FAKING AND BREAKING NEWS

Technology is disrupting our lives at an unprecedented pace and we’re all struggling to catch up, afraid of becoming irrelevant or left behind. We’re reeling from the expose of how Facebook data played a role in manipulating the elections in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.  Yet, would any one of us seriously consider deleting our Facebook profiles? How else could we stay connected to myriad acquaintances we can’t or won’t call or meet face to face?

Social media is already integral to many of us today. We remember a time without it as one of deprivation and can’t quite imagine how we might manage without it today.


It feels comfortable to expect technology companies, government regulators and activists to sort this out for us while we wait in a sort of limbo, some of us shunning and some of us embracing social media, with most of us somewhere in the middle.

When Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, he candidly admitted that he couldn’t have imagined when he set out to create Facebook that one day he would be held accountable for possible election fraud. Just as none of us can imagine that one of our profound insights or frivolous musings, joyful sharing or pretentious posing on Facebook, Twitter or Whatsapp could be held against us in a job interview or even a legal court. Yet, this is happening and we must be aware of the danger even when we don’t quite understand it.

I’m not a fan of the gun lobby in America but they made a critical point about intent when they embraced the slogan, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” It doesn’t work so well in their context – people do kill significantly less people if they don’t have access to guns.  But this insight in the context of technology has a much greater impact – Technology doesn’t manipulate people. People manipulate people. And this is something that will hold true even if technology is removed from the equation.

Self-interest is a reality for all of us. We all sometimes have feelings and opinions we feel pressured to hide from the disapproval of the society we inhabit. Why should we expect other people to be any different? Everybody lies. The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves because we believe them.


Does election fraud and voter manipulation not happen in technologically disadvantaged countries? If anything, it happens more. The myth we believed was that it didn’t in so-called developed countries – that Americans and Europeans had evolved to a level of integrity the rest of the world must aspire to. This scandal and the role played by social media has served to unmask the subtlety and sophistication with which manipulation is engineered.  Gossip and rumour mongering have always been around, only the tools they use to spread have evolved.

In a desperate attempt for survival, traditional media is being styled as the hero in the war against fake news on social media. Yet, the fact remains that they are not above faking news either. Remember propaganda? History has shown how often and how effectively many governments used control over the news media of their times to spread misinformation and influence outcomes in their favour.


We know how strictly the government of China regulates the Internet in their territory. Do we believe they leave traditional media alone to speak the unfavourable truth? If anything, traditional media must have been easier to regulate when we saw them as trustworthy news sources. Just as social media makes it more easy to spread fake news, it also makes it much easier to spot fake news because now the seeds of doubt have been planted and we already feel wary.

Technology companies, governments and activists probably will and must hold themselves accountable for this breakdown in trust. But we as individuals must also ensure that we do not complacently put the blinders of trust back on.

CAN FACEBOOK BRING THE WORLD CLOSER?

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, I did what many others were doing – I used the Facebook application to add a filter of the French flag to my profile photograph. It helped me show my support and express what I was having difficulty expressing otherwise. My sense of shock & helplessness, my frustration against the irrationality of terrorists, who seem to do everything against religion in the name of religion. The despair of wanting to change things without any sense of what I, as an individual, may be doing to contribute to the problem or what I may yet do to end it.

Facebook was the one place I felt less alone. Countless status updates and profile pictures showed me others also struggling to articulate similar connected feelings. So I was shocked when a Facebook friend accused me via a comment on my profile picture of not having empathy with victims of terror in other places like Beirut & Kashmir. I felt so misunderstood that I have pondered this strange unintended interpretation for days. And this is my realization: the thing we can and must fight as individuals is this sense of ‘other-ness’.

It’s in the way we express and interpret things today. If someone expresses support for one person/country/religion/idea, it goes without saying that he/she must naturally be against another. But, why must there always be an ‘other’? As an Indian, why can’t I empathize with citizens of other countries? As a Hindu, why can’t I respect other religions too? As a woman, must I only envy men for being physically & culturally stronger and never empathize with any burdens they might be carrying? How is expressing empathy with one person/region/religion/ideology equal to not having any for another?

Facebook is a nice place to interact with the world from the safety of our comfort zones. We meet many ‘others’ – people who come from different places and cultures, different ideologies and points of view. Can we try, if not always to understand and appreciate the differences, to at least learn to live with them? Isn’t this what we actually do in our offline lives when we have differences with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours? What siblings or spouses or friends always agree exactly on everything without discussions and even the occasional disagreement?

While it’s nice to have an easy visual filter to show our concerns in a timely manner, maybe Facebook can’t keep up with all the horror in the world. So here’s my little action, my new Facebook profile photo:

By displaying the flags of all the countries in the world I hope I am showing that I am making my effort, as an individual, to breakdown my sense of ‘other-ness’. And if anyone can still misunderstand this, then it means that for them, I will always be the ‘other’ – the problem is now theirs to resolve, if they choose to.

WHAT'S THE BEEF?

Full disclosure: I am a Hindu, I eat beef but not frequently, as I haven’t developed much of a taste for it. However, I don’t have any problem with anyone else (Hindu or not) eating it in front of me, behind my back or indeed, anywhere in the world. I’m not as well-versed with Hindu scriptures as say, a Baba Ramdev-style “godman” but I have read several translations of the Bhagavad Gita, which many believe is the definitive text on Hindu philosophy. And that’s where I got the fundamental belief of Hinduism that appeals most to me – tolerance.

The Gita says that there are many paths to God/Truth/Infinite Wisdom (call it whatever you will) and none is better than the other. Everyone is free to choose for themselves but not for others. This is also the founding belief of modern India as a nation – a “secular” republic that gives its citizens the right to practice their beliefs without imposing them on others who choose differently. Right or wrong, it’s in our Constitution. Whoever tries to impose a different view of this is going against the law. Be they President or Prime Minister or political goon or even ordinary man/woman on the street.

So what’s with the beef ban? Is there a section of society really concerned about cow slaughter? If we believe this, we must believe that a mother would never harm her own child and live in a Rajshri movie. Game of Thrones is more like it. Indrani Mukherjee’s shocking story was dominating the headlines lately till the media gagged. Now we don’t hear anything further about this case, by accident or design or something more nefarious. Will we know the full truth or is what’s out there, so complex, accidental and subjective that it’s incomprehensible?

A sociology student I know once told me a story. In the ancient India plagued by droughts and starvation, a king decreed that cows must not be slaughtered and eaten. He believed this would save weak & vulnerable children’s lives as they would have milk to drink. To ensure people followed his decree, he likened cow’s milk to mother’s milk and put the bovine on the pedestal of mother. I don’t know if this story is true but it’s as plausible as any other creation myth I’ve heard.

Living in the Kalyuga, we need to accept that we have no kings or leaders looking out for us and must learn to develop our own judgement. It’s all politics and self-interest today. If killing a cow is like killing a mother than what is killing another human being like? Like killing someone like yourself over a simple difference of opinion. Like killing a writer or a cartoonist because they offended your sensitive principles or held you up to ridicule so no one would take you seriously any more.

Let’s remove the blinders that allow us to live in a parallel dimension, untouched by the chaos around us. Examine motives. Yours, mine, his, hers, the people we support, the people we oppose – everyone’s. Chances of overlap are slim – unless we choose to believe in either tolerance or quid pro quo. Quid pro quo is a never-ending spiral of corruption & violence, always having to ensure we hold enough cards to make the others do what we want them to. Tolerance means giving up interference and trusting others to respond and reciprocate. It’s no more risky than the other option and it gives us a comfortable place to rest our conscience.

Killing a cow and eating it doesn’t necessarily make a bad person. Killing a person should. I’m not vouching for cannibalism but killing for food is the only type of killing that makes some sort of sense to me. Any other killing is cruel, immoral & criminal. Certainly not something any religion should support.

And as for politically-motivated violence – let’s start seeing it for what it is and give the offenders a real reason to stop. If it didn’t work for them, they wouldn’t do it.

ONE WORLD OR VIRTUALLY TOO MANY

As I woke up this Sunday morning, I inadvertently switched on Twitter instead of switching off the alarm on my phone. All I could see in my blurry morning daze was the top trend #pacquiaomayweather.

That’s a strange name for a tropical storm, I thought. What else could a May weather trend refer to but some unexpected, yet now anticipated climate devastation. That too, surely, headed straight for a first world country, somewhere rich enough to press the panic button and trigger worldwide concern before the event.

A little later, I saw my young cousin watching TV avidly, and got curious as to what could engage a millennial with the idiot box in the age of instant, on-demand content. So, of course, I went to investigate this aberration and that’s when I found out that what I thought was a tropical storm was in fact a boxing match, one with the highest prize money ever!

I admit I am slow to start in the mornings. I also admit that I have the least interest in sports and consequently the lowest awareness of sporting events amidst anyone I know. 

Yet, am I not wired in and connected to the one world created by global technology?

That promised world where visuals transcend the translation difficulties of language and people from myriad countries follow the same celebrities and like the same memes. If I am indeed a citizen of this world, should I not have known what millions of other people had known?

Am I only a frequent visitor to the one world? Or is the one world composed of many different regions that act as many little worlds in themselves, like a country with diverse states?

While digital technology has lived up a little to its claims to bring the world closer, it has also facilitated an explosion of data – in the form of web sites & platforms, the sharing of information & opinions, the upsurge in both quantity and variety of content. It feels overwhelming.

The virtual world is not a simple place to explore, you can start with one objective and get sucked into a wormhole of impulses that lead you astray quite easily. And it doesn’t match so exactly with an offline experience as to be able to replace it entirely.

For example, getting news on the Internet is not the same as reading it from a good old-fashioned newspaper. I could read a newspaper page to page, absorbing everything because it is finite and static. As I read news on a web site, there seems to be too much to go through and all of it constantly updating – I cannot read it the same way. At best I might scan through the latest headlines and follow one or two happenings of interest to me. So rather than bring me into the one world, it encourages me to shrink into my mini-world which seems simpler and safer to me. I’d rather get my news from a newspaper and use the Internet to check for the latest updates on the specific stories I want to follow. It just seems easier that way.

It turns out that I do not inhabit or use the virtual world as per the predictions of media pundits. It’s just one more world in which I can exist but it’s certainly not the only or the most important world to me.