One of the earliest responses of the Sri Lankan government to the terrorist attack on Easter Sunday was to clamp down on social media. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and some other services were blocked. The country’s minister for mass media and state minister for defence appealed to the media not to publicize the names of the attackers and give extremists a chance to exploit the situation.

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Social media is prone to herd behaviour:

• It’s easy to lose our sense of self when we’re interacting online and can turn into sheep just doing what everyone else is doing.
• Humans are social creatures. Sometimes the things other people do overwhelm our sensibilities and we do things just because others are.
• The Herd Mentality has roots in social pressure. We all want to be accepted, and in times of stress, that pressure becomes more powerful.
• People in a crowd feel less guilt, less individuality, and more support from other members of the group. This is called “de-individualization.”
• The fear of losing your friends and followers if your views don’t fall in line with the majoritarian view.
• People feel empowered when they are in line with the herd’s behaviour and the anonymity of internet acts as a protective shield.
• users in a social system tend to bond more with ones who are similar to them than to ones who are dissimilar
• Entry barriers are very low and every user and blogger is a potential broadcaster.
• Being in crowds, and even being on the road driving, can change our thoughts and behaviours. We might say or do things we otherwise never wouldn’t.

Suppression of social media helps:

• Fake news is an industry today and finds great resonance with people. Its rise corresponds with a growing distrust in the mainstream media.
• Fake news has now even slipped into traditional media outlets and is often circulated by prominent individuals. This has contributed to the echo chamber phenomenon.
• “Echo chamber” is a term widely used in today’s lexicon, that describes a situation where certain ideas, beliefs or data points are reinforced through repetition of a closed system that does not allow for the free movement of alternative or competing ideas or concepts.
• It allows the authorities to lay down guidelines to impose temporary measures to maintain public tranquility.
• Shutting down internet access is a supply-side attempt to curb panic, rumours and hate speech.
• In some ways, the temporary clampdown on social media is similar to a physical curfew imposed by the Sri Lankan government.
• A curfew is a ban on the assembly of more than, say, a dozen people in one place, and blocking social media services is like banning a virtual assembly.

However, there are negatives associated with such clamp-downs:

• It surely has negative economic costs, in terms of a shutdown of legitimate e-commerce.
• It hurts businesses and services that depend on digital connectivity.
• They hurt the weaker and more vulnerable sections, since their dependence on social media for crucial updates is far greater than that of the elites and well-off sections.
• social media allows people to communicate with one another more freely, they are helping to create surprisingly influential social organizations among once-marginalized groups.
• Without social media, social, ethical, environmental and political ills would have minimal visibility. Increased visibility of issues has shifted the balance of power from the hands of a few to the masses.
• Social media activism brings an increased awareness about societal issues, questions remain as to whether this awareness is translating into real change.
• Social media platforms provide a platform to raise their voice against injustice and inequality.
• Social media have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.

Way forward:

• Government plan to achieve a temporary illusion of security at the cost of a permanent loss of freedom must be avoided.
• There must to be no invasion of the individual’s right than what is strictly necessary to achieve the state’s goal.
• Resorting to this measure represents a failure of policing in the country.
• The police should develop more effective methods of interacting with local communities and gathering intelligence to scotch the spread of inflammatory fake news.
• Thus, instead of using a blunt instrument such as a complete shutdown, the law and order machinery across the country must find less damaging ways of dealing with increasingly connected populations.
• Otherwise, the country could see an increasing number of shutdowns, which would run counter to the policy of encouraging digitisation.
• Government to preserve law and order must use less drastic ways, such as increasing security, or addressing grievances of the citizens.
• Fact-checking services have sprung up in India, including some sponsored by mainstream media. This could be seen as a “free market” response. Facebook too is apparently toying with the idea of introducing a button for “fake news” (along with “like”). This would be an inbuilt countervailing force, it believes.
• Many social media companies have also enhanced the human surveillance of their platforms and customer support to detect and deal with fake news.