BJP, Congress leaders held for livestreaming voting on Facebook Live

A case of misuse of Facebook Live has come to light in Punjab where police have arrested two local leaders for uploading videos of casting their votes on the platform.

According to local media reports, Rahul Kalia, a Congress leader, and Bhanu Partap, a Bharatiya Janata Party councillor of Ward No. 3 in Kurali municipal council in Mohali, shot a video on Facebook Live while voting in the seventh and final phase of voting on Sunday.

The police immediately swung into action and got the videos removed from Facebook. The two local leaders were also booked under the appropriate sections of the Representation of the People (RPA) Act and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Following the incident, the presiding officer for the election Joginder Singh was removed from his duty.

Facebook had recently come out with “one strike” policy to deal with abuse of its Live facility.  It entails a ban on users who violate the platform’s community standards from using the live-streaming service.

The decision came after the terrorist attacks in New Zealand were streamed live on Facebook and the social media giant did not show alertness in removing the horrific video.

The goal is to minimize risk of abuse on Live while enabling people to use it in a positive way every day, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity had said in a blog post last week detailing the measures to deal with cases of misuse.