Tag: Media

Social media is a defective product, lawsuit contends

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It also could upstage members of Congress from both parties and President Joe Biden, who have called for regulation since former Facebook Product Manager Frances Haugen released documents revealing that Meta — Facebook and Instagram’s parent company — knew users of Instagram were suffering ill health effects, but have failed to act in the 15 months since.
“Frances Haugen’s revelations suggest that Meta has long known about the negative effects Instagram has on our kids,” said Previn Warren, an attorney for Motley Rice and one of the leads on the case. “It’s similar to what we saw in the 1990s, when whistleblowers leaked evidence that tobacco companies knew nicotine was addictive.”
Meta hasn’t responded to the lawsuit’s claims, but the company has added new tools to its social media sites to help users curate their feeds, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is open to new regulation from Congress.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers, led by Motley Rice, Seeger Weiss, and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, believe they can convince the judiciary to move first. They point to studies on the harms of heavy social media use, particularly for teens, and Haugen’s “smoking gun” documents.
Still, applying product liability law to an algorithm is relatively new legal territory, though a growing number of lawsuits are putting it to the test. In traditional product liability jurisprudence, the chain of causality is usually straightforward: a ladder with a third rung that always breaks. But for an algorithm, it is more difficult to prove that it directly caused harm.
Legal experts even debate whether an algorithm can be considered a product at all. Product liability laws have traditionally covered flaws in tangible items: a hair dryer or a car.
Case law is far from settled, but an upcoming Supreme Court case could chip away at one of the defense’s arguments. A provision of the 1996 Communications Act known as Section 230 protects social media companies by restricting lawsuits against the firms about content users posted on their sites. The legal shield Section 230 provides could safeguard the companies from the product liability claim.
The high court will hear oral arguments in the case of Gonzalez v. Google on Feb. 21. The justices will weigh whether or not Section 230 protects content recommendation algorithms. The case surrounds the death of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed by ISIS terrorists in Paris in 2015. The plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that Google’s algorithm showed ISIS recruitment videos to some users, contributing to their radicalization and violating the Anti-Terrorism Act.

If the court agrees, it would limit the wide-ranging immunity tech companies have enjoyed and potentially remove a barrier in the product liability case.
Congress and the courts
Since Haugen’s revelations, which she expanded on in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, lawmakers of both parties have pushed bills to rein in the tech giants. Their efforts have focused on limiting the firms’ collection of data about both adults and minors, reducing the creation and proliferation of child pornography, and narrowing or removing protections afforded under Section 230.
The two bills that have gained the most attention are the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which would limit the data tech companies can collect about their users, and the Kids Online Safety Act, which seeks to restrict data collection on minors and create a duty to protect them from online harms.
However, despite bipartisan support, Congress passed neither bill last year, amid concerns about federal preemption of state laws.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has proposed separate legislation to reduce the tech firms’ Section 230 protections, said he plans to continue pushing: “We’ve done nothing as more and more watershed moments pile up.”
Some lawmakers have lobbied the Supreme Court to rule for Gonzalez in the upcoming case, or to issue a narrow ruling that might chip away at the scope of Section 230. Among those filing amicus briefs were Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), as well as the states of Texas and Tennessee. In 2022, lawmakers in several states introduced at least 100 bills aimed at curbing content on tech company platforms.
Earlier this month, Biden penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal calling on Congress to pass laws that protect data privacy and hold social media companies accountable for the harmful content they spread, suggesting a broader reform. “Millions of young people are struggling with bullying, violence, trauma and mental health,” he wrote. “We must hold social-media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit.”
The product liability suit offers another path to that end. Lawyers on the case say that the sites’ content recommendation algorithms addict users, and that the companies know about the mental health impact. Under product liability law, the lawyers say, the algorithms’ makers have a duty to warn consumers when they know their products can cause harm.
A plea for regulation
The tech firms haven’t yet addressed the product liability claims. However, they have repeatedly argued that eliminating or watering down Section 230 will do more harm than good. They say it would force them to dramatically increase censorship of user posts.
Still, since Haugen’s testimony, Meta has asked Congress to regulate it. In a note to employees he wrote after Haugen spoke to senators, CEO Mark Zuckerberg challenged her claims, but acknowledged public concerns.
“We’re committed to doing the best work we can,” he wrote, “but at some level the right body to assess tradeoffs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress.”
The firm backs some changes to Section 230, it says, “to make content moderation systems more transparent and to ensure that tech companies are held accountable for combating child exploitation, opioid abuse, and other types of illegal activity.”
It has introduced 30 tools on Instagram that it says makes the platform safer, including an age verification system.
According to Meta, teens under 16 are automatically given private accounts with limits on who can message them or tag them in posts. The company says minors are shown no alcohol or weight loss advertisements. And last summer, Meta launched a “Family Center,” which aims to help parents supervise their children’s social media accounts.
“We don’t allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99 percent of it before it’s reported to us. We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues,” said Antigone Davis, global head of safety at Meta.
TikTok has also tried to address disordered eating content on its platform. In 2021, the company started working with the National Eating Disorders Association to suss out harmful content. It now bans posts that promote unhealthy eating habits and behaviors. It also uses a system of public service announcement hashtags to highlight content that encourages healthy eating.
The biggest challenge, a spokesperson for the company said, is that the language around disordered eating and its promotion is constantly changing and that content that may harm one person, may not harm another.
Curating their feeds
In the absence of strict regulation, advocates for people with eating disorders are using the tools the social media companies provide.
They say the results are mixed and hard to quantify.
Nia Patterson, a regular social media user who’s in recovery from an eating disorder and now works for Equip, a firm that offers treatment for eating disorders via telehealth, has blocked accounts and asked Instagram not to serve up certain ads.
Patterson uses the platform to reach others with eating disorders and offer support.
But teaching the platform to not serve her certain content took work and the occasional weight loss ad still slips through, Patterson said, adding that this kind of algorithm training can be hard for people who have just begun to recover from an eating disorder or are not yet in recovery: “The three seconds that you watch of a video? They pick up on it and feed you related content.”
Part of the reason teens are so susceptible to social media’s temptations is that they are still developing. “When you think about teenagers, adolescents, their brain growth and development is not quite there yet,” said Allison Chase, regional clinical director at ERC Pathlight, an eating disorder clinic. “What you get is some really impressionable individuals.”
Jamie Drago, a peer mentor at Equip, developed an eating disorder in high school, she said, after becoming obsessed with a college dance team’s Instagram feed.
At the same time, she was seeing posts of influencers pushing three-day juice cleanses and smoothie bowls. She recalls experimenting with fruit diets and calorie restricting and then starting her own Instagram food account to catalog her own insubstantial meals.
When she thinks back on her experience and her social media habits, she recognizes that the problem she encountered isn’t because there’s anything inherently wrong with social media. It’s the way content recommendation algorithms repeatedly served her content that caused her to compare herself to others.
“I didn’t accidentally stumble upon really problematic things on MySpace,” she said, referencing a social media site where she also had an account. Instagram’s algorithm, she said, was feeding her problematic content. “Even now, I stumble upon content that would be really triggering for me if I was still in my eating disorder.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 26, 2023
Reporting corruption in a time of war: The Ukrainian journalists’ dilemma

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When a major corruption scandal broke in Ukraine last weekend, reporters faced an excruciating dilemma between professional duty and patriotism. The first thought that came to my mind was: “Should I write about this for foreigners? Will it make them stop supporting us?”
There was no doubting the severity of the cases that were erupting into the public sphere. They cut to the heart of the war economy. In one instance, investigators were examining whether the deputy infrastructure minister had profited from a deal to supply electrical generators at an inflated price, while the defense ministry was being probed over an overpriced contract to supply food and catering services to the troops.
Huge stories, but in a sign of our life-or-death times in Ukraine, even my colleague Yuriy Nikolov, who got the scoop on the inflated military contract, admitted he had done everything he could not to publish his investigation. He took his findings to public officials hoping that they might be able to resolve the matter, before he finally felt compelled to run it on the ZN.UA website.

Getting a scoop that shocks your country, forces your government to start investigations and reform military procurement, and triggers the resignation of top officials is ordinarily something that makes other journalists jealous. But I fully understand how Nikolov feels about wanting to hold back when your nation is at war. Russia (and Ukraine’s other critics abroad) are, after all, looking to leap upon any opportunity to undermine trust in our authorities.
A journalist is meant to stay a little distant from the situation he or she covers. It helps to stay impartial and to stick to the facts, not emotions. But what if staying impartial is impossible as you have to cover the invasion of your own country? Naturally, you have to keep holding your government to account, but you are also painfully aware that the enemy is out there looking to exploit any opportunity to erode faith in the leadership and undermine national security.
That is exactly what Ukrainian journalists have to deal with every day. In the first six months of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and watchdogs decided to put their public criticism of the Ukrainian government on pause and focus on documenting Russian war crimes.
But that has backfired.
“This pause led to a rapid loss of accountability for many Ukrainian officials,” Mykhailo Tkach, one of Ukraine’s top investigative journalists, wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda.
His investigations about Ukrainian officials leaving the country during the war for lavish vacations in Europe led to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues. It also sparked the dismissal of the powerful deputy prosecutor general.
The Ukrainian government was forced to react to corruption and make a major reshuffle almost immediately. Would that happen if Ukrainian journalists decided to sit on their findings until victory? I doubt it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended up imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Is it still painful when you have to write about your own government’s officials’ flops when overwhelming enemy forces are trying to erase your nation from the planet, using every opportunity they can get to shake your international partners’ faith? Of course it is.
But in this case, there was definite room for optimism. Things are changing in Ukraine. The government had to react very quickly, under intense pressure from civil society and the independent press. Memes and social media posts immediately appeared, mocking the government’s pledge to buy eggs at massively inflated prices. Ultimately, the deputy infrastructure minister was fired and the deputy defense minister resigned.
This speedy response was praised by the European Commission and showed how far we really are from Russia, where authorities hunt down not the officials accused of corruption, but the journalists who report it.
As Tkach said, many believe that the war with the internal enemy will begin immediately after the victory over the external one.
However, we can’t really wait that long. It is important to understand that the sooner we win the battle with the internal enemy — high-profile corruption — the sooner we win the war against Russia.
“Destruction of corruption means getting additional funds for the defense capability of the country. And it means more military and civilian lives saved,” Tkach said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 24, 2023
Scholz doubles down on refusal of fighter jets for Ukraine

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz doubled down on his rejection of demands by Kyiv to supply Ukraine with fighter jets on the heels of Berlin’s agreement to send battle tanks.
“The question of combat aircraft does not arise at all,” Scholz said in an interview with Tagesspiegel published on Sunday. “I can only advise against entering into a constant competition to outbid each other when it comes to weapons systems.”
His comments come after a top Ukrainian official said on Saturday that Kyiv and its Western allies were engaged in “fast-track” talks on possibly sending military aircraft as well as long-range missiles to help fight the invasion by Russia.
Scholz last week ruled out providing fighter jets, citing the need to prevent further military escalation. “There will be no fighter jet deliveries to Ukraine,” he said on Wednesday, soon after Germany and the U.S. agreed to provide advanced tanks for Kyiv’s war effort.
Ukraine renewed its request for the fighter aircraft almost immediately after Berlin and Washington announced the tanks. Berlin said Germany and its European allies will send about 80 Leopard 2 tanks.
“If, as soon as a decision has been made, the next debate starts in Germany, this does not look very serious and shakes the confidence of the citizens in government decisions,” Scholz told Tagesspiegel. “Such debates should not be conducted for reasons of domestic political profiling. It is important to me now that all those who have announced their intention to supply battle tanks to Ukraine do so,” he said.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Saturday that Kyiv was in talks with allies about aircraft, but that some partners have a “conservative” attitude on arms deliveries. Without citing any partners by name, he said this attitude was “due to fear of changes in the international architecture.”
Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 24, 2023
‘Fox News in Spanish’: Inside an upstart media company’s big plans to impact the 2024 election

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“We don’t have a Fox News in Spanish, and that’s what Americano intends to be,” said the network’s CEO and founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo. He said he has listened to Hispanic Republican leaders lament for 25 years about the need for something like it, but no one ever took serious action.
Garcia-Hidalgo, who worked as a Hispanic surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign after a career in telecommunications with Tyco, AT&T and Sprint, said he wants to “blow up” the traditional ways in which conservative Hispanics interact with the media, which he said consisted of going on liberal-leaning networks to “apologize for being Republican, bow your head and take a beating for an hour.”
Americano started with a suite of radio shows out of Miami, where it remains headquartered, but plans to have a presence on television and radio in battleground states across America in the next year, in addition to driving Spanish-speaking audiences to its online and streaming platforms.
To date, Americano Media has raised $18 million from its first three investors, and is set to complete its first and only round of equity investment this spring to generate another $30 to $50 million, Garcia-Hidalgo said. Thomas Woolston, a northern Virginia patent attorney, and Doug Hayden, a San Jose, Calif.-based investor, were the first to provide capital; Americano declined to disclose the third investor.

As a sign of Americano Media’s growth, the network has scored recent interviews with Donald Trump and several top elected Republicans.
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Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Americano is taking every opportunity it can to build a profile in conservative political circles. The network aired live from CPAC Dallas in August. In December, they set up a massive booth on radio row at Turning Point’s AmericaFest, featuring a “No mas fake news” display that delighted attendees at the Phoenix Convention Center who lingered nearby to watch a cast of conservative celebrities give interviews. As a sign of their growth, the network has scored recent interviews with Trump and several top elected Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Lee (Utah), and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Steve Saclise (La.), along with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Ultimately, however, the Spanish language network’s intended audience isn’t the type of conservative diehards who attend political conferences or tune into Steve Bannon’s “War Room.” It’s working-class Hispanic people living in America, who prefer to speak Spanish, aren’t particularly ideological and who lack options for commentary on the news of the day.
“Hispanics are normies,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a GOP strategist who led the 2020 Trump campaign’s Hispanic marketing efforts.
Strategists behind Americano’s expansion efforts say they believe there is a limit to the GOP’s gains with Latinos in recent years. The low-hanging fruit has already fallen, they say, requiring Republicans to do a bit more work to pick off remaining centrist voters, something Americano intends to do by offering a combination of fairly straight news, mixed with conservative commentary and eventually entertainment offerings.

Democratic operatives, who have long warned that the absence of more robust investments in Spanish media could have boomeranging effects, acknowledge that targeting that type of niche audience could be a highly effective plan.
“There is an information war in Latino and bilingual communities in this country,” said Tara McGowan, the founder and publisher of the Democratic-aligned Courier Newsroom network, who has been vocal about the left needing to build new, progressive media outlets. “It’s a very smart and very alarming move by conservatives to double down on their investment in Americano Media.”
Americano’s venture mirrors that of the liberal Latino Media Network, which in June announced the purchase of 18 Latino radio stations around the country. One of those stations, Miami’s Radio Mambi — a longtime fixture in the conservative Cuban-American community — lost several prominent hosts to Americano Media after the sale was announced. Lourdes Ubieta, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio are among those who made the switch to Americano. Most of Americano’s hosts, producers, directors and technicians came from Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español, according to network officials.

Mayra Flores has recently signed a contract to become one of Americano Media’s senior political contributors.
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LM Otero/AP Photo
Mayra Flores, the Republican who flipped a South Texas congressional seat in a June special election, becoming the first female Mexican-born House member, has recently signed a contract to become one of Americano Media’s senior political contributors. Flores lost reelection in November after redistricting made the seat more Democratic.
Other top executives at the startup include Michael Caputo, a longtime GOP operative who advised Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and briefly served as an official at the Department of Health and Human Services at the start of the Covid pandemic, and Alfonso Aguilar, who led George W. Bush’s citizenship office, is serving as Americano’s political director.
After years of trying to get a news network off the ground and creating a lineup of podcast talk shows, Garcia-Hidalgo launched Americano in March as a partnership with Sirius XM’s Latino variety station. The strategy, he concedes, was not to reach the small number of Latinos listening to satellite radio, but to grab the attention of investors and top radio network executives. Americano pulled its lineup from the satellite channel in October and moved over to a Miami-based Audacy radio station.
The network’s ambitions are broad. By the end of this year, Americano plans to be on 25 radio stations. They’ve added content to every major streaming platform, and have built a digital news website and phone app. They’ve spent several million dollars building studios to launch new television programs, with plans underway to be on cable in every major battleground state ahead of the 2024 election, and in Puerto Rico in the coming weeks, Garcia-Hidalgo said.
“The most underserved news consumer is a center-right Spanish speaker,” Flores said in an interview, noting that many of those fairly conservative Latinos in South Texas have traditionally voted Democratic, though some have begun to leave the party, data show.
While heavy on conservative commentary, Americano does feature liberal guests. On one show, Democrat Jose Artistimuño, a former Democratic National Committee press secretary who worked in Barack Obama’s administration, debates Republican Jimmy Nievez each evening. The network says they’re in the process of adding more Democratic commentators to their roster.
“It’s definitely a space that needed to be filled, and I’m saying that as a Democrat,” Artistimuño said of the lack of Republican-versus-Democrat talk shows in Spanish. “I may not agree with all the policies that Americano supports, but that’s OK. In order for democracy to work, both sides need to talk to each other and debate.”
Latinos in America are still more likely to favor Democrats. But those margins have shrunk dramatically in recent years.
CNN exit poll data in November found that Democrats’ lead with Latino voters has narrowed by nearly 10 percentage points since the 2018 midterm election, with 60 percent supporting House Democratic candidates this fall and 39 percent GOP. Four years ago, 69 percent of the Latino electorate backed Democrats and 29 percent Republicans, the exit polls found.
“The biggest challenge Republicans have had is they usually engage Hispanics from a perspective of electoral politics, just to get their vote, and they usually do it three months before an election,” said Aguilar, Americano’s political director. “It’s very difficult to build confidence in a community when you arrive so late.”
One of the problems still facing Republicans has been reaching Latinos who primarily speak Spanish.
Sopo, whose work includes GOP advertising to Latinos, noted that his firm, Visto Media, conducted a poll for a client this fall that found Democrats held a 40-point lead on the midterm ballot with Hispanics who receive all or most of their news in Spanish. That number fell to a 13-point lead with Hispanics who prefer English news sources.
There are also challenges to successfully capturing an audience of Latino viewers hailing from different countries, Sopo said. Content that appeals to Cubans in Miami isn’t always what Mexicans in Texas are interested in. A mix of culture, news and conservative commentary, Sopo said, is likely a “formula for success with Hispanics,” and something that isn’t widely available.
“If they want to broaden out and grow the tent, the programming has to look more like Fox and less like Newsmax and OAN,” Sopo said, referencing two further-right TV news channels. “Straight news, combined with conservative commentary, and you add some entertainment, which they’ll need for that demographic.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 23, 2023
Top Russia official threatens West with ‘global catastrophe’ over weapons to Ukraine

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Continued deliveries of arms to Ukraine by its allies in the West will lead to retaliation with “more powerful weapons,” a top official in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime said on Sunday.
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, threatened Europe and the U.S. with “global catastrophe” over their continued military support to the government in Kyiv, which is trying to continue retaking territory it lost in the Russian invasion.
Volodin directly invoked the use of nuclear weapons in his statement over messaging app Telegram.
“Arguments that the nuclear powers have not previously used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts are untenable. This is because these states have not faced a situation in which the security of their citizens and the territorial integrity of their countries were threatened,” the Russian official wrote in his social media post.
The threat comes amid arguments over whether Germany will send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion. Kyiv has requested the German-made tanks, which it says it needs to renew its counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces. But Berlin has so far resisted the call from Ukraine and its allies to send the tanks without the U.S. making the first move, over fears of an escalation in the conflict.
Berlin also hasn’t approved deliveries of the tanks from its allies, as Germany gets a final say over any re-exports of the vehicles from countries that have purchased them.
Newly appointed German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is planning a trip to Ukraine, which could come in the next month, German newspaper Bild, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, reported on Sunday, citing an interview. Asked about the Leopard tanks, Pistorius said: “We are in very close dialogue on this issue with our international partners, above all with the U.S.”
In his Telegram post, Russia’s Volodin said: “With their decisions, Washington and Brussels are leading the world to a terrible war … foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries.”

It’s not the first time that top Russian politicians threaten a nuclear escalation. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has invoked the use of nuclear weapons more than once since the outbreak of the conflict 11 months ago.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 21, 2023
Govt issues guidelines for social media influencers

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New Delhi: Social media influencers and celebrities will face a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh, which can go up to Rs 50 lakh on repeat offence and even lead to a ban of up to six years, on violation of guidelines for them, which were released by the consumer affairs ministry on Friday.
Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told mediapersons, while releasing the guidelines, that the whole issue is centred around consumers’ right.
“It is the responsibility of the endorser, celebrities and influencers or other advertisers to truthfully disclose whatever information the consumer must know before making any decision for purchase,” the guidelines said.
Singh further said social media influencers should disclose the nature of their endorsements.
“Individuals or groups who have access to an audience and the power to affect their purchasing decisions about a product, brand or service because of the influencer’s authority, knowledge, position or relationship with their audience,” the guidelines said.
Influencers are defined as creators who advertise products with a strong influence on the decisions or opinions of their audience. Virtual influencers, which are defined as fictional computer-generated people with realistic features of humans, are also required to disclose their endorsements, the guidelines said further.
The department noted that, “When there is a material connection between an advertiser and celebrity/influencer that may affect the weight or credibility of the representation made by the celebrity/influencer.”
These material connections include monetary or other forms of compensation, free products, contests and sweepstakes entries, trips or hotel stays, media barters, coverage and awards, or any personal, family or employment relationship, the rules note.

The influencers should be able to substantiate the claims made by them. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 provides the framework for the protection of consumers against unfair trade practices and misleading advertisements.
The product and service must have been actually used or experienced by the endorser, the ministry said, adding that consumers can seek legal actions against those defaulting.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 20, 2023
Govt Issues Guidelines For Social Media Influencers; Fine Up To Rs 50L, 6-Yr Ban On Repeat Offence

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SRINAGAR: Social media influencers and celebrities will face a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh, which can go up to Rs 50 lakh on repeat offence and even lead to a ban of up to six years, on violation of guidelines for them, which were released by the consumer affairs ministry on Friday.
Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told mediapersons, while releasing the guidelines, that the whole issue is centred around consumers’ right.
“It is the responsibility of the endorser, celebrities and influencers or other advertisers to truthfully disclose whatever information the consumer must know before making any decision for purchase,” the guidelines said.
Singh further said social media influencers should disclose the nature of their endorsements.
“Individuals or groups who have access to an audience and the power to affect their purchasing decisions about a product, brand or service because of the influencer’s authority, knowledge, position or relationship with their audience,” the guidelines said.
Influencers are defined as creators who advertise products with a strong influence on the decisions or opinions of their audience. Virtual influencers, which are defined as fictional computer-generated people with realistic features of humans, are also required to disclose their endorsements, the guidelines said further.
The department noted that, “When there is a material connection between an advertiser and celebrity/influencer that may affect the weight or credibility of the representation made by the celebrity/influencer.”
These material connections include monetary or other forms of compensation, free products, contests and sweepstakes entries, trips or hotel stays, media barters, coverage and awards, or any personal, family or employment relationship, the rules note.

The influencers should be able to substantiate the claims made by them. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 provides the framework for the protection of consumers against unfair trade practices and misleading advertisements.
The product and service must have been actually used or experienced by the endorser, the ministry said, adding that consumers can seek legal actions against those defaulting. (IANS)

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( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )

January 20, 2023
Big business is taking over the media By Justice Markandey Katju

Rahul Gandhi has congratulated Elon Musk on his taking over Twitter, and has asked that the Opposition’s voice in India be not stifled.
What Rahul, wittingly or unwittingly, overlooks is that the big business which is taking over the media all over the world, looks only at its own interests, not the interests of others.
The take over of Twitter by Elon Musk in America is akin to the take over of CBN IBN by Mukesh Ambani, or of NDTV by Gautam Adani in India.
When I was Chairman of the Press Council of India, I came to know that the owner of one of the big Hindi newspapers, having perhaps the largest circulation in India, also owns about 50 other businesses e.g. mining, coal, iron&steel, real estate, etc. The newspaper was only a small business compared to his other businesses.
Why then was he interested in publishing the newspaper ? It was obviously to help his other businesses, e.g. by publishing something favourable to a Minister, who in return would help him in his other businesses.
Historically, the media arose in the 18th century in Europe as an organ of the people against feudal oppression. At that time all the organs of power were in the hands of feudal authorities, kings, aristocrats, etc. Hence the people had to create new organs which would serve their interests. The media ( which was then print media mainly in the form of leaflets, pamphlets, etc, not regular daily newspapers ) was one of the main organs created by the people for waging their struggle against feudalism, and it was used by great writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Junius, etc. The media then represented the voice of the future, as contrasted to the feudal state organs, which only wanted to preserve the status quo.
Later, the role of the media changed. It was taken over by businessmen, and stopped representing the people. However, it still fulfilled a useful purpose by conveying news truthfully to the people. In India, great journalists like Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Nikhil Chakrabarty, etc fulfilled this role, like William Lloyd Garrison, Edward Murrow, and Walter Cronkite in America.
Now the wheel has turned totally around. Now the worldwide trend is to totally emasculate the media, deprive it of whatever freedom it had, and make it an organ dedicated solely to serving the commercial interests of the proprietor.
This trend is most visible in Indian television today, which has turned largely into what is called euphemistically as ‘godi media’. Now all pretences of conveying the truth have been dropped, and instead one hears only a single refrain.

Rahul Gandhi’s message is only wishful thinking, and Elon Musk is unlikely to pay any heed to it. He has invested 43 billion dollars in buying Twitter, and will only be interested in having good returns from this huge investment.
Author Justice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India. Author can be reached at justicekatju@gmail.com
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house.

October 31, 2022