Trolls & fake news likely on the agenda when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey meets PM Modi
Governance

Trolls & fake news likely on the agenda when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey meets PM Modi

Jack Dorsey is on a week-long visit to India, and is also set to discuss with PM Modi how Twitter can better engage with the government.

   
Jack Dorsey

Co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey | Commons

Jack Dorsey is on a week-long visit to India, and is also set to discuss with PM Modi how Twitter can better engage with the government.

New Delhi: Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is slated to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday or Tuesday as part of his week-long visit to India.

Dorsey and Modi will discuss ways in which Twitter can engage with the government, as well as its investment plans for India. Sources told ThePrint some of the issues that could come up for discussion include Twitter training for government employees for effective leverage in governance, opening up Twitter to government agencies to tackle law and order, regulating trolls and fake accounts, and checking the spread of fake news.

India is a crucial market for Twitter. As per a report on statista.com, Twitter has 7.83 million active users in India.

Announcing his visit, Dorsey tweeted: “my first time here after a lifetime of wanting to experience it (sic).” He visited the Dalai Lama Saturday, and said is an “amazing teacher”.

Reports say Dorsey will also host a townhall meet with the students of IIT-Delhi Monday.


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Ministry inputs

In the last few days, several ministries have furnished inputs to the Prime Minister’s Office about how they feel Twitter can collaborate with the central government. Currently, the micro-blogging service works with the government to promote some of its flagship initiatives.

Some ministries, such as the Ministry of External Affairs, use the ‘Twitter Seva’ facility for citizens to register their grievances.

Trolls and fake news

Dorsey’s visit to India comes at a time when Twitter is under fire for not doing enough to tackle online trolling and curb the spread of fake news. There have also been reports of Twitter’s declining revenue in India.

It had recently suspended Lok Sabha TV anchor Jagrati Shukla’s account after she advocated the use of real bullets on Kashmiri civilians instead of pellets. However, Twitter’s action was called “too late too little”, since Shukla has been alleged to be a “repeat offender” on the platform.

Twitter had earlier also acted against some of the trolls who had spewed venom against external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj by suspending their accounts.

Last month, union home secretary Rajiv Gauba, along with other senior officials, held a review meeting with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, YouTube and Instagram to review the misuse of social media sites for spreading rumours, cyber-crimes and other activities against India’s national interest.

This was the second such meeting, where the social media platforms were asked to nominate Grievance Redressal Officers based out of India, create a monitoring mechanism for timely preventive action in taking off objectionable content, as well as sharing information sought by law enforcement agencies and investigators.

Twitter had initiated a sanitising operation to remove inactive and fake accounts, resulting in a drop of nearly 2.7 lakh followers of Modi, and 17,000 of Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Reports say Twitter is also working on an encrypted messaging feature for sensitive communications. It is also working towards alerting its users who may have seen Russia-linked advertisements during the 2016 US presidential election.


Also read: Panel formed by Modi’s office to fix India’s internet, from fake news to payments