Democratic nations have inevitable fault lines because of their inherent nature to accommodate differing opinions which makes them a melting pot of diversity. India being no exception has a long-cherished history of co-existence and accommodation along with the fault lines. With the advent of social media in India, information became more readily available than ever&it was seen as a long-awaited march towards a more accountable democratic system. After all, we are told that information enables better decisions.

However, it has been observed that social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are deliberately trying to subvert the democratic order in India. Political enthusiasts often complain about Twitter bias irrespective of the side they’re on for the plain reason that we live in a perception-oriented world. From once being half the reality, perception has now occupied almost full space. True that Twitter gave voice & platform to millions whose expressions hitherto were unheard of. But what if opinions are based less on facts and more on emotions. This is where social media amplifies biases.

In August 2018, the then US President Donald Trump criticized Twitter for shadowbanning & silencing conservative accounts, its CEO Jack Dorsey fully admitted the ‘left-leaning’ bias of the platform’s employees. This bias has trespassed borders. In India, time & again Twitter has shadow banned and suspended accounts for merely stating the obvious. During this year's Durga puja celebrations, Bangladesh witnessed a spate of hate crimes against its minority Hindu population which has been reduced to 8% of the population from 30% in 1971. Several temples were ransacked, idols broken and devotees killed in cold blood. This resulted in an obvious outrage on Twitter where the Hindu community cutting across the borders came together to show solidarity with their religious brethren. Videos and pictures of attacks were posted on Twitter with a demand to take strict deterrent action against the perpetrators of this religious hatred. Certainly, the action was taken, not against the perpetrators but those showing solidarity with the victims. In a bizarre move, Twitter suspended ISKCON’s account for posting pictures and videos of victims in Bangladesh for not following its ‘community standards.

Twitter has often quoted its community standards and blamed algorithms for shadow banning and account suspension, which picks those gory images, posts, and videos before suspending the account. However, the evidence is contrary to the claims. Taliban terrorists and sympathizers have active accounts. The content shared by them doesn’t violate ‘community standards’ at all. Twitter’s excuse of algorithm and machine learning is an excuse of convenience to hoodwink the masses for these are little understood phenomena.Social media is certainly driven by algorithms & these algorithms are managed by Artificial Intelligence (AI), which in turn is managed by individuals. No thinking individual can remain neutral is a time-tested truth. They have their own biases as they have been born, brought up, trained, and made to cherish the western universal notions of the world. Twitter blaming AI &algorithms for suspending accounts is only a symptom of a malaise that lies elsewhere & is deeper.

In June this year, Twitter earned the dubious distinction of becoming first America based social media forum to lose legal protection in India. This implies that the company can now be held responsible for tweets&data hosted by it as it has editorial responsibility of the posts. Same month, the representatives of Twitter appeared before the parliamentary panel chaired by Mr. Shashi Tharoor to discuss the issue of its guidelines and the misuse of its platform. When the panel asked the company whether they follow the law of land, Twitter responded that they follow their own policies. One wonders what those policies are and the effects it can have on the fault lines of Indian democracy. On innumerable occasions, the level of discourse in social media is shockingly biased. People reject stuff that doesn’t endorse their unwavering beliefs but gladly accept anything which reinforces them. Cognitive bias as scientists would call it, is fuelled by Twitter to a great extent.

Last month, the Delhi HC after receiving a petition, asked Twitter to remove objectionable content related to Goddess Kali from its platform that was posted by an obnoxious user. This came after the petitioner first approached the Twitter grievance officer to remove the objectionable content which fell on deaf ears as Twitter replied that there is nothing objectionable in the post pointed by the petitioner. This only reinforces the hypocrisy & bias of Twitter. Taliban’s Anas Haqqani’s tweetwhere he paid rich tribute to Ghazni& boasted about the destruction of Somnath temple remains on the platform. Hate speech anyone! Clearly, Jacks’ confession of bias is not limited to ideology alone. India needs indigenous platforms to control the narrative. We are livingin Post-truth era, where discourses are shaped not by objective truths but subjective biases; where learning is challenged by trending hashtags& where perceptions are threatening to become bigger than realities, India can’t let the guard down by being indifferent to truth in the era of Post-truth.

Kanishk Shekhar is a political analyst and a book reviewer with a publishing house. He also teaches Political Science to students preparing for Civil services exams in leading institutes of India.

Democratic nations have inevitable fault lines because of their inherent nature to accommodate differing opinions which makes them a melting pot of diversity. India being no exception has a long-cherished history of co-existence and accommodation along with the fault lines. With the advent of social media in India, information became more readily available than ever&it was seen as a long-awaited march towards a more accountable democratic system. After all, we are told that information enables better decisions.

However, it has been observed that social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are deliberately trying to subvert the democratic order in India. Political enthusiasts often complain about Twitter bias irrespective of the side they’re on for the plain reason that we live in a perception-oriented world. From once being half the reality, perception has now occupied almost full space. True that Twitter gave voice & platform to millions whose expressions hitherto were unheard of. But what if opinions are based less on facts and more on emotions. This is where social media amplifies biases.

In August 2018, the then US President Donald Trump criticized Twitter for shadowbanning & silencing conservative accounts, its CEO Jack Dorsey fully admitted the ‘left-leaning’ bias of the platform’s employees. This bias has trespassed borders. In India, time & again Twitter has shadow banned and suspended accounts for merely stating the obvious. During this year's Durga puja celebrations, Bangladesh witnessed a spate of hate crimes against its minority Hindu population which has been reduced to 8% of the population from 30% in 1971. Several temples were ransacked, idols broken and devotees killed in cold blood. This resulted in an obvious outrage on Twitter where the Hindu community cutting across the borders came together to show solidarity with their religious brethren. Videos and pictures of attacks were posted on Twitter with a demand to take strict deterrent action against the perpetrators of this religious hatred. Certainly, the action was taken, not against the perpetrators but those showing solidarity with the victims. In a bizarre move, Twitter suspended ISKCON’s account for posting pictures and videos of victims in Bangladesh for not following its ‘community standards.

Twitter has often quoted its community standards and blamed algorithms for shadow banning and account suspension, which picks those gory images, posts, and videos before suspending the account. However, the evidence is contrary to the claims. Taliban terrorists and sympathizers have active accounts. The content shared by them doesn’t violate ‘community standards’ at all. Twitter’s excuse of algorithm and machine learning is an excuse of convenience to hoodwink the masses for these are little understood phenomena.Social media is certainly driven by algorithms & these algorithms are managed by Artificial Intelligence (AI), which in turn is managed by individuals. No thinking individual can remain neutral is a time-tested truth. They have their own biases as they have been born, brought up, trained, and made to cherish the western universal notions of the world. Twitter blaming AI &algorithms for suspending accounts is only a symptom of a malaise that lies elsewhere & is deeper.

In June this year, Twitter earned the dubious distinction of becoming first America based social media forum to lose legal protection in India. This implies that the company can now be held responsible for tweets&data hosted by it as it has editorial responsibility of the posts. Same month, the representatives of Twitter appeared before the parliamentary panel chaired by Mr. Shashi Tharoor to discuss the issue of its guidelines and the misuse of its platform. When the panel asked the company whether they follow the law of land, Twitter responded that they follow their own policies. One wonders what those policies are and the effects it can have on the fault lines of Indian democracy. On innumerable occasions, the level of discourse in social media is shockingly biased. People reject stuff that doesn’t endorse their unwavering beliefs but gladly accept anything which reinforces them. Cognitive bias as scientists would call it, is fuelled by Twitter to a great extent.

Last month, the Delhi HC after receiving a petition, asked Twitter to remove objectionable content related to Goddess Kali from its platform that was posted by an obnoxious user. This came after the petitioner first approached the Twitter grievance officer to remove the objectionable content which fell on deaf ears as Twitter replied that there is nothing objectionable in the post pointed by the petitioner. This only reinforces the hypocrisy & bias of Twitter. Taliban’s Anas Haqqani’s tweetwhere he paid rich tribute to Ghazni& boasted about the destruction of Somnath temple remains on the platform. Hate speech anyone! Clearly, Jacks’ confession of bias is not limited to ideology alone. India needs indigenous platforms to control the narrative. We are livingin Post-truth era, where discourses are shaped not by objective truths but subjective biases; where learning is challenged by trending hashtags& where perceptions are threatening to become bigger than realities, India can’t let the guard down by being indifferent to truth in the era of Post-truth.

Kanishk Shekhar is a political analyst and a book reviewer with a publishing house. He also teaches Political Science to students preparing for Civil services exams in leading institutes of India.