The election commission of India has issued (what appear to be initial) guidelines for the use of Social Media for election campaigning, saying that its attention has been drawn to 'certain violations of the Electoral Law in the social media", which, worryingly enough, it says "need to be regulated in the interest of transparency and level playing field in the elections." The legal provisions related to election campaigning apply to social media as well, and the Election Commission's guidelines are basic, essential, initial steps, with nothing worrying in particular, but perhaps not pervasive enough. They've looked at the following aspects of online campaigning: 1. Candidates' Social Media accounts: Candidates are required to provide information about their (official) Social Media accounts, in the affidavits that they file at the time of filing nominations. Our take: this is a necessary step, for a few reasons: in the absence of verification of accounts by Facebook and Twitter (which hasn't covered everyone), authenticating accounts is important, because it helps validate whether certain statements are made online by a politician through an authenticated account, or by someone faking an identity. This helps voters, and twitter and facebook would do well to get access to these affidavits, and verify accounts using this information. If money is spent managing an authenticated account, then it needs to be accountable to the election commission, and this is also a step in that direction. 2. Pre-Certification of Political Advertisements: every registered/national and State political party and every contesting candidate proposing to issue advertisements on television…
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