There is no doubt that social media often houses an inordinate amount of misinformation, and even disinformation, which leads to devastating consequences.
To that end, the recent directive from the cabinet on verifying a lot of the news being shared regarding the banking sector shows that the government is indeed in cognizance of the matter.
While there is absolutely a need to clamp down on such faulty information, we cannot overstate the importance of leaving such measures up to the platform holders and publications carrying such news, as even the slightest hint of government involvement in the process of news verification would set a dangerous precedent.
As things stand, draconian laws such as the Digital Security Act already pose serious challenges to good, honest journalism being carried out in our country as we have seen far too many instances of the law being abused to silence reporters -- lest we forget how three reporters from Thakurgaon were slapped with the DSA for reporting on alleged discrepancies and corruption regarding food allocation for Covid-19 patients at a hospital.
Again, we understand that there is a great need for filtering actual news from fake ones, but the responsibility lies squarely on the platforms to that end. Given that the proliferation of misinformation is almost always carried out through social media, it would behoove the administration to coordinate with platforms such as Facebook, which is the most widely used social media platform in the country, to ensure that these companies are more active in their news verification process and tailor such measures in accordance to the news landscape of our nation.
We appreciate that the government understands the need to filter out junk information, but we also hope it understands that further draconian measures are not the way to go.
