I would recall my several writings on naavi.org regarding how to handle fake news on the internet.
Today, read an article about Wikipedia inventor who had a noble objective in giving away knowledge free. But when I reflect back on the developments of Internet, I have realized that Wikipedia is not longer a source of information relied upon on many aspects of our society . In aspects related to information which is Political and Social, Wikipedia has been poisoned and often needs to be read with circumspection. This is a tragedy.
Similarly the P2P media like Twitter or FaceBook has become totally unreliable except as a propaganda vehicle for vested interests.
Further, I also saw a video where AI was used to create a fake video by just taking a few mobile pictures and inserting it into a video in an app. This appears to be the final straw that breaks the back of the camel. We will see rogue techies creating fake videos of all politicians to ensure that Internet as a news purveying media becomes completely worthless since it will be filled with false information alround.
We are aware that the last USA election was defrauded with manipulation of postal ballots. We can expect that the next elections both in USA and India will be full of fake videos of all political figures including Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi created by AI. Hence any video or any article that appears on the Internet need to be fact-checked and the entity doing the fact-check itself need to be fact-checked.
We have also discussed the solution for countering the misuse of Internet for spread of fake news. The first suggestion was way back in December 2000 when I wrote “How to Respond to Rogue web Sites” which was further referred to in the latest article in March 2023.
In terms of solutions, I had discussed the “Mandatory Counter Views link display”, “Mandatory Identification of content contributors” through verification of IDs including Aadhaar type of reliable verification methods, “Intermediary Liabilities with self regulation in the form of Uniform Intermediary Dispute Resolution” on the lines of UDRP.
Out of this, Mandatory verification of contributors to Twitter kind of platforms have been introduced int he form of “Verified” status and Indian Data Protection laws are expected to carry it through. The Intermediary guidelines are being introduced through ITA 2000/8 and the Grievance Redressal Committee set up by the Government (instead of a self regulatory set up which was suggested by the Government but not accepted by the industry).
Now we are learning that Mr Adani the person who is being used by the opposition to defame Mr Modi has been moving in to introduce the other strategy of taking over some of the rogue media houses. Accordingly after NDTV, we understand that substantial interests have been bought in “Quint”. With such moves, there is a competition being created to George Soros who was holding the control on one sided narrative through paid journalists.
With these moves, “Information Warfare” is being commercialized. This development may not be desirable but it is inevitable to atleast correct the skewed behaviour of Internet and the possibility of further damage through biased AI algorithms.
When Adani was attacked for political reasons by Hindenberg report the loss of market capitalization was depicted by media as “Adani’s loss”. But the real loss was actually that of investors who had no stake in the political narrative. Even Mr Modi would be only marginally affected and perhaps will come out strongly after the fake narrative dies down. Adani also will come back albeit with some delays in some projects. But common investors who have lost their hard earned savings will never pardon Indian politicians who tried to use the bear operators of the stock market for their political propaganda.
The latest fake news corroborating the conspiracy of the Soros media was the article in Economic times calling Adani groups statement of premature repayment of debts as unsubstantiated and causing a 5% loss to investors in Stock markets yesterday. With such articles, Economic Times has once again showed its bias and why it is losing credibility.
We therefore welcome Adani’s move of taking over Quint. His control of NDTV and Quint may not fully match the combined weight of George Soros supported media but could at least create a counter weight. We hope that some “Journalists” who are caught in the Soros network by fate would consider defecting to create a better balance in the use of Internet as a news media.
If this does not happen, then the trust of Internet as an “Information Super Highway” would be further eroded.
As Data Security professionals, the preservation of “Integrity” of information does not end with the binary data but also extends to the preservation of integrity of the data as interpreted by the users of the binary data. Under the Theory of Data, I have stated Data is created by technology but interpreted by humans. Hence if the integrity of interpretation is corrupted, it is a “Data Security” issue.
Just has “Privacy Protection” has expanded the domain of Information Security in to the domain of human rights, it is time to recognize that “Prevention of Information warfare” is an extension of the “Prevention of Cyber Crimes” and hence the Information and Privacy protection domain may need to extend itself into preservation of “Information Integrity” .
Naavi
Very correct analysis and observations.