Japan Eyes Steps to Curb Election Disinformation on Social Media

Tokyo, Oct. 23 (Jiji Press)--Japan's internal affairs ministry Friday released draft guidelines outlining measures for social media operators to mitigate the adverse effects of false or misleading information online on elections.

The guidelines cite suspending monetization of posts that undermine electoral fairness, detecting images and videos generated by artificial intelligence and displaying warnings about them as examples of recommended measures.

The draft will be finalized as early as the end of this year so that the guidelines can be in place for the unified local elections in April next year.

The draft was compiled in response to the revised public offices election law and the revised information sharing platform law, which were enacted in July.

Concerns have been raised about the use of social media during election campaign periods, particularly over systems that allow users to earn money based on the number of views or video plays their posts receive, which have been blamed for contributing to the spread of radical content and false or misleading information.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]