Dr. Shubhnandan S. Jamwal
Social media has deeply dug its claws in the cyber world and it has evolved as massive platform for businesses, entrepreneurs, professionals and organizations that seek greater recognition and identification at a very economical price. But several people across India are losing money every day by responding to the messages from unknown entities and responding to the offers like mobile phone for Rs 251. Every day number of people are becoming the victims of frauds and during this pandemic the fraudster is more active. According to one of the statistics of December 2019, 80% of the internet users in India have experienced cyber crime which is the highest in the world followed by the America which is around 61%. It is not only monetary issues but the use and abuse of the electronic media by miscreants for several other anti-social purposes is on the increase and the laws for controlling this monster are still in inception. Social media platforms are providing the mass medium to allow the interaction between different people and sharing their thoughts and feelings but because of the phony accounts it has become inauthentic. The biggest example one can quote is where social media interfered in the 2016 US election. It was observed by the Senate Intelligence Committees that Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) used social media to “conduct an information warfare campaign designed to spread disinformation and societal division in the United States”. It was also observed that the IRA used several different platforms but the Facebook and Instagram were the primary platforms. If the superpowers of the worlds are becoming the victim of social media then one can also imagine the status of India. Most of the people in India blame that there was the abuse in media in the shape of spreading rumors, and scandals, doing sting operations, destroying institutions, personalities and so on but still they have to hear about paid news, media leaks, use and misuse of the right to information by the media for different purposes. It is also assumed that if the person in India is having a smart phone along with the social media account, in most of the cases, he has a political party and most probably a media channel also under her/his control irrespective of age, maturity and literacy level.
Social media networks have also attracted worldwide attention of the big companies for advertisings just because a social media platform has potential to address millions of users and possible future customers and now the real potential of social networks is being explored daily by the different companies for the marketing purpose. But according to the recent statistics by Martin Armstrong, 16% of all Facebook accounts are fake or duplicates. In simple words it means that, 412 million user profiles on the largest social media platform are fake or duplicate. Although the exact amount of the fake accounts will never be revealed by any company but research is also being carried out to undermine the Facebook business model by studying the interactions between fake profiles and regular users.
Looking at the problems created by the fake accounts, most of the social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn have disclosed that they have removed or in the process of removing legions of fake accounts from their platforms. The existence of the Phony accounts since the inception of the social networking on social media always remains in trend and the problem has increased manifolds and will continue even though the big giants are saying that they are working to stop it. The performance metric of a social media company is measured by the growth in user accounts, therefore, the genuineness of the user and the purpose of the social media account are never asked. The purpose of creating the social media accounts is hardly known to anyone in India. Fake life style is depicted on the Social media account which is appreciated by the fake followers also. One must ask a question to him/herself that, why should we pretend on lifestyle which we know so well we can’t afford? The world has turned into a place whereby people especially the youth showing off expensive life style on Facebook, Instagram and twitter and so on while in reality they can’t even afford a bit of it. Some of the youth shares pictures and videos on social media with someone else resources like cars and gadgets. But if the youth has really seen the life style of Mark Zuckerberg, they have hardly seen him with expensive gadgets or luxury life. Some of the people even go into depression when they actually cannot afford that artificial and costly life style. Most of the people are posting an image on the social media, may be in new dress, and then continuously watching that picture every minute and every second to see the number of likes and comments. Some of them have also developed TSH and blood pressure problems just because there are not enough likes and followers.
In reality every social media company wants to see growth but at the same time they also have sympathy for the one who is victimized by fake accounts holders in any sense. The idea of preventing this actually does not suit to the big platforms and they are constantly adding new users in order to sell ads and placate the all concerned stockholders. This does not matter for a platform whether the user is real or fake. Not even a single platform wants to shrink its base but fake accounts are not just a spam risk but these accounts are essentially spreading misinformation or propaganda. The first step of involving into an online propaganda and misinformation campaigns is to have a fake social media profile. But neither social media companies nor technological innovations offer reliable ways that can be used for the identification of Phony profiles. From the bogus followers and fake news it is very hard to know whom to trust?
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