 Pratik is of course well-known, the founder of ALT News. Pratik, what led you to start ALT News and you've been focusing largely on fake news. So why, what was the inspiration to start this and what led you to pick this as the main focus? So at my individual level, I run another page called Truth of Gujarat and at my individual level I've been doing a little bit of fake news busting right since 2013. You know, this is photoshopped, this is not photoshopped. But unfortunately what happens in Facebook is that it is very difficult to get across the ideological divide. The people who sort of agree with you at an ideological level, they tend to like your posts more. Those who do not agree with you at an ideological level, they probably agree with you but they wouldn't sort of physically like the post. You know, so what happens is those who agree with you, they like more and more of your posts and those, you know, and the ones who are across the ideological divide, they stop seeing your posts more or less. That is how the Facebook algorithm works. So we were doing a lot of work, me and the other co-founder is the admin of unofficial Subramaniam Swami. So both of us and his page is, you know, he does a lot more than I do. So we were doing stuff but unfortunately there was no impact that was being made. So at some point in time we decided, you know, this was around September 2016 that we decided that we need to sort of create a platform of our own. And the other factor was that I had just walked 10 days from Amdabad to Oona from August 5th to August 15th for the, you know, because four Dalit boys were flogged in Oona and then there was a march that was taken out and I had documented the entire journey on Truth of Gujarat. So, and I realized that, you know, there's no, you know, there was only one representative from mainstream media there. And this march was an iconic march, you know, in Gujarat. We have only 7% Dalit population. So, you know, people actually coming together and taking out such a massive march and the amount of reception we got, there was nobody to document this entire thing. So, you know, on day five we were in a place called Botad and there was like a sea of people out there. And, you know, there was nobody covering this, you know, this moment in history. So that is when I thought to myself that, you know, I need to go beyond, you know, Facebook page, Twitter account and create a platform for myself. So, in September 2016 we came up with the first draft document. The first bullet point was, you know, bust fake news. The second bullet point was reportage on people's issues. But unfortunately, you know, none of us, you know, neither of us had the resources, money to sort of do the reportage on fake news. So, sorry, reportage on people's issues. So, we started with fake news. Well, what is the experience that you now have with fake news? And why do you think fake news has become so, what shall we say? I would not say it's very popular, but definitely a very big menace in the digital media particularly because that's where it seems to have had the maximum traction. Yeah. So, I think it is also one of the reasons is, you know, in the last one and a half years as a telecom war, you know, the prices have dropped, especially with the arrival of Jio. Now, you know, a lot of people, a lot of, many parts of India are using a lot of mobile data. According to statistics, in June 2016, we were using 200 million GBPS per month as a country. In March 2017, we are using 1.3 billion GBPS per month. So, that is a six and a half fold increase in just a space of nine months. Another set of statistics which says that, and these are 2016 statistics which says that year on year, rural internet subscribers are increasing by 22 percent, while urban internet subscribers are increasing by 7 percent. Now, this 22 percent is a very, very important figure because, you know, while in urban areas, we access internet in a variety of ways, you know, we go watch news, we go on Netflix or Hotstar and watch a video, we'll go to YouTube, we'll go to Amazon, buy something, we'll go to news website, read some news and then go back to our mobiles, check Facebook, check WhatsApp. So, you know, we see internet as it is, you know, as it has been designed to, you know, to provide a variety of services. While in rural areas, you know, with the advent of these feature phones, these are not smart phones, you know, you can buy them for 1500 rupees and all they have is, you know, two, three applications like WhatsApp, Facebook, etc., and most of the users are on WhatsApp because Facebook is a little complicated. So, their window to the world of internet is just this WhatsApp, you know, they have no background about this technology being 30 years old, it's pitfalls, you know, because fake news, even though it has become more prevalent all over the world in recent past, but it's not a new phenomenon, you know, we have known how fake news has been around for a very, very long time. So, but the rural India especially, you know, when the window to the world of internet is just a WhatsApp inbox and they have no history, you know, they are not aware of their history, they tend to fall for fake news much more and which is why what we have seen recently, let's say in Jharkhand where seven people were lynched purely based on a WhatsApp rumor, you know, that WhatsApp rumor probably went in a lot of places, but it is the rural part of Jharkhand which picked it up and acted on it. Secondly, we saw recently in Boshir Hath and West Bengal where morphed image of Kabash Sharif, you know, led to riots. Now again, morphed images are very commonplace, but it was sort of a minority dominated, probably, you know, not economically well-to-do area, which, you know, which actually came out in streets and led to a riotous situation that probably wouldn't have happened had the morphed image, you know, sort of circulated, let's say, Calcutta urban area. So, so this 22% is a very, you know, very important number because that is the percentage where there are a lot of first time internet users. There's no internet literacy whatsoever. I'm not saying this in a negative way. I'm saying it in a factual way that, you know, there's no internet literacy whatsoever. So, and this is going to increase, you know, the consumption of mobile data is going to increase and the number of internet subscribers, first time internet users are going to increase. So, which is going to sort of, you know, this fake news, the phenomenon of fake news is going to keep increasing unless certain steps are taken by a collaboration of organizations. Now, you know, there are two parts to this, and I'm going to ask this question successively. One is, of course, pending an election, say, proximity of an election. There seems to be more organized effort to send this WhatsApp groups and some of them with incendiary messaging, as we saw in the Muzafarnagar riots, which were precursor to the UP elections. There were conscious attempt to circulate images, news, etc., which could lead to increase of communal tensions. And do you think that this is something which has been also a much older tactic of certain political sections, namely the right, actually, in India, when we was to say the rumor mongering to create communal riots and communal tension was something which even various judicial commissions earlier have held RSS, a carder or activist responsible for, that they seem to have a stake in increasing communal tensions. I'm not going to say others have played no role. They have, but various judicial commissions at different points of time have pointed out the role of communal organizations which have played this role. Do you think this is an important reason why this has become more of a threat today? Not just during elections, different political developments. For example, when mainstream media highlighted the clash between the left and right in Kerala, boom comes a fake video which claims that a member of RSS is being beheaded by a member of left. And then all news published a story and that video was actually from, I think it was from Brazil. Then after Pehlukhan was murdered by, you know, was lynched in Alwar, just a few days after that, and this issue became a huge thing in the parliament, boom comes a video which says that, you know, all the MPs, MLAs are crying for Pehlukhan, but nobody is going to cry for this Hindu man who was murdered in West Bengal. It was an 11 second clip and we sort of traced it to some place in Bangladesh where somebody who was accused of a murder was in turn murdered. So, you know, for every important political event is almost invariably, you know, where the right wing is sort of put on the back foot, invariably there comes a fake video or a fake message and the danger is, so the recent phenomenon. Now, this time the right wing was on the sort of, you know, was being attacked in Haryana when, you know, this Gurpreet guy got convicted. Now, a fake news came, a fake video came that a BJP MLA who went there to sort of, you know, take sides with Gurpreet was beaten up and we looked that up and we saw that it was being circulated in Congress circles and this was a 6 year old video where a Samajwadi party leader was beaten up in front of the assembly in UP. So, what this says is that, you know, now the other parties are picking up, you know, that, okay, these guys are operating via the mode of fake news. You know, there's one political section which is greatly benefiting by using this fake videos to create a narrative. Now, the other political parties will be forced to do that because there is no, because there's no, no one is putting a stop to this. So, other political parties are forced to do that to create their own narrative. So, we are sort of getting into a situation in near future where every political party will be forced to, you know, create their own set of fake news to stay relevant and, you know, that is the formation of a banana democracy.