In election season, Twitter is tightening rules and taking steps to prevent prohibited political ads by identifying and blocking such content promoted by candidates and parties.
The microblogging site is also expanding its team with “local, cultural, and language expertise” to deal with “attempts to manipulate the platform and content that can incite violence, abuse, and threats and trigger the risk of offline harm.”
Assembly elections will be held over a period of one month, starting on March 27, in four states — West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala – along with the union territory of Puducherry.
This is not the first time Twitter is taking measures to enforce election rules in India and abroad. “Twitter banned political ads in 2019, we believe that political message reach should be earned, not bought, bringing ads from political candidates and political parties to an end. We are 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,” Twitter said in a blog post.
Two months ago, Twitter had faced flak for refusing to ban some accounts after specific requests from the Indian government following the Republic Day violence and incidents at Red Fort during protesting farmers’ tractor rally.
“We continue to invest in technological solutions and have deployed tools backed by technology to detect and surface abusive content more efficiently. This way, the content that’s most likely to cause harm is prioritised for review by our team of specialists to determine whether the content violates the Twitter Rules,” Twitter said.
