Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Friday said fake news had drowned out true information simply by virtue of the scale of dissemination in the digital age, replacing the character of discourse from truth-seeking to the loudest voice.
“Disinformation has the power of impairing democratic discourse forever, pushing a marketplace of free ideas to the point of collapse under the immense weight of fake stories. A cursory glance at the newspaper every day will bring to the fore instances of communal and vigilante violence fuelled by fake rumours and targeted disinformation campaigns,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said in his 14th Justice V.M. Tarkunde Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Upholding civil liberties in the digital age: Privacy, surveillance and free speech’.
The Chief Justice said freedom of speech was traditionally considered an essential part of civil rights activism for the fear that government would gag certain kinds of speech. However, he said, “with the advent of troll armies and organised disinformation campaigns across different social media platforms, the fear is that there is an overwhelming barrage of speech that distorts the truth”.
