2025 POLLS: Parties Struggling with False Info on Social Media

   Tokyo, July 16 (Jiji Press)--While Japanese ruling and opposition parties utilize social media in their campaigns for Sunday's House of Councillors election, they are struggling to tackle posts spreading false information.
   Efforts to counter misinformation and disinformation are left to parties and social media platform operators after parliamentary discussions on the issue were shelved during this year's ordinary Diet session that ended last month.
   A post recently made the rounds on social media, featuring a video falsely claiming that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, "threatened" a newscaster with a warning not to mess with him, during a commercial break on a Nippon Television Network Corp. program July 1.
   Japan Fact-Check Center, a nonprofit organization established to fact-check online information, concluded that the post was "false." The video was based on edited footage.
   An Upper House incumbent of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan running in the election took to social media to criticize a YouTube video, saying that an artificial intelligence-generated voice resembling the candidate's voice was saying things that were not actually said.

(2025/07/16-18:55)

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