LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday issued notices to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman and Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) over a petition regarding Facebook’s influence on general elections 2018.
The notices were issued to the respondents by LHC’s Justice Abid Aziz Sheikh during the hearing of a petition regarding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement in April, in which he vowed to protect the integrity of the upcoming Pakistan general elections in 2018.
The petitioner, Shahid Jamal, requested that the interim federal government, ECP and PTA should also be directed to regulate social media to ensure the democratic process is not harmed in the upcoming general elections.
In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said, “There are important elections in India, in Brazil, in Mexico, in Pakistan, and in Hungary. And we want to make sure we do everything we can to protect the integrity of those elections.”
The 33-year-old internet mogul told the Congress that the company has new artificial intelligence tools to identify fake accounts, and plans to hire 20,000 people to work on security and content review by the end of 2018.
The Facebook CEO had also said political ads on the social media website will be required to specify the person or entity paying for the message, as part of the bid to curb outside election interference.
Zuckerberg’s comments had come following severe backlash after it was revealed that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gained access to the personal data of 87 million Facebook users.
