The internet must be free from political meddling

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/22/the-internet-must-be-free-from-political-meddling

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With just weeks to go until the general election, and the use of existing and emerging online platforms increasingly being used for political campaigning, it is concerning to read about the alleged manipulation of Wikipedia by the Tory party co-chairman Grant Shapps (Shapps accused of secret slurs against top Tories, 22 April). Online and digital content holds advantages for politicians on account of the longstanding ban on advertisements of a political nature, and with the undecided electorate turning to the internet for meaningful information to inform voting decisions, it is imperative that they feel this content is genuine.

While Shapps denies the allegations, they raise the point that, generally, our ability to trust the information we’re presented with online is under threat by unethical practices. The worst offenders will create fake reviews, use “click-farms” or pay for “likes”, as we saw in the case of David Cameron on Facebook (Report, theguardian.com, 10 March). Our research reveals that nearly half of consumers surveyed would boycott a brand or change their purchasing behaviour if they discovered the brand or individuals were found to be manipulating or behaving dishonestly online. To drive greater consumer confidence, brands, individuals and consumers must be able to coexist successfully online and via social media. The internet has come to dominate the way we experience and interpret information. Failing to address unethical practices ultimately makes online content ineffective and redundant, and lack of trust in such a powerful tool that has become imbedded in society is too big a risk to consider.Thomas BrownDirector of strategy and marketing, Chartered Institute of Marketing

• Never again must we go through an election for the mother of parliaments while the protests of charities that work with and for the poorest citizens are muffled by a ruling from the Charity Commission. Oxfam’s “perfect storm” tweet in June 2014, related to a report by it and two other charities on the impact of austerity, was an entirely reasonable analogy given all the facts and circumstances of the impact of cuts, caps and council tax on the health and wellbeing of the people they serve since the last election.

The commission decided that the tweet “could be misconstrued by some as party political campaigning”. That cuts to the heart of the human right of free speech in a democracy. There is a smell of corruption in the notion that receipt of funding from taxpayers by charities directly from government, or from donations that recover donors’ taxes, pays for a gag on truthful and effective protests against poverty.Rev Paul NicolsonTaxpayers Against Poverty

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