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Verified By BOOM 76
Unemployed Youth Ran The Infamous Betting App
Browser View | December 9, 2023 | Subscribe
Hello,
Did you come across news reports mentioning how several prominent people have been named in FIRs related to the Mahadev Betting App scam?
Interestingly, all the accused arrested are between 18 to 34 years of age, and most of them unemployed. What’s the scam about and how did the police crack the nexus? Read on!
🔖 Ratan Tata took to social media to call out a deepfake video created with artificial intelligence (AI) voice cloning technology where he is supposedly seen promoting an investment opportunity, becoming the latest high profile name in India to warn about the menace of deepfakes.
How did we, at BOOM, find out if it’s a deepfake?
The fake ad on Facebook purports to show the legendary industrialist endorsing an investment opportunity by a woman supposedly named Sona Agarwal. By the way, Sona is a fictitious persona.
A reverse image search of some frames from the viral video of Sona Agarwal led us to a video from 4 June 2015 shared by the official account of HEC, a business school in Paris.
The clip showed Tata receiving the honoris causa degree at HEC, speaking about leadership and management, and interacting with the audience during a Q&A session.
Nowhere in the video Tata can be heard speaking about any investment scheme by Sona Agarwal that would help people get rich quickly.
We also ran audio samples of the ads through a tool called AI Voice Detector, which estimated that the voice in the Sona Agarwal video was 83% AI-generated.
Why Is Telangana Seeing An Upsurge In Cybercrime Cases?
🔖 The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data notes: Telangana has once again reported the highest number of cybercrimes for the second consecutive year, experiencing a significant surge of 48.5% from 10,303 cases in 2021 to 15,297 in 2022.
But, what is the reason behind this surge in Telangana? BOOM’s Hera Rizwan spoke to experts who provided insights into the matter.
Misinformation This Week
🔖 Last week, BOOM published 15 fact-checks. Among these, 40% were associated with international events, primarily the Hamas-Israel war, followed by political claims at 26.7%, and communal claims at 13.3%.
Read our thread on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) to know the detailed analysis by Nidhi Jacob:
How Unemployed Tech-Savvy Youth Ran The Infamous Mahadev Betting App
🔖 The Mahadev betting app’s story started in 2017, but the police FIRs were registered only in late 2021. The "platform for illegal betting" in poker, card games and cricket, badminton etc, has been creating news since the arrest of bigwigs.
While several prominent people have been named in FIRs , it was mostly young, unemployed people who were working for Mahadev betting app. The realisation that it was illegal to bet online came to them much later, for some only when the police knocked on their doors.
Read this story by Gargi Verma.
How Hate And Bullying On Instagram Led To The Death Of A Teenager
🔖 The abuses in English get taken down, but queer artists say that Instagram lacks the ability to track hateful comments in Indian languages.
Decode’s Samriddhi Sakunia spoke to some queer artists only to find that they are all grappling with hate and menacing comments. And the platform isn’t doing much to help.
‘I Don’t Watch Cricket Anymore’: Kashmiri Youth Booked For Cheering Pak in 2021
🔖 Showkat Ganai just sits at home. He does nothing. The once-promising student is now worried about the mountain of debt incurred by a court case he is embroiled in. Ganai said his family had to sell farmland and take loans to match the legal expenses incurred.
He is one of the three Kashmiri students who was arrested in October 2021 for cheering Pakistan’s win against India in the T20 cricket finals.
BOOM’s Ritika Jain spoke to the three students and their families to understand how their lives changed after the October 2021 incident.
Karnataka HC Suspends Live Streaming After Porn Gets Played
🔖 An advocate was waiting for his matter in the Karnataka High Court’s courtroom when he came across an unusual disturbance. At around noon, the virtual proceedings were hijacked, and instead of court hearings, one was treated to unseemly pornographic images.
🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For
🔍 A video of Muslim students learning Sanskrit at the Academy of Sharia and Advanced Studies in Thrissur, Kerala was shared on social media with a false and communal claim that students are being coached to take up roles as temple priests in Kerala. 🔗Anmol Alphonso & Sujith↗️ debunked the claim.
🔍Several official Israel X (formerly Twitter) handles and other pro-Israel accounts shared a CCTV footage and an unrelated video to falsely claim that Palestinian youth Mohammed Nazzal had not suffered any injures after being released from Israeli prison. Read 🔗Anmol Alphonso’s↗️ fact-check.
🔍 Several Facebook videos of popular TV news anchors went viral online claiming that they were recently seen promoting a medication for diabetes. But, did they? Find out in 🔗Sachin Baghel’s↗️ fact-check.
🅱️ Recommends
📖 This week's recommendation is: Enter the robot journalist by Christer Clerwall
This paper attempts to investigate how readers perceive software-generated content in relation to similar content written by a journalist. Please note that the journalistic content here is on issues that do not evoke a partisan response.
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