Of fake info and curbs

Dissemination of information and its audit are under the scanner these days. One of the biggest enigmas of this age is fake news, and the aftermath that such fissures create in a society. The reported involvement of a Pakistani citizen for allegedly sharing fake information that incited the recent UK riots is a case in point. The accused, Farhan Asif, has been arrested a week after Britain witnessed riots in the wake of the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport. The footprints of the mess being found in Pakistan is a point of concern and illustrates how the virtual-digital reality is influencing politics and state-relations. A similar allegation is also there on another Pakistani, Asif Merchant, who reportedly had ties with Iran and has been charged over a foiled conspiracy to carry out assassinations on the US soil.

Both these incidents have a slur as Pakistanis have been found on the wrong side of the divide. This also points out at some deep-rooted revulsion wherein the youth are out on a track to find attention, and the tech-savvy culture is enabling them to go over the brink. This trend needs to be analysed on a bigger canvas as socio-digital unrest is on the rise and state authorities from Venezuela to Pakistan are adopting the Chinese prescription of firewall module and minute media management. President Nicolás Maduro banned X; Pakistan is already in an exercise to scuttle the internet; the Brits suspect incitement of racial hatred through social media. That democratic dispensations too are now sceptical of this window of free flow of information is noteworthy.

This calls for a regime of introspection and for analysing where the fault-lines of society have crisscrossed. There is something amiss as even developed societies erupt in violence, and the two sides of information are either slow to fall in line or found to be in a capsule of inflammation. People fanning flames of otherness and violence are in need of being checked, but not through arbitrary crackdown on information medium. The thin line between chaos and control is blurred somewhere.