Social Media A Double-Edged Sword-
Manipur Crisis And Fake News- AI Regulations
Today we will take a deep dive to understand how social media plays a vital role in our lives. It can cause a revolution against the unjust while being also the reason why the unjust act was incited. Hence the double-edged sword. We will look into 2 blogs. The first one covers the Crisis in Manipur and how social media played a vital role in making people aware of the disgraceful event that occurred. The second blog mainly talks about Fake News and Regulation Rights how fake news can do more harm than good with a few examples and all this in the context of social media.
Crisis in Manipur
Manipur has been in the news for the war-like situation in the state. The disturbing photos and videos that went viral on social media describe the sorry state of affairs and how people themselves became enemies of each other. That being said there is much more to this than what meets the eye. Let's try to build a foundation and a mental image of the ethical construct and religious construct of the state. This will help us understand how the violence began in Manipur and why it still persists.
Manipur is a state in northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It has a very vibrant ethnic construct. The state of Manipur is home to many tribal communities. The Meitei, who makeup 53 percent of the state’s 2.85 million population and yet occupy only 10 percent of its land.
Against the Kuki and 33 other tribes, which constitute about 30 percent of the population and are geographically more spread out in the poorer hill areas. Though, as noted, the Kukis are mostly Christian and the Meitei mostly Hindu (small numbers of Meiteis are Christian or Muslim), the violence has occurred over ethnic rather than religious divides.
Let's now look further into our discussion. The crisis occurred a day after the conflict in the state of Manipur between the Kuki tribe and the Meitei, on the 4th of May in broad daylight, two women being paraded naked by a mob of men both of them belonging to the Kuki community, one in her twenties and the other in her forties,
Both were groped and molested one was also gang raped. Almost 90 days ago, did these women file a complaint? Yes a complaint was filed on the 18th of May but nothing happened the state government and the police took no action, they pretended like nothing had happened. So what changed? ? On 19th May the video of this incident got leaked everyone saw it on social media it was only then that the Manipur Government decided to act. The Police Ignored this brutal crime for well over 70 days but when the video emerged they sprung into action.
The Chief Minister of the State Biren Singh has promised strict action against the offenders, let's look at his statement the police took “ Suo-moto cognizance of the incident”.
Meaning no one complained, the police acted on their own except they did not. These women had filed a complaint 2 months back but instead of helping them, the police ignored them. In fact, the 2 women have spoken to multiple news agencies, and they said that the police actively helped the mob. So much for the Suo-moto cognizance. Either way, it’s a national shame which wouldn’t have come to light if not for social media. Here the role of social media is vital as it facilitates justice and the hypocrisy of the government and makes the public aware of the failures of the government.
Both communities are locked in a violent standoff. They have multiple issues with each other like- land ownership, job quotas, and even migration. Is it complicated? Yes, it is, but if the government fails to solve the complications why are they in power? why should people trust them? In the last 80–85 days around 140 people were killed more than 40,000 people were displaced and more than 1700 houses were destroyed mobs have descended on villages and burned them to the ground. That’s what happened to these women as well their village was attacked by a mob. They were hoping to find shelter when they were assaulted. We must admire their courage to speak out after all that happened. That being said the leadership gets no excuse and, hence should be accountable for its failures in the state.
Even the Prime Minister spoke out saying it’s an insult to humanity. We need accountability for what has happened to these women in Manipur, for all the death destruction, and chaos. Perhaps the chief minister should lead the way he has no excuse for his failures Mr Biren Singh is a BJP Chief Minister it’s the same party at the center and the state so he can neither blame the lack of federal support nor the historical fault lines.
Top Manipur officials should take responsibility resign and make way for more competent ones if not all this outrage will be pointless. Even the Chief Justice has given an ultimatum to the government either arrest the culprits or step aside. Arresting the culprits should be on priority but that alone won’t be enough Manipur’s top leadership needs to go. The violence and destruction must stop because the point of Democracy is not to vote once every five years and forget it’s about continuous accountability.
Fake News And AI Regulation
Let’s now look at the other side of this story, why did this happen or what was the trigger? The reason is Fake News these women were paraded naked molested and sexually assaulted over a piece of fake news.
The fake news showed a body wrapped in plastic stating “A Meitei woman was raped and killed by kuki men” The victim was not from Manipur she was from Delhi and the picture was from last year, (November 2022). This fake news was circulated in Manipur, The local police did try to stop the fake news from going viral but there was no stopping the fake news from spreading like wildfire. This fake news was part of the reason the outrageous act occurred in Manipur. One of the victims confirmed this, she said that the mob was incited by fake news.
This wasn’t the only sad story there are multiple incidents of disinformation, among which one was about a hospital, The Shija Hospital in Imphal the story claimed that there were bodies of 37 Meitei rape victims in the hospital. The Hospital issued a strong denial, they also said that they did not conduct any postmortem so there is no question of bodies being taken there despite all of this, such stories continue to spread this is the scourge of fake news. Fake news definitely contributed to the outrage of the Meitei tribe and what happened in Manipur and it happened despite an internet ban. That’s how volatile fake news is fake news can also serve as a weapon to escalate an already violent crisis like we have seen happen in Manipur. Let's also look at similar incidents abroad.
It was the 22nd of May when a Photo went viral let’s see what this photo is about. A cloud of smoke rising up from a building looks like an explosion or an attack, well that isn’t just any building. It’s the Pentagon, it’s the headquarters of the U.S Defense Department, but there is a catch there was no explosion at the Pentagon. The Photo that we see is fake it was generated by AI some verified Twitter handles ended up posting this picture thanks to Elon Musk anybody can be verified including accounts like “Bloomberg feed” with a “blue tick”. We know Bloomberg is one of the biggest media organizations in the U.S, But this account wasn’t theirs it belonged to some mischief makers many journalists and channels actually were deceived by this fake image, seems hilarious but let's hear the other side of the story.
This image caused the U.S. stock market to dip standard and poor dropped 0.26 percent within minutes it only recovered once the story was busted. The Blue tick is one part of the problem unfortunately Twitter is owned by just one man so there is little that governments or people can do, but AI is not it is still uncharted territory which means there is still time to put regulations in place. We can’t ignore AI it has vast potential to do good and yet more to harm. AI can manipulate almost anything but the consequences could be huge. What can we do to avoid falling for fake news?
These are a few things that could be done to avoid and spot fake news, like looking for water marks or even trying to find AI anomalies like extra limbs on humans or lack of facial features. These will tell us if an image is fake or not, but what if the AI is really advanced in such cases there might be no anomalies. So what we could do is to check for other reports or pictures of the same event. Let's take the same example if there was indeed a blast there would be dozens of videos from different sources but that was not the case here. In this case, there was only one single photo posted everywhere which was a classic give so we must be aware.
Now to the crux of our discussion how can we avoid such controversies in the first place? Regulations are the only way forward because AI is getting more powerful every day. At this point, even experts are having a hard time picking them out so what should big tech and government be doing?
The only thing that could be done is to slow down and let the regulations catch up as the technology is developing at insane speeds. We need guidelines and we need it soon.