Verified By BOOM | 102

Sudarshan News' Election Coverage On YouTube Rife With Hate Content

June 14, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Browser View | June 15, 2024 | Subscribe

Hello,

YouTube failed to act on hate speech and misinformation violations by far-right channel Sudarshan News, and instead shared ad revenue with the channel, reveals a report shared exclusively with Decode. Read on!

Are you a parent who wants your child to learn highly transferable skills in research, critical thinking and fact-checking? Are you a middle-schooler or a high-schooler who wants to sort fact from fiction online?

The Teen Fact-Checking Network (TFCN) is a prestigious, one-of-its-kind scholarship programme bringing together teenaged fact-checkers from around the world. In the United States, MediaWise has successfully run the program with school students for over 4 years. In 2023, it expanded to India, Brazil, and Germany.

TFCN in India: For the India edition, MediaWise partnered with BOOM Live, an independent fact-checking outlet debunking online misinformation. We hired 13 teenaged fact-checkers for 4 months in 2023.

We are back with the second edition starting July 2024 for six months. This is a paid, and once-in-a-lifetime experience. Applicants don't need to have prerequisite knowledge of fact-checking.

What’s the role of the teenager?

Selected middle-and-high school students will create fact-checks and learn to spot fake news and other types of misinformation.

  • You will learn how to spot misinformation

  • Research the social web

  • Use digital verification techniques

  • Write fact-checks

  • Edit and shoot videos

Sudarshan News' Election Coverage On YouTube Rife With Hate Content

🔖 Not upto the mark: YouTube failed to take action against videos published by Sudarshan News that violated its policies on hate speech and misinformation, says a report shared exclusively with Decode’s Archis Chowdhury.

The report: highlights 26 videos published by Sudarshan News, that were reported for violating YouTube's policies on hate speech, misinformation and monetisation, leading up to and during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. Notably, 17 of these videos were published during the polling phases.

YouTube’s response: A YouTube spokesperson told Decode, "YouTube has well established community guidelines that govern what content is allowed including policies prohibiting hate speech and election misinformation. All our policies are applied consistently across the platform, regardless of the creator, their background, political viewpoint, position or affiliation.”

How Meta Ads Enable Loan Scam That Misuse Aurangabad Bank's Name

🔖 Al-Khair Baitul Maal is an Urban Co-operative Society which provides interest-free loans only to the residents of Aurangabad.

  • There's no online service for it. All the ads that Decode’s Waquar Hasan found in Meta’s Ad Library say that they provide online loans. None of these scam ads are related to the bank in Aurangabad.

  • All of these pages are running the same 8-year-old report of Zee News on Al-Khair Bank as their ads giving a link to apply for the loan along with mobile numbers.

  • Despite multiple complaints, no FIR has been filed.

BJP Pumped In Over ₹73cr on Meta And Google Ads In May

🔖 With the entire month of May seeing multiple polling phases, political parties made their biggest ad expenditure on social media till date.

Taking the top spot: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the biggest political advertisement expenditure in a single month till date in May 2024, pumping in over ₹17 crore on Meta ads and ₹56 crore on Google ads, right in the middle of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.

Close behind: Odisha's Biju Janata Dal came second, albeit far behind BJP, putting in ₹16.9 crore on Google ads and ₹9.8 crore on Meta ads.

On the podium: The Congress party trailed closely behind, spending a little over ₹18 crore on Google ads, and ₹4.2 crore on Meta ads.

Read Archis Chowdhury’s explainer.

Fed Up With Deepfakes, Journalist Rajat Sharma Seeks Legal Action

🔖 Last month in May, Delhi High Court issued notice and sought the government's stand on journalist Rajat Sharma's plea against deepfakes.

  • The PIL relies on a BOOM fact-check which found viral videos of news anchors were fake and were overlaid with voice clones promoting a diabetes medicine.

  • Since 2023, fake ads using real videos of popular Hindi news anchors such as Ravish Kumar, Anjana Om Kashyap and Arnab Goswami have mushroomed over social media platforms.

  • Increasingly, scammers rely on AI-generated voice clones to falsely claim that these news readers, who are household names in India, have endorsed these drugs and have spoken about their efficacy. Read Ritika Jain’s story.

AI-Generated Scam Ads, Fake Exit Polls Dominate Misinformation In May

🔖 In May, BOOM published 128 fact-checks in English, Hindi and Bangla. We observed the highest occurrence of AI-generated fake news this year in May.

From news channels predicting exit poll wins for political parties to celebrities promoting diabetes pills, we published 12 fact-checks involving deepfakes, artificial intelligence-generated images, and voice clones.

Read Nidhi Jacob’s detailed analysis.

🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍 Did the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) add Prime Minister Narendra Modi's name to its 'Margdarshak Mandal' recently? Here’s a fact-check by 🔗 Anmol Alphonso ↗️.

🔍 A video of a bulldozer driver, who was arrested for bulldozing toll booths on the Delhi-Lucknow highway in Uttar Pradesh, was shared on social media with a false and communal claim that the accused driver is a Muslim. Read 🔗 Anmol Alphonso & Shefali Srivastava’s ↗️ fact-check.

🔍 Does this video show women waiting to avail their promised sum of Rs 8,500 under the Congress' Mahalaxmi scheme? Find out in 🔗 Hazel Gandhi’s ↗️ fact-check.

🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: Taking the power back: How diaspora community organizations are fighting misinformation spread on encrypted messaging apps

↪️ Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe Now

Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose

and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

If you have suggestions about this newsletter or want us to conduct workshops on specific topics, drop us a line at 👉 [email protected] and we will get back to you in a jiffy. Thanks for reading. See you next week.👋

🖤 Liked what you read? Give us a shoutout! 📢

↪️ Become A BOOM Member. Support Us!↪️ Stop.Verify.Share - Use Our Tipline: 7700906588↪️ Join Our Community of TruthSeekers

Copyright (C) " target="_blank">unsubscribe