Online disinformation harming youth, need transparency law, says report

The report noted that social media's response to the growing harm in India has been marked by a lack of urgency

The sheer scale of disinformat­ion on social media platforms is harming youths in India with no serious efforts shown by companies to combat the menace, says a new report.

The report titled Politics of Disinfor­mation, released on Thursday by the Delhi-based non-profit Future of India Found­a­t­ion, follows discussions with youths in eight states to understand their social media habits and the im­pact of harmful content and mis­information on them. Seventy per cent of India’s internet users are aged below 35. They are 65 per cent of its population.

Public discourse, which is the entry point for youths in politics and democracy, has