Final
year engineering students from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) were declared
winners of the two day 'Digital Masala Challenge' held on 17 and 18 November,
in Mumbai.
Dubbed the 'Digital Masala Challenge', the hackathon was
organized by an online news portal, Youth Ki Awaaz and social networking giant
Facebook. In a bid to combat violent extremism and polarisation in the social
media, the hackathon has previously taken place in Guwahati and Jammu as well.
This time, it was conducted in Mumbai, where the
participating teams had ten minutes to pitch their ideas to an expert panel.
The panel comprised of Shivnath Thukral, Public Policy
Director, Facebook India and South Asia, Ruhee Neog, Director, Institute of
Peace and Conflict Studies, and Ms. Sushobha Barve, Ashoka Fellow and Program
Director of Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation.
Depending on the sustainability, uniqueness and possible
impact of their ideas in real times situations, the teams were judged.
“We are delighted to be a part of such a big challenge that
as a practical project to curb extremism on social media. We are happy that our
hard work from the past 24 to 30 hours was commended by all and it can be
scaled up,” said Hamza Khan, winning team member from AMU.
The winning team received Rs 3.25 lakh to materialize their
idea.
The event was attended by tech enthusiasts, techies, social
media campaigners, and filmmakers as well.
Recent reports suggest that social media giants
like Google, Facebook and Twitter have joined forces to combat fake news and
extremist content. Social media in the recent times has become the fertile
ground to spread fake news as well as to spread violent content. Websites like
YouTube are redirecting users searching for extremist
content to videos which would tell them to debunk extremist ideology.
Source: Tech2-22nd November,2017
