 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. I am Paranjoy Guhatakuta. Four articles have been published by Al Jazeera that points out how India's ruling party, the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has been able to benefit greatly thanks to Facebook, which is owned by now Metaverse and Facebook includes WhatsApp, it also includes Instagram. And another aspect of the series of four investigative articles is how a company owned by one of India's richest men who also happens to be one of Asia's richest men Mukesh Ambani was instrumental in spreading misinformation, disinformation, fake news, false news all aimed at either supporting the BJP, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or undermining its political opponents. And this was done by exploiting a loophole in India's election laws. Let me welcome to the studio here a person who is the lead author of these four articles. I'm happy to have with me here Kumar Sambab Shrivastav of the Reporters Collective, which spent a year working on this investigation together with another organization called Adwatch, represented by Nantara Ranganathan. Kumar, if you can summarize how the BJP has been benefited by Facebook, because today this matter is huge, it's come up in parliament, if you can summarize the main points in your series of reports. Sure, thank you for having me here. So basically, our four part series tells two important things. One, the Bharatiya Janata Party caught a lot of visibility and a lot of traction by surrogate advertisers or ghost advertisers. So in the Indian election law, you're not allowed to place advertisements for any political candidate or a political party if you are not authorized by that candidate or if you are not funded by that candidate. Essentially, what you call surrogate advertising. Correct. And this is banned because it essentially allows illegal money to flow in the election if the political candidate is not accountable for that money. Also for the content, if somebody else is putting an ad which is misinformation or which is derogatory to opposition or false information, then the candidate or the political party can just dissociate themselves. They are not held accountable for that. And for these reasons, in the print media and electronic media, our Indian law have always banned this kind of advertisement. But since the advent of social media, the election commission of India knew that this kind of surrogate advertising also happened in social media. They said that they'll regulate it later. This is in 2013 what they said. But so far, they haven't brought any regulation to regulate surrogate advertisements in social media. This loophole was exploited by at least 23 advertisers who did not have any information of who they are funded by. Even some of them did not have any information of who really these advertisers are. And they spent over 58 million rupees in 22 months that we That's correct. Between February 2019 and November 2020, after an analysis of over 536,000 advertisements and the whistleblower Frances Hogan, she's pointed out how associations like the Internet and Mobile Association of India lobbied with the Election Commission of India to ensure that no regulations were put on these. Correct. And Facebook itself took some actions, but those actions were mostly targeted at the opposition. So, right before the 2019 election, they brought down a lot of surrogate advertisers, but more than 95% of those advertisers were related to the Congress Party, which is the main opposition, while a very small number of BJP surrogate advertisers were brought down. But in our investigation, we found that despite that action, a large number of these surrogates continued to support or promote BJP. One of them was a company funded by Reliance Geo. And this company actually calls itself a news and media organization, but it promotes advertisements on Facebook by burning money invested by or sort of pumped in by Reliance. NEWJ, new emerging world of journalism, which sounds like news, corrects very much like a news. And they targeted Indians before in small towns, in villages, people who are not so well educated. And all this happened when there were series of elections, local elections that took place. And your investigation shows that all of them were aimed at helping the Bhartijanta Party or simultaneously putting down its political opponents. Most of them were. There were some viral advertisements just to get eyeballs of its readers. So, there will be a relentless stream of viral video content. And in between very carefully sparred advertisements to promote Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP, and its other candidates, while also mocking the opposition leaders in those advertisements. And you also pointed out in your reports, how the ruling Bhartijanta Party, in terms of money, they got a lower rate in comparison to others. And they had to pay less money. And all of this is on account because I mean, Facebook does is apparently a metaverse is not answerable to anybody. I mean, it decides what its advertising rates are going to be. And these vary as you pointed out wildly. They decide what is relevant, what results in engagement. So, it seems to be completely arbitrary the way in which the BJP has been favored in terms of they've been able to reach that many more people by paying less money in comparison to its political opponents. So, Facebook's algorithm works to sort of keep the users hooked to its newsfeed. And that's why they say that whatever is more relevant to the user, if the user is being shown that, we'll sort of subsidize those ads so that more and more relevant content go to people. Now, if something is polarizing, something is politically or emotionally very hyper which generates emotions, hyper emotions among people, obviously they are more inclined to engage with that. So, there are two problems with that. One, this some if the if the audience is more inclined to like the BJP content, it will be cheaper, those ads would be cheaper for them. But at the same time for the same audience, opposition if want to target those audience, it will be much more expensive for them because Facebook thinks that the Congress content is not relevant to the BJP following. And that's why it will be very expensive for them. So, it generates more and more polarization. Apart from that, it also gives an unequal field in the election that it skews the competition because someone if it's getting cheaper ads, they are going to reach more voters for less money. While someone who's smaller and who has a smaller following and not putting polarizing content or emotionally charged content, they will be charged more and they will reach less people. That's right. And whereas Facebook gave its standard replies and so did the person who set up this huge company, New Emerging World of Journalism, how significant is it that the spokesperson of the election commission of India, the Bharti Janta party's own spokesperson, those who had their information technology sell and of course representatives of reliance industry is limited headed by India's richest man or certainly he's one of the two richest men and Asia's richest man. I mean, how significant is the fact that they've chosen not to respond? That's very important because at least in the case of say this new organization, we looked at the document and the association document of this company actually shows that the investor has say in deciding guidelines of the content, which means reliance companies have say in what content this organization would be putting out on social media and we didn't get any response from them on those questions. Similarly, about from BJP or election commission of India, which is the most important thing they are supposed to regulate this whole thing. It's a constitutional authority. Exactly. And they have not responded to it, which is really strange. I mean, we are still hoping that they'll respond and we'll put those out at least on our website on the reporters collective. And if they're listening, I hope that they do respond to these questions. Thank you so much, Kumar, for giving us your views and throwing a little bit of light as to what went on behind these series of four investigative reports, which have been published in Al Jazeera. And in a sense, it follows up similar reports, which have been published by other organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed, Aussie.com, Time.com, etc., etc. And so, Kumar Sambhav has clearly told you how the series of reports that he has helmed, which have been published in Al Jazeera, clearly indicate how Facebook, owned by Metaverse, apparently has gone out of his way to politically help India's ruling right-wing Bharati Janata Party and, at the same time, try to put down its political opponents. Thank you for being with us.