Twitter announces measures to protect India assembly polls

New Delhi: As the assembly polls in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry inch closer, Twitter on Wednesday said it is implementing significant product, policy, and enforcement updates to keep the service safe from attempts to manipulate the platform.

While a global cross-functional team with local, cultural, and language expertise will run the election integrity work, Twitter said it is taking proactive measures to prevent prohibited political advertising through comprehensive and nuanced enforcement mechanisms.

“These include identifying and blocking ads from referenced candidates, parties, and other election-related content,” the company said in a statement.

Twitter said it will label synthetic and manipulated media and link it to a Twitter Moment to give people additional context and surface-related conversations “so they can make more informed decisions on the content they want to engage with or amplify”.

When people attempt to retweet tweets with a synthetic and manipulated media label, they will see a prompt pointing them to credible information.

“These Tweets won’t be algorithmically recommended by Twitter, which further reduces the visibility of misleading information,” the company announced.

Twitter will also launch an events page dedicated to the assembly elections on voting days and for the election results day.

The page will include a timeline of Tweets from credible accounts to provide the latest information on the days of voting and election results.

“These will be visible to account holders in India in the Explore Tab, and will provide continuous updates and context throughout the election period with multiple language videos from a variety of news partners in the carousel,” the company informed.

“We are taking extra steps to ensure people have context to what’s trending for them and will include a representative Tweet, Twitter Moment or description to the top trends”.