 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Gohar Thakurtha and for the next 15 minutes or thereabouts I am going to look at the proliferation of fake news, misinformation, disinformation especially after what happened after Pulwama. And I am extremely happy to have here with me in the studio of NewsClick a person who I believe has been at the forefront of countering disinformation and misinformation on the internet, on the social media a person who I greatly admire, I mean I am plugging him right here and now on this program. Thank you very much Pratik Srinath for coming here. Pratik Srinath for the benefit of our viewers is the founder and editor of Alt News which is an amadabad based fact checking portal. At the ripe young age of 36, you studied electronics engineering, made a software engineer, studied in Bangalore, worked in the United States, Vietnam, India and earlier was one of the moving forces behind the truth of Gujarat website. Pratik, post Pulwama we have seen this hyperventilation, this jingoism being fueled in the social media on the net and yes of course those who support Mr. Narendra Modi, the Bhartya Janta Party, the current government have been at the forefront of it. How much of what has been disseminated is false, fake, aimed at incitement, promoting hatred? This is a lot of it, the propaganda has been multi-fold, it has had many objectives. Number one, the first figure that was bandied about was this figure of 300 terrorists that have been killed by the IF strike, this was Pulwama happened then Indian Air Force went into the park and it has been credited to sources. Now as soon as that happened what happened was that multiple pictures of dead bodies started circulating on social media claiming that these are the people who have been killed by the IF strike. And we recently did a detailed story of 12 pictures, 11 to 12 pictures where we showed how each one of these pictures are either a previous bomb blast somewhere else or earthquake, different kind of things which were put together and circulated claiming that this is the amount of destruction that the Indian Air Force has had. Now I'm not going into details as to what happened, what did not happen. People can always go to the alt news website and check out the details. But the sort of spreading pictures of bodies has been a very, very important element of this kind of whipping up jingoism. Just not only whipping up jingoism, see what happens is that in a recent, for example, an interview of a mother of a slain CRPF soldier the very day when the IF strike happened she's like the dead bodies of our sons were taken around everywhere. I don't see a single dead body of a terrorist, that is what she said in an interview to a news channel. So that is what everybody thinks first, when you claim a number of 300, a government can possibly hide 4, 5, 6, 10 bodies. But in the age of front facing cameras how do you hide 300 bodies in broad daylight? The BJP president Namit Shah has publicly claimed that there were 250 people. So now there has to be at least people want to see evidence. And that is where misinformation comes into picture that instead of showing actual evidence you produce evidence. So this is essentially, for example, Gujarat Samachar, I come from Ahmedabad and Gujarat Samachar had a headline. And Gujarat Samachar is the leading Gujarati newspaper in the state of Gujarat. Yes, and Gujarat Samachar had a headline which roughly translates to that, you know, Narendra Modi has blown off 350 terrorists and big bold headline. And Gujarat Samachar's headline makes a huge difference. Now, but again, there are no pictures, there is no evidence to show that. And that is where this comes into picture that, you know, you can't show evidence, but you can show all, you can circulate these fake pictures over and over and over again. And they now, BJP has this massive network of WhatsApp groups. Now, you know, in fact, what we have seen in recent days and recent weeks appears to many to be a precursor of what we're going to see in the coming weeks in the run up to the elections. And we've heard of literally hundreds of thousands of the so-called WhatsApp army of the Bharati Janta Party and the Sangh Parivar. And they seem to be, I mean, my sources within the Bharati Janta Party tell me that that is what the focus is about. They are going to be the leading disseminators of information, the propagandists, the campaigners on behalf of the ruling party. That is expected. And if you go back to Amit Shah's speech a few months ago, where he himself admitted that they have a network which can make anything go viral. In fact, he gave an example of how some... Accoladesh Yadav slapping his father, which was fake. Yes, which was fake and that went viral. So they already have that network in place and it's been a long time. But one also needs to know how it is being done professionally. It's not just about being the network. At the end of the day, you have to produce content which is believable enough. The messaging has to be believable enough. So presently, there are multiple Facebook pages. For example, there's a Facebook page called Fir Ekbar Modi Sarkar. Now, just before these three elections and you see the content that is being produced, it's professional. You can look at the graphics, look at the video. You know that it is not just some random dude sitting and producing this there. There's a team which is doing this. Which is all organized. Yes. And this is not just a team of people who are doing it because they're ideologically motivated or because politically... There is more and let me make a quick point. So before these three elections that, you know, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, I have a video, you know, I did a screenshot video where you can see that in the info and ad section on a Facebook page, there's a info and ad section to show what are the active ads. And I counted at one point of time some 17 ads, 17 sponsored posts. Now that is a lot of money, right? And what the parties are doing is that they are now... See, if the ad goes to BJP's official page, that would be counted by election commission. That's correct as an advertisement which is coming from the party. Exactly. But if it is going through all these surrogate pages, then that doesn't get counted. Right? So which is why I believe that there's lots and lots of money which is being outsourced to these external Facebook pages which I... So for example, this particular page, in its previous avatar used to be called UPK Man Ki Baat. And the website for Bahatiya Janta Party's UP manifesto was upkmankibaat.com. So while I don't have a direct linkage that, you know, it is connected to the party, but there are enough markers to show that it is closely associated with the party. You know? And so there's not just one page. For example, there's this page with Nation with Namo which is putting out job ads on LinkedIn, clearly saying that this is an opportunity to make 2019, if you want, to get Mr. Nandamudi re-elected. And again, see, every party has its right to do its propaganda, but it's not just propaganda. There's a large element of misinformation as well. Right? And this is where the social media platforms come into picture. Facebook has recently announced that they're going to have an ad archive and you can report ads. But the whole problem is, as you rightly pointed out, whether it's election commission or Facebook. I mean, if it comes from the official sources, if you know it's the Bahatiya Janta Party, or if you know it's a unit of the Bahatiya Janta Party or the Rashtriya Swamseh Waksang, you can do something. I mean, you can say, yes, this is where the money has come from. But what do you do when it's ABC and XYZ? Who's doing it? So that is where, yes. And you don't know whether XYZ and ABC is being paid to do it. Corrupt in a surreptitious manner, perhaps? That is the whole problem. There is no transparency. I have made this point multiple times. For example, recently, when BBC had this whole fake news thing, and there was a panel of Facebook, et cetera, and I brought up the case of this specific page. And I said, there's so much money going in. Why don't the citizens deserve to know where is this money coming from? Because it is pure political propaganda. It is meant for this only singular purpose of these multiple pages, which is political propaganda. Do the citizens not deserve to know where is this money coming from? Who's behind this propaganda? Who are the individuals behind this propaganda? And there is very little transparency from that point of view, as far as Facebook is concerned. The election schedule is yet to be announced. For all you know, by the time this program is being watched by our viewers, the election schedule would be known. But we would expect the elections to be held sometime from the middle of April to the middle of May. What do you expect is likely to be happening? I mean, is this the so-called weaponization of WhatsApp? And WhatsApp officially says that, look, we can't do anything because we have end-to-end encryption. We don't know who's putting out what. And we don't know who's receiving what. And even if WhatsApp spokesperson say that most of our messaging or 90% of our messaging is like personal, we know how these groups are being created. I mean, over 250 people can be part of each group. And even if you can send five to five groups at a time, you're still reaching 1,250 odd people at a go. Tell me, what is the kind of strategy the BJP and its supporters and its troll army and its WhatsApp battalions are planning? How do you anticipate the next few weeks? Here, I would like to clarify. So, we are sitting in multiple WhatsApp groups and on both sides, Congress and BJP. And there is a fair share of misinformation on both sides. But there is a difference. Congress doesn't have that bigger network. And if you look at the share of misinformation, it is definitely greater in the BJP WhatsApp groups. But the strategy is, which is why I was talking about these Facebook pages, that you see this content here. So, there are people who are sitting and creating this content, which goes to multiple social media networks. So, this propaganda is actually agnostic of the platform. The propaganda is created for every platform. So, what you see on Facebook is the same thing that will go in the WhatsApp world. And it is just that WhatsApp and Facebook, they are two different social. People who are on WhatsApp, there is a certain socioeconomic sector. WhatsApp is accessed by everybody. But Facebook is more of lower middle class, upper middle class and beyond. So, there is a section of economic section which is not there on Facebook. And that is also the section which has very little literacy as far as internet goes. So, that is the section which these parties are looking to target with misinformation. And that would include the young people who are begun their first, they are going to be first time voters, they are going to be recent users of WhatsApp. And to use Ravish Kumar's famous phrase, they sort of educated in WhatsApp University. Absolutely. So, for example, I was with this person yesterday. And right after Pulwama, there was a photo which was put out claiming that Rahul Gandhi is with the Pulwama bomber that there was a Photoshop picture and we did that story. And I was sitting with this person yesterday talking about the work we do. And he said that I was in a taxi and this guy told me that I can understand that probably the union government needs to be deserved on multiple counts. But look, this man has a photo with the bomber who blew 40 of our soldiers. So, that is the penetration of misinformation. And even though, if you look at that photo, it is clearly Photoshopped to my eyes. Of course, I will have a different perception to it. But generally, I have seen good Photoshopped images and bad Photoshopped image. This was a bad, bad Photoshopped image. And even then, this person who did not know how to differentiate between this and that. So, that is the danger that there is this huge section of population who has absolutely no ability at this point of time to distinguish between what is credible, what is genuine, what is factually correct and what is false. So, in that case, what will dictate is the amount of money you spend behind propaganda, the volume of propaganda that you can push. The one that pushes a greater volume of propaganda obviously has the edge. I continue my conversation with you. We have a second conversation where I will ask you to outline, give suggestions to ordinary people how they can distinguish between what is genuine and what is not, what is propaganda and what is factually correct information. If you can give some guidelines, some tips, some advice to the WhatsApp generation and we will take that conversation forward. Stay with NewsClick. We are discussing the pernicious impact of fake news, of disinformation, of misinformation that is being used by people with wealth, with power to try and influence political opinion in the coming weeks. We'll be back with you. Keep watching NewsClick.