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Verified By BOOM 55

Verified By BOOM 55

🚖 The Dark Side Of 'Green' Cab Hailing App BluSmart

July 08, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

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Hello,

According to the policies of 'Green' cab hailing app BluSmart, Rs 1,000 will be deducted from the driver's wage if there’s a single complaint against him. BOOM spoke to at least 17 drivers who told the dark side of the work culture in BluSmart.

Also, a lot is happening in the Meta (read:Threads) & Twitter space!

Read on.

🅱️ Quiz

Did you know Twitter has put a limit on the number of posts you can read in a day? Find out more by taking this week's BOOM quiz.

👆 Simply click on image below to start the quiz!

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Name: Prof. N John Camm

Here's what he tweeted

Everything looks believable, right? But, here's what BOOM's Anmol Alphonso & Sujith found out about him:

He is one Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav alias Narendra John Camm, - a man with an opaque past in the medical profession in India and abroad and who has misappropriated the name Professor John Camm - a well-known cardiologist from the United Kingdom.

Not Just The General Public Who Fell For It

Let's look at who all amplified/reported about the tweet:

@myogioffice - a verified handle representing the UP chief minister's office
News18 Uttar Pradesh (later deleted)
ABP News (later deleted)

How Did We Fact-Check His Identity

He has a website: websitenjohncamm.com
When we looked up website registration details of the site, we found that 'Dr. Narendra Yadav' is listed as the registrant of the site
On checking further, we found news reports from May 2019 stating that Dr. Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, chairman of Braunwald Hospitals was arrested by the Rachakonda police (Telangana)
We looked up the name 'Narendra John CAMM' on the UK government's Companies House website and found the name listed in relation to four dissolved companies in the UK.
BOOM reached out to Prof. A John Camm, professor of clinical cardiology (emeritus) at St. George's University of London who told us that his "identity is being stolen" by the said Twitter account.
When BOOM confronted Narendra John Camm with the denial by Professor A John Camm, he retorted by calling the professor an 'idiot'. "He is an idiot. No one told him my full name."
In an email response to BOOM, the British Cardiovascular Society said that neither 'N John Camm' nor 'Narendra John Camm' are members of BCS. N John Camm on his website had claimed to be awarded membership of BCS.

Read the full story to know what the evidence has to say.

30 Fact-Checks Published

International claims were most predominant (53%), followed by Communal claims (20%) and Political ones (13%).

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

#BOOMWeeklyReport | BOOM published a total of 30 fact-checks this week. Of these, International claims were most predominant (53%), followed by Communal claims (20%) and Political ones (13%). (1/n)
#BOOMFactCheck#Thread 🧵
— BOOM Live (@boomlive_in)
9:04 AM • Jul 7, 2023

🤥 Misinformation Last Month

BOOM's Debraj Sarkar analysed all the fact-checks that we did in the month of June and here's a quick glance:

BOOM published 101 fact-checks, each debunking a unique false/ misleading claim
Communal claims and misleading content lead the charge
Islamophobia, Balasore accident and PM Modi's US visit popular topics of fake news
Muslims & PM Modi are the biggest targets of false claims

🚖 The Dark Side Of 'Green' Cab Hailing App BluSmart

🔖 On a Wednesday afternoon, Kishor*, a BluSmart driver in his late 40s, held the door of his white SUV open with a pronounced look of nervousness on his face. “Ma’am main gate tak nahi aa paaya, thik hai na?” (Is it alright that I was not able to come all the way up to the gate?).

According to BluSmart policies, Rs 1,000 will be deducted from his wage if there’s a single complaint against him.

Decode's Titha Ghosh spoke to at least 17 drivers working with BluSmart who shed light on the impossible worker policies that they are forced to adhere to.

⚖️ Clickbait Courtrooms: When Judges And Lawyers Are Memes

🔖 Meanwhile, since the live-streaming of court proceedings was initiated, clips of judges and lawyers have been made viral often turning them into memes on social media platforms. A number of YouTube channels take a part of the court proceedings, give it a clickbait headline and share them.

Concerns around live-streaming of court proceedings are simmering, Saurav Das points out.

🧵 Meta's Threads Has Finally Launched. So We Tried It Out

🔖 Meta's much-hyped micro blogging platform, Threads, is finally here. Currently, Threads is available for download on both Android and iOS platforms through their respective app stores.

What is Threads? How is it different from Twitter? Read this explainer by Hera Rizwan to know more about the platform.

P.S. Follow BOOM Live on Threads

The Kumbalangi Test

A beautiful evocation of masculinity that we can all aspire to in the film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD). It does so well on the Kumbalangi Test that HR Venkatesh wonders if the test itself ought to be called the #ZNMDTest

The Kumbalangi Test calls for a role in which any man

A) talks to another person

B) about any vulnerability

C) other than anger.

🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍 An AI-generated image of rioters walking through charred remains in a street with the Eiffel Tower seen in the background was shared with false claims that it shows apocalyptic scenes in Paris amidst the ongoing unrest. BOOM's 🔗Swasti Chatterjee↗️ debunked the claim.

🔍 A viral graphic circulating on WhatsApp is misinterpreting a poster put out by the Ministry of Finance to state that the rates of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on certain items would be significantly slashed. 🔗Mohammed Kudrati↗️ finds out the catch.

🔍 An old video of an Apple store in Bordeaux, France being looted in December 2018 was falsely linked to the riots in the county last week. Read🔗Anmol Alphonso's↗️ fact-check.

🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: “I don’t think that’s true Bro!” Social Corrections of Misinformation in India by Sumitra Badrinathan and Simon Chauchard

This article deals with assessing means of reducing the impact of false information by comparing the impact of peer interventions (source provisioning or not) on a user encrypted social media platform that is widely used in India (WhatsApp). The article deals with multiple topics of contention spanning across COVID, ethnic tension, political stakeholders, among others.

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