In the democracy, the ballots are cast to express the opinions and preferences. They represent the choices of the people for selecting who would govern them. A ballot is therefore not just a paper, but it is an expression of ideology as well. In the recent showdown in what happened in the USA regarding “manipulations” of votes by a data, the company is important for any democracy. In India, the RSS/BJP and its IT cell are fighting the war of trolls through fake IDs and fake news. The news determines the opinions of the people and as we saw that the ballot is also a piece of an opinion.

In the USA, the Facebook created storm against Hillary Clinton to the extent that the voters were systematically targeted through the social media and their opinions were affected. In India, the social media created such a storm in favour of Modi and BJP that the Congress was wiped out in the last elections, they did not earn even the 10 percent of the seats required to qualify as the opposition party.

Social media is useful as well as it can be manipulated. It is useful for the people who have no access to media otherwise. The social media, particularly Whatsapp and Facebook, have become an important tool for dissemination of information among the social movements and hence one of the important platforms to organise the events at different levels. It has also created a new brand of journalism that enables the common citizen to report the events and in many cases voice the genuine cases of injustice. The media in the good hands and at the service of people will always lead to greater things.

But if the same data falls into the hands of powerful and with a malicious agenda, the same media can become exploitative. Hence, the strong privacy laws are important and users of these media should have right to privacy to the highest level. Any breach of their privacy should amount to the criminal offence. The social media companies cannot just the data with the companies and the governments even in the name of security. The cyber monitoring of the private lives of the citizens will create an authoritarian society, the signs of which are beginning to manifest in China.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale

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