Security Challenges Posed by the Social Media

Lack of Privacy: Most people believe the age of privacy is now over and are, apparently, unconcerned about the data that is captured about them.

• Radicalistaion of the Youth: Of late, terrorist groups take advantage of it to communicate with cybercrime organisations and to coordinate along with them fundraising activities (from illicit activities) carried out in part (drug smuggling, gunrunning) or completely (e.g. phishing) on the Internet.
• Echo Chambers, Polarisation and Hyper-partisanship: In many ways, the design of certain social media platforms mirrors the growing volume of partisan media in traditional channels. As they increasingly become a primary distribution channel, social media platforms create bubbles of one-sided information and opinions, perpetuating biased views and diminishing opportunities for healthy discourse.
• Spread of False or Misleading Information: Viral disinformation or misinformation, commonly dubbed “fake news”, runs rampant across social media channels, disseminated by both state and private actors. These false and distorted pieces of information can intensify divisiveness and make it difficult for people to trust both what they read as well as the people and institutions they are reading about.
• Conflation of Popularity with Legitimacy: The idea that likes or retweets can be used to measure validity or mass support for a person, message or organisation creates a distorted system of evaluating information and provides a false pulse on the popularity of certain views. This is compounded by how challenging it is to distinguish legitimately expressed opinions from those generated by trolls and bots.

• Political Manipulation: Such as trolls and bots, disguised as ordinary citizens, have become weapons of choice for governments and political leaders to shape online conversations. Governments in Turkey, China, Israel, Russia and the United Kingdom are known to have deployed thousands of hired social media operatives who run multiple accounts to shift or control public opinion.
• Manipulation, Micro-targeting and Behaviour Change: Advertisers and their sophisticated targeting mechanisms drive the attention economy. Not all of these messages look like ads or are visible to anyone outside the target population, as was the case with Facebook’s recent admissions surrounding Russian-sponsored ads purchased during the US election. This model further widens the gap between publishers and journalists and erodes the revenue and sustainability of traditional news organisations charged with holding the powerful accountable.
• Intolerance, Exclusion and Hate Speech: Various policies and features of these platforms can amplify hate speech, terrorist appeals, and racial and sexual harassment. These environments can deter those targeted by hate speech from engaging in the conversation.

Challenges in Monitoring Social Media

• Server Location and Laws of Different Countries: Lack of Geographical Boundaries makes social media regulation an arduous task. Major complicating factors to secure the networks and Media are the hardware and software that make up the communications ecosystem is sourced externally.
• Encrypted Message: Use of phones/ WhatsApp to send and receive messages, concerns the government because the communications sent via such devices and applications are encrypted and could not be monitored and consequently hinders the country’s efforts to fight terrorism and crime.
• Complicated Networks: The task of securing the networks is also complicated by the fact that much of the infrastructure is in the hands of private companies who see measures such as security auditing and other regulations and frameworks as adding to their costs. Source of Origin is difficult to find out.

Ways to Improve

The government of India must come with a new policy on internet and social media as the Act which take care of the matters related to such media is about two decade old and the technology is getting changed day by day. The policy should be focused on curbing fake news and checks on the mass mobilization through such media.

• The government should raise awareness about social media menace and the outcome of the intolerance on such media platforms.
• The intelligence input should be strong to penetrate on the information and assure that fake news and any disturbing news should not reach to the mass to get mobilised. TT