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Here's what we have in store for this edition: We'll be sharing some really cool analysis on the fact-checks that BOOM has debunked over the past week and last month. Plus, we'll also be discussing some helpful tips 💡 on how to identify and debunk deepfakes. So, get ready to learn and let's dive in!

🔖 Heard of deepfakes? Well, we debunked one this week. 

A video showing United States Vice President Kamala Harris was shared on social media where she is heard making a faux pas and being incoherent while elaborating on "yesterday is today" during her speech at a rally for abortion rights at Howard University in Washington D.C. on 25 April. 

Enough of misinformation, here are some facts: It was a deepfake and the audio in the video has been edited and added to falsely claim Harris made a gaffe. 

But, how did we debunk a deepfake? 

• Searched for the original/official video of her speech at Howard University in Washington D.C. 

• In the official video: At no point in her speech does Harris say "Yesterday is today". 

• We traced that the edited video was tweeted by the right-wing Twitter account '@Ramble_Rants' on 29 April, which regularly posts memes. 

• So, how has this viral video been edited? 

• "This is not a face replacement deepfake: Ramble Rants has simply created a voice clone and applied this to the existing video footage, then manipulated the lips and mouth to match the fake speech. Close observers will detect the video ‘noise’ around the mouth," Dr Dominic Lees, Deepfake researcher and Associate Professor of Filmmaking at the University of Reading, UK told BOOM. 

Watch BOOM's Anmol Alphonso break it down in this video.👇

🤥 Misinformation This Week

The month of April saw misleading information around gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad's assassination and the upcoming Karnataka assembly election, thereby emerging as prominent topics of false information, accounting for 5% and 7% of the total false claims that BOOM investigated last month, respectively.

Read our Twitter thread to know the detailed analysis by Debraj Sarkar.

🤙 'I Got A WhatsApp Video Call And My Life Turned Into A Nightmare'

🔖 In November 2021, Aijaz Baba was sitting with his family when his phone rang. The call was from an unknown number. Aijaz, a government teacher, was then on COVID vaccination duty so he had been receiving numerous calls from people inquiring about vaccination certificates. 

Assuming the call might be from someone enquiring about vaccination, the teacher answered the WhatsApp video call. 

That one video call turned into a nightmare for him. Read Kaisar Andrabi's story.

Read More

🗣️ Wrestlers Protest In Delhi Getting Support from All Over India

🔖 Indian wrestlers have been protesting against the WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh since 23 April for the second time. On 21 April, Wrestlers went to Connaught Place Police Station to file an FIR against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh but the Police refused to register the FIR. 

Khap Panchayat, a group of farmers and women's organizations joined the protest to support the wrestlers. Watch BOOM's Kirti Rawat's ground report. 

📵 How Are Scammers Using WhatsApp To Con People? Expert Explains

🔖 Have you been receiving missed calls from international numbers on WhatsApp? Turns out, you are not alone. 

Several Twitter users, over the past few weeks, have shared screenshots of their WhatsApp call history that show numerous suspicious missed calls they have received. 

BOOM's Hera Rizwan spoke to a Mumbai-based cybersecurity expert, Ritesh Bhatia, to understand the modus operandi of the scam. Here are the edited excerpts from BOOM's interview with him.

Read More

🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍 A clipped interview of national-level wrestler Sakshee Malikkh was shared on social media misidentifying her as wrestler Vinesh Phogat crediting Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Saran Singh for winning a gold medal. Read this fact-check to know how 

🔗Srijit Das↗️ debunked the claim.

🔍 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT cell chief Amit Malviya tweeted a cropped video falsely claiming that Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge was waiting for Sonia Gandhi's approval to sit down at an election rally in Karnataka. Read this fact-check to know how 🔗Anmol Alphonso↗️ debunked it. 

🔍 India Today group's AajTak and AajTak Bangla recently used two artificially generated images of former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and falsely claimed that the photos were clicked after Khan was arrested following a court ruling in Pakistan. Read this fact-check by BOOM's 🔗Srijit Das.↗️ 

🔍 BOOM recently visited Jantar Mantar in Delhi, where the wrestlers are protesting against the WFI chief, to debunk two pictures from the ongoing protest: one showing Vinesh Phogat, Sangeeta Phogat, and Bajrang Punia, and another showing a slightly empty protest site. They were being shared to claim that the protest had come to an end. Here's a fact-check by 🔗Hazel Gandhi & Runjay Kumar.↗️

🔍 A video from a secondhand goods store was linked to the violent clashes in Manipur to claim that shops owned by Hindu Meiteis are being looted by tribal groups. Read this fact-check by  🔗Hazel Gandhi↗️ to know the truth about the viral video. 

🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: Fake News, Disinformation, and Misinformation in social media: A review by Esma Aimeur, Sabrine Amri, Gilles Brassard

A comprehensive review of false information and its many manifestations in OSNs (Online Social Networks); this article captures many dimensions of how the world has interacted so far with fake news - both in terms of being affected and providing effective counter-measures to mitigate its impact on the more vulnerable sections of society. 

Additionally, it tackles the concern of how advancements in the understanding of fake news have allowed us to create detection tools.

Read More

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

and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

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