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Advertisers will be required to provide verifiable public contact details before they can run political campaigns on Facebook, the company has announced. This is being done to ensure that there is accountability of all kinds of advertisements. This move is being seen as an additional measure ahead of the European elections in May, when citizens from across the EU will vote in new MEPs. On March 27, Facebook launched political advertising restrictions in the EU27, following partial rollouts in six countries including the UK,US and India. These restrictions require advertisers of "political" topics, which are defined in a different manner in each nation, to prove that they are targeting the country they are living in. It also requires them to store all their adverts in public databases for seven years, in addition to the information about targeting, spend and reach. Facebook also requires its users to provide either their phone numbers or email address through which interested parties can contact the advertisers while also allowing them to write what they want as a source of funding. Users who advertise at their personal level will have the option of not entering the information. Instead, Facebook will verify and publish their names.

WhatsApp has taken quite a number of steps to prevent the spread of fake news, especially ahead of the upcoming general elections. However, the company has agreed to take more steps to make the platform fully secure from spreading fake news and misinformation. After taking over as head of India operations of the Facebook-owned messaging platform early this year, country head Abhijit Bose in his first statement said that the company strongly believes that private messaging is fundamental to safety. WhatsApp was under pressure from the government over dozens of lynching incidents that were attributed to rumors spread on the platform. Since then, the Facebook-owned social media messaging service has taken several steps including limiting the number of messages to five and appointing a grievance officer for the country. The platform has also introduced a new feature called WhatsApp Payments which would make use of UPI (unified payments interface) and allow easy transfer of money from one user to another or to their favourite merchants.

Facebook has fixed a security issue wherein around 200 million passwords in plain texts were saved in its database which was in 'readable' format and could be searched by thousands of its employees. According to a report by KrebsOnSecurity, around 200–300 million Facebook users might have their account passwords stored in plain texts, which allowed it to be searchable to around 20,000 Facebook employees. Facebook later claimed in a blog post that as a part of their routine security review in January, they found that some user passwords were stored in readable format within their internal data system. However, the company maintained that these 'readable' passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook.

The district election department in Noida has sent an advisory to all administrators of WhatsApp groups to check the content of their groups. The advisory will also be applicable to pages on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. According to district magistrate BN Singh, the Election Commission has enforced this code of conduct. The Election Commission has also asked State Election Commissions to check the degree of social media usage and ensure level-playing field for all political parties.

Facebook is taking steps to check the spread of false information ahead of India's general elections, company officials have claimed. With polling scheduled to take place in phases between April 11 and May 19, Facebook has listed down a number of measures which ranged from blocking fake accounts to employing third-party fact-checking organisations through camping and voting. The Election Commission of India is reifying assurance of its users by rein in social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to prevent the spread of politically motivated manipulative information and protection of user data.

Despite a lot of pressure from Indian authorities, WhatsApp has asserted that it will not trace the origin of messages. WhatsApp is not keen on doing so because it would require the company to redesign its platform. Indian authorities have been asking WhatsApp to introduce a feature that would enable the authorities to trace the origin of a message that could possibly spread misinformation. However, the company stated that introducing such a feature would mean redesigning the app in a way that the messages would not be private.

Facebook has listed a variety of measures it's taking to curb the spread of false information ahead of the Indian general elections. It has partnered with several Indian media organisations to fact-check and reduce the visibility of posts containing false information by 80 per cent. These measures have been taken after the organisation faced a backlash after failing to prevent the spread of false information during the 2016 US elections.

Facebook is in the process of establishing an election response team to monitor and track objectionable content in real time round the clock. The team will be Singapore-based and will work closely with the Election Commission of India. Samidh Chakrabarti, global director of product management for civic integrity at Facebook, emphasised on the importance of the work and said that while unusual, the organisation had staffed a product team dedicated to the Indian elections over a year ago in the US.

Facebook has launched two new India-specific tools "Candidate Connect" and "Share You Voted", to boost civic engagement on its platform during the Lok Sabha elections in April. The "Candidate Connect" tool will help people learn more about their candidates and the "Share You Voted" tool will provide people with polling information while enabling them to announce and celebrate their vote.

The Election Commission has urged voters to not believe messages received on Whatsapp which claim that people can vote online. ECI spokesperson Sheyphali Sharan took to Twitter to alert citizens about the spread of a 'fake message' which claimed that Indian passport holders can vote online in 2019. She clarified that one can only apply for voter registration online.