Parody accounts on Twitter were meant to post fun-laden tweets to delight the followers. Instead, they have become fake news factories, misleading the users on burning issues in India.
Twitter accounts that pose as another person, brand or organisation in a confusing or deceptive manner have seen a meteoric rise in India, tweeting misinformation to change the narrative of the day.
No one is spared in this misinformation war, be it politicians, mediapersons, celebrities and common Twitter users, who fall to the trap and retweet or file stories basis those parody/fake handles that have mushroomed on Twitter and the algorithms have miserably failed to track and flag/remove those.
In fact, India is such a big market for Twitter and it ought to have given far more attention to compliances under the Indian law, but it appears that there is a lot of gap between what the law wants Twitter to do versus what Twitter actually does.
Today, Twitter is infested with fake and parody accounts in India. Most of these accounts are being used for the purposes of targeting a particular person or for the purposes of forwarding or perpetuating a particular philosophy, political, religious or otherwise.
"Most of the fake accounts are targeting individuals, often hitting them below their belt so as to prejudicially impact the reputation, goodwill, standing or repute in society," Pavan Duggal, one of the nation's top cyber law experts and a seasoned Supreme Court lawyer, told IANS.
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