu The Election Commission’s coordination with social media groups for taking action against fake news and contents violating poll rules has so far resulted in the removal of 628 online posts. Since the Model Code of Conduct came into force, 574 Facebook posts have been taken off for various reasons. In all, 468 political posts were detected during the silence period as provided under the Representation of the People Act...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Over 80% of the posts taken down by Facebook, Twitter, Google and WhatsApp on the request of the Election Commission (EC) in the middle of election campaigning were political or advertisements violating the 48-hour ‘silence period’ prior to polling. According to data, 537 political posts and advertisements were removed by the four companies during the ‘silence period’ of the first three phases. While Facebook took down...

-The Economic Times The group said the threat posed by digital platforms to the integrity of the upcoming elections has assumed “alarming proportions”. A group of rights organisations and citizens — including Internet Freedom Foundation, Common Cause and former chief election commissioners N Gopalaswami and SY Quraishi — have “made an urgent appeal” to the Election Commission to rein in digital platforms to ensure integrity of the general elections. The group, which also...

-The Telegraph The impact the beast called social media can really have on the ensuing general elections Sometime in the late 2000s, a young software engineer who voluntarily ran social media propaganda for the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party got an opportunity to attend a BJP social media meet in Bangalore. Among the people who saw this young man speak there was the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi....

-The Indian Express English-speaking Indians are concerned with deciphering what is real and what is fake on the Internet at similar rates - roughly 57 per cent - to respondents in the US and Turkey, according to the survey. Supporters of the BJP, and to a somewhat less extent those of the Congress-led UPA and former UPA supporters, trust news in the media more than English-speaking Indians who identified themselves as...