SURGE IN FAKE NEWS ON SRI LANKA ATTACKS
This despite a social media ban, showing inability of govts to contain disinformation
SRI Lankan social networks saw a surge in fake news after the Easter suicide bombings a month ago, despite an official social media blackout, highlighting the inability of governments to contain disinformation, experts said.
A nine-day ban on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp was introduced after the Islamic State-claimed attacks on churches and hotels on April 21, which killed 258 people and wounded nearly 500.
Many anxious social media users switched to virtual private networks (VPNs) or the TOR network to bypass the order and
keep communication open with friends and relatives as the extent of the carnage became clear.
But for others, the tools were a means to spread confusion and vitriol as the island struggled to come to terms with one of the worst terror attacks in its history.
Sanjana Hattotuwa, who monitors social media for fake news at the Centre for Policy Alternatives here, said the blackout failed to prevent “engagement, production, sharing and discussion of Facebook content”, and he saw a significant rise in false reports.
AFP has published half a dozen fact-checks debunking false claims made on Facebook and Twitter after the Easter attacks.
Some had dug out photos of coffins and funerals from Sri Lanka’s brutal decades-long civil war and claimed they showed victims of the blasts. One video posted to Facebook showed police arresting a man dressed in a burqa and claimed he was involved in the bombings. The video was actually from last year, and showed a man who had used a burqa to hide his identity while he sought to attack someone over a debt issue.
Another used a five-year-old photo from India that showed a group of men wearing T-shirts with “ISIS”, another name for Islamic State, to claim there was an active IS cell in eastern Sri Lanka.
One Twitter user claiming to be a high-ranking Sri Lankan army brigadier accused India of being involved in the attacks. The account was taken down after the Sri Lankan army complained.
Authorities in Sri Lanka, where ethnic divisions still linger after decades of war, had blocked Facebook in March last year after Buddhist hardliners used incendiary posts to fan religious violence that left three people dead and reduced several hundred homes and shops to ashes.
The surge in fake news has further blemished the troubled reputation of social media, which several years ago had been seen as a means to expand freedom of information, in the region.