“State declarations must not be made via twitter”

A false tweet was sent out claiming that “India has officially adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender” and that “government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country”.   

This is the second such hacking instance of PM’s account in a year, last time the fake tweet appealed for donations in cryptocurrency to the Prime Minister’s covid relief fund. 

Not restricted to India but a global problem 

Last July, the handles of former US president Barack Obama, rapper Kanye West, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others got taken over by scamsters offering to double the money of people who sent Bitcoin via a specified link. 

What are the concerns regarding using social media for official announcements 

1)Threat of hacking- Accounts can easily get hacked as shown by instances mentioned above. 

Vulnerable citizens -Although such scammers put out messages that are hard to believe but still it is not a guarantee that all receivers of message will not fall prey to it. 

Lead to a difficult situation in a standoff– Tweets mistaken for official statements by those in high positions of power could compound the problem. This may further weaken the bilateral/Multilateral relation between nations. 

Although some leaders in past like Trump has set this precedent to announce major decisions via twitter, but this is not a risk free choice. 

2) Undue advantage – 

News breaks with market-sensitive information should not be available to a private party even for a moment before it goes public. 

Technical delays and content filters lead to time lag in tweets which means that twitter has an information advantage vis a vis twitter users. 

In present time even split-second delay can lead to big financial losses and data arbitrage. No company should have any privileged access to valuable material. This may have grave consequences.  

Only Official channels which have assured security should be used for important announcements. 

Source- This post is based on the article “State declarations must not be made via twitter” published in Live mint on 14th Dec 2021.