How the governments are using social media as a weapon against their citizens | By Sohail Khan

 Hello friends

The WhatsApp university in our country, the Twitter troll army, and the fake news prevalent on Facebook

I have told you a lot about them in my previous articles

In today's article, I'd like to give you a worldwide perspective.

How are situations in the rest of the world regarding the exploitation of social media?

How the political parties and the governments are using social media as a weapon against their citizens.

After reading this article, you will get to know what are the different ways in which this is being done worldwide.

and what can you do to save yourself?

How the governments are using social media as a weapon against their citizens | By Sohail Khan 

Let us begin with the UK, where a Brexit referendum was conducted recently

Brexit means Britain plus exit.

The people were asked whether they wanted to take Britain out of the European Union

Some politicians supported it, some were against it

We can refer to the politicians who supported this as the "Leave group"

They wanted to make Britain leave the European Union.

The ones who were against it can be referred to as the "Remain group"

When this referendum was conducted, the politicians of the Leave group

had spread massive propaganda on Facebook

They fooled the people by spreading fake news

The name of Cambridge Analytica too came to the forefront in this regard

What Cambridge Analytica had done was to collect the data of the people using Facebook

They observed the likes and dislikes of the people to find out

which type of people like which things and what is their thought process

Then, on that basis, they showed personalized ads to such people

to convince them that Britain should leave the European Union

For example, this was a popular ad on Facebook but it was not shown to everybody in the UK

This ad was only shown to people for whom Immigration was an important issue

which they found out by collecting the data

For example, the people of the old age group that are a little wary of the foreigners

They were shown that 76 million people of Turkey were given a visa-free journey by the European Union

so all these foreigners might come and settle in the UK

The truth was that this was entirely fake news. Turkey isn't even a part of the European Union

and neither was Turkey granted a visa-free journey by the European Union.

Similarly, the Left-wing people, who consider health as an important issue, we're shown this ad

We're giving away 350 million pounds every week for staying in the European Union

Our country is being harmed by this

Vote to leave

The truth was that there was no proper account of this money

In reality, Britain too receives a lot of money from the European Union

and overall, the economy of Britain benefits

The people who cared about the environment were shown in this ad

that they were not able to protect the polar bears because they were a part of the European Union

There was no coherent sense to this ad. it was completely illogical

Similarly, what were the ads shown to the youngsters?

That the European Union was about to put a quota upon Netflix and other streaming services

The European Union was set to regulate taxi services like Ola and Uber

Hence they were asked to vote to Exit

All these ads proved to be effective when it was found out that the majority in the referendum voted to leave

Later, the scandal of Cambridge Analytica was revealed and we got to know all this

Facebook displayed all the ads that were used during the campaigning for the referendum.

How can we stay safe from this?

The first step is that you should give out the least possible amount of personal data

You should also display your likes and dislikes to Facebook in the least possible amount

So that it shows the least amount of personalized ads

Secondly, you should also be aware of these things

Now that I've told you this, you know that such things do happen

So stay alert regarding this in the future

Next, let us move towards Brazil

Brazil and India have a lot of similarities

Just like in India, Whatsapp is a very popular app in Brazil

The population of Brazil is around 210 million

Out of this, 120 million people use Whatsapp

In the elections conducted in 2018, a new President named Bolsonaro was elected

In the last week of election campaigning, a Brazilian newspaper published a potent investigative report

in which it was found that some companies that were supporting Bolsonaro

had spent 3 million dollars in the election campaigning

to fund 4 digital agencies

the digital agencies that were responsible for spreading fake news on Whatsapp

One of these was a digital strategy company that illegally collected Whatsapp numbers of the people

on which the fake news was circulated via Whatsapp