Ratan Tata Calls for Stopping Online Hate, Bullying

Veteran industrialist Ratan Tata on Sunday called for stopping online hatred and bullying and instead supporting each other in what has been a "year full of challenges" for everyone.

In a post on social media platform Instagram, Tata said the online community is being hurtful to each other and bringing each other down.

"This year has been full of challenges for everyone, on some level or the other. I see online community being hurtful to each other, bringing each other down, harshly and with quick judgements," the Chairman Emeritus of the Tata group said.

"I believe this year specially calls for all of us to be unified and helpful and is not the time to pull each other down," he added.

Urging for more sensitivity towards each other, he reiterated the need for "more of kindness and more of understanding and patience than what one sees today."

Tata said while his "presence online is limited, but I truly hope it will evolve into a place of empathy and support for everyone, no matter what your cause, rather than hate and bullying." PTI RKL

Report Finds Bulk Video Posts on Social Media to Influence Muslim against COVID-19 Precautions

Bulk videos are being posted on social media platforms like Tiktok, Youtube, and Twitter to influence Muslims in India against following safe practices to contain coronavirus infection, a report prepared by open-source intelligence and fact-checking IT firm Voyager Digital Investigations has claimed.

According to the report, videos have been shot in both foreign locations and India and are being primarily posted on Chinese mobile video app Tiktok.

"TikTok, a Chinese origin video-sharing app is being used as a primary medium to create and spread videos with religious instigations against health advisories and fake information regarding coronavirus. These videos are further shared on other platforms like Whatsapp, Twitter and Facebook," the report said.

The report submitted to India Cyber Crime Coordnination Centre, claims to have analysed over 30,000 videos in the last five days, said that most of these videos have been created with professional video editing softwares and originally uploaded accounts are being deleted after circulating them to other social media platforms.

"Certain accounts peddling fake news among Muslims are promoting Pakistani religious leaders with Terror links. A further investigation into the likely role of foreign actors needs to be
investigated," the report said.

The researchers found that Hindi and light Urdu are being used as a language, Suggesting at India Specific Targeting of Audience.

"Several of the videos appear to be shot in Pakistan and Middle East but audio in Hindi have been superimposed to create a Hindi video," the report said.

When contacted, a Tiktok spokesperson condemned any and all efforts to spread misinformation and fear regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have been monitoring and systematically removing all content from our platform, including video, audio, and image that transgresses government advisories, as well as our own Community Guidelines.

"We are suspending or banning accounts, and, where necessary, are reporting the accounts to relevant legal authorities to ensure public safety," the spokesperson said.

A Twitter spokesperson said that the company is using machine learning and automation to take a wide range of actions on potentially abusive and manipulative content.

"To tackle misinformation related to COVID-19, we have broadened our definition of harm to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources with the intent to influence people into acting against recommended guidance, such as: 'social distancing is not effective'," the Twitter spokesperson said.

Twitter said that it will continue to prioritize removing content when it has a clear call to action that could directly pose a risk to people's health or well-being.

The company said that its automated systems have challenged more than 1.5 million accounts which were targeting discussions around COVID-19 with spammy or manipulative behaviours.

"We will use both technology and our teams to help us identify and stop spammy behaviour and accounts. We continue to remain vigilant," the spokesperson said.

Taking cognisance of fake news reports on the internet, the IT ministry has asked all social media companies to immediately remove false news spreading misinformation about coronavirus from their platform.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT issued an advisory on March 20 asking social media companies to inform their users about not posting false news that can create panic among the public and disturb social tranquillity.

Voyager recommended "timely identification, flagging and timely removal of such content. Twitter and Tiktok must take timely measures against such disinformation when human lives are at risk." PTI PRS

Workshop on 'Combating Fraud Activities using Data Science' held at IIIT-Delhi

• Problems such as fake news, hate speech and collusive activities on social media were discussed by subject matter experts

Laboratory for Computational Social Systems (LCS2) at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT Delhi) organized a workshop on Combating Fraud Activities using Data Science (Co-FAD) on Saturday, 11th January in their campus. It was a one-day colloquium studying the impact of fraudulent activities in Social Science, Journalism, Product Reviews, Forged Imagery, Cybercrime, and Finance among others. The speakers for the workshop were some of the most influential people whose research is helping curb fake activities around the web. 

The workshop commenced with a welcome note by the Director of IIIT Delhi, Prof. Ranjan Bose. He left us with the thought that where there is money, there is fraud. All the talks that followed further emphasized this point. The director’s address was followed by an enlightening keynote by Dr. P.N. Vasanti, director general of Centre for Media Studies (CMS). She highlighted the work of CMS and Penn State University, supported by WhatsApp, and gave some valuable insights. She also discussed the intersection of technology with legal policies for combating fraud.

 



"Major theme that we have trying to address is collusion in online media -- a secret collaboration to deceive someone. These collusions can be propagated through a vast number of social media platforms and also happens on online review forums where people hire colluders to promote or demote certain products. We are trying to address the collusive activities on online platforms and came up with a method to identify such collusion in product reviews. We have also published a research paper on how to detect collusion on twitter," says Prof Tanmoy Chakraborty, IIIT-Delhi, and convenor of the workshop. 

"There are black markets where you pay money and get the desired number of followers. Then there are other services in the black market where one can re-tweet to their customers to get credit and those credits can be used to promote their agenda, etc. It is very difficult to detect such colluders as they are common people. We are trying to collect datasets from premium black market services that will help in detecting such collusions," further added by Prof Chakraborty.

Another problem that society is facing is fake news and hate speeches, which is difficult to control or detect in a country like India where we have numerous languages. Prof Chakraborty was of the view that "Major problem in fake news is that it is not very well defined. We are trying to define fake news to address the problem. Then comes the hate speech problem on social media where we are coming up with a tool which will be able to detect hate speech in Indian languages." 

Yet another informative keynote was given by Anushree Bishnoi and Ankur Pandey, founders of unfound.ai. Unfound.ai is a startup tackling various forms of misinformation in online media. They illustrated their journey, the various challenges and the unique ways they are approaching them. Among the list of other speakers were people from prominent institutions like Queen's University, Belfast, IIT Patna, TCS Research, and Jadavpur University. Head of the Department, CSE, Dr. Vikram Goyal was also one of the speakers for the workshop. Researchers from all over India working or exploring this area participated in this one-day event held at IIIT Delhi. Apart from them, the event also witnessed enthusiasts across academia and industry showing their interest in the event. Student members of LCS2 IIITD also showcased their work through an interactive poster presentation session.

About IIIT-Delhi

It was created as a State University by an act of Delhi Government (The IIIT Delhi Act, 2007) empowering it to do research and development, and grant degrees. In a relatively short time, it has earned an excellent reputation in India and abroad for being a center of quality education and research in IT and interdisciplinary areas. Established in 2008, the Institute has grown to be recognized as one of the most promising young institutions for education and research in India.

The Institute is accredited ‘A’ grade by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and has been accorded 12-B status by the University Grants Commission (UGC). In recognition of its performance, QS India University Ranking 2020 has ranked IIIT-Delhi 41 and QS BRICS ranking 2019 ranked the institute at 192. NIRF also ranked IIIT-Delhi at number 55 this year.