#
Before you listen to this episode of The Scene and the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
#
Do check out Pullia Baazi, hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Kutasane, two really good
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Kick-ass podcast in Hindi.
#
In 1922, the writer Walter Lippmann, who has been described as a father of modern journalism,
#
wrote a seminal book called Public Opinion.
#
The first chapter in the book was titled The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads.
#
The point Lippmann made in that chapter was that all of us have a picture of the world
#
in our heads, and that picture can never correspond to the actual world exactly, or even to other
#
such pictures inside other people's heads, because the world is too complicated.
#
We are a storytelling species, and all of us build or subscribe to simple narratives
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that help make sense of a complex world.
#
This is the necessary mechanism, and there's nothing wrong in this.
#
However, in modern times, when our means of getting news and knowledge are widely dispersed,
#
and the political discourse is so polarized, it means that these narratives diverge furiously.
#
More than it used to in the past, when the media was monolithic, and there was some sort
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of broad consensus on the truth.
#
And once we build a narrative in our heads about the world, we only accept news and information
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that conforms to this narrative.
#
There is too much cognitive dissonance otherwise.
#
Too much hard work for us to do to keep modifying that picture in our heads.
#
At some level, this explains the attractiveness of fake news.
#
Anything that reinforces our worldview is legit, everything else is fake.
#
You might think that this is fine, let people believe what they believe, but fake news has
#
Rumors can kill people, decide elections, tear communities apart and spread cancer in
#
And it has never been as much of a threat as it is today, enabled and turbocharged by
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Something must be done.
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Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Padma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
#
My guest on the show today is someone I've admired for a long time.
#
Pratik Sinha runs AltNews, an organization that has made it a mission to bust fake news
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from all sides of the political spectrum.
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It's been fascinating for me to watch from a distance how AltNews has evolved as a resistance
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movement against falsehood.
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And I'm very pleased to have finally gotten Pratik to agree to come on my show.
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But before I cut to my conversation with him, let's take a quick commercial break.
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This episode of The Scene and The Unseen is brought to you by Storytel.
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It's an audiobook platform which you can listen to on your Android or iOS app.
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They have thousands of audiobooks that you can listen to on your mobile, including hundreds
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in local languages like Hindi and Marathi.
#
An unlimited monthly subscription costs only rupees 2.99 per month.
#
And you can also get a 30-day free trial if you hop on over to storytel.com slash IBM.
#
I actually use Storytel myself regularly, so as long as I sponsor the show, I'm going
#
to recommend one book a week that I love.
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The book I want to recommend today is Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.
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Steven Pinker was a guest on an episode of The Scene and The Unseen.
#
You can check that out in the archives page.
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And the book that we spoke about is this very one, Enlightenment Now, now on Storytel.
#
And remember, you get a 30-day free trial only at storytel.com slash IBM.
#
Pratik, welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
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Pratik, tell me a little bit about yourself.
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What's your background like?
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I was born in Ahmedabad.
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I did my schooling in Ahmedabad, did my engineering from Bangalore.
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After that, I worked in Bangalore for three years.
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I worked only for startups through my career as a software engineer.
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2006, I went to the US, sometime in mid-2006, I think 2007.
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And then till 2010, I was in the US.
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Then 2010, I moved to Vietnam.
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And then 2010 to 2013, I was in Vietnam.
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And then 2013 is when I came back to Ahmedabad.
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And that is essentially where some of the political journeys, my politicization started,
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not the political journey.
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But in a sense, because of by virtue of the family that you're born in and the work that
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your parents did, and I want to discuss that with you as well, you were politically aware
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from a long while before that, right?
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The political awareness was right since I was a child.
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I was forced to watch the same news on multiple channels again and again, because that is
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the time when cable TV came in, multiple channels came in, they're always watching news.
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There was no soap operas there.
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And all the discussion on dinner table was always about politics.
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So yes, I was very much politically aware, connected.
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But it's just that when you're away, then you look at things from a distance, you're
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But once I came back to Ahmedabad in 2013, and that is the time we started a website
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called Truth of Gujarat.
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And it was also a time when my father got cancer.
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And both my parents are homebound.
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My mom had also retired by that time, point of time.
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And the three of us spent a lot of time together in those nine months till my father passed
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And that is when I sort of got a lot of dump of knowledge because we were all together,
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you know, sitting in a room, nothing to do.
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So we did a lot of talking.
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And which is why I often say that, yes, I was politically aware, but the real politicization
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started during that period where Truth of Gujarat started.
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And when, you know, there was a lot of knowledge transfer from my parents to me.
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Tell me a little bit about your dad, because he's obviously someone who's been a very
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big influence on you and a remarkable activist in his own time, for those who know about
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Tell us a little bit about that.
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So my father was a physicist.
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He did his PhD from an institute called Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.
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Before that, he's an IIT Kanpur pass out and he got into union activities.
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There was a class four employee who was kicked and he went up to the director to complain
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And that started a movement which started formation.
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I think Physical PRL was the first organization which got a union, a scientific institute
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which got a union in the 70s.
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And then he was a postdoc at that point of time.
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He was terminated, fought the case, lost the case.
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And then eventually he did his LLB in late 80s, became a lawyer.
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A lot of activities at that point of time was concentrated on unions, various industrial
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unions, unions like ATIRA, NID, IIM, et cetera.
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Eventually they got into civil rights movements such as housing, education, environment.
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And then when 2002 happened, that is when the organization saw that the people were
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split along vertical lines, along communal lines, which is when Jan Sangash Manj, which
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is the primary civil liberties organization, they decided to take part in Nanavati Commission.
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Then the spate of fake encounters started in Gujarat and many victims approached Jan
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So we did multiple cases from Souravuddin to Yushad Jahan to Sadiq Jamal to Tulsi Prajapati.
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And yeah, so my father's journey has essentially been from a union activist to a civil rights
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activist to a lawyer who's fighting the cause of, you know, design communal polarization
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that was sort of going on in the society.
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And in those days, like for part of that time, of course, you were a software engineer, you
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were a VA, you went to the US, you went to Vietnam, but was there a sense of worry for
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you that this is dangerous work that my parents are involved in?
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Or I mean, obviously you were supportive, but were you also worried at the same time
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that, you know, why do they have to take such risks?
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And did it strike you as a kid that, you know, your father is involved in all these causes
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and at one hand, it's obviously romantic that someone is fighting for the downtrodden.
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But on the other hand, did you ever feel that, you know, had he stuck to his physics or had
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he stuck to a regular career line, it could have made a material difference to your lives?
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No, that thought never occurred.
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There have been times when sort of, you know, papers have been slipped under, you know,
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left at my house with death threats, et cetera, for my father.
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But somehow it never crossed our mind.
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I think in all these things, the support system matters a lot.
#
Even now, for example, I have, you know, got a phone call with a death threat, like, you
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know, stop writing or we'll shoot you.
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This happened sometime in 2017.
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But you know, we often look at people as individuals who are doing something, but usually the support
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system around that matters.
#
In case of my father, it was my mom who sort of stood like a rock.
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And she was an activist.
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Her work is not as much recognized because she was a government employee and, you know,
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she did not come out and open.
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But even now, for example, there was a legal notice from a news channel, I wouldn't like
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to name, when we did a story about them.
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And it was my mother who said that, you know, we are not taking down the story, come what
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So it is always about support.
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Whenever you're doing any such work, it is the people around you, the support system,
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Tell me about 2013, because you point out about how, you know, you had those nine months
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with your parents and you were sitting and talking a lot.
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You described it as a dump of knowledge.
#
And that must have been very important for you because I suppose both of them are sort
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of giving you all of their insights and learnings through the years.
#
And how did that change the way you looked at India and politics and what was happening?
#
So during that period, see, it was not like we were sitting and they were talking.
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That is, the knowledge transfer happened through a project called Truth of Gujarat.
#
So on July 2, 2013, the Ishwajahan Chashit came out and this was the chashit which spoke
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about Kalidari and Safeddari giving a go-ahead for the Ishwajahan encounter.
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According to Gujarat Police's statement given to CBI, it was claimed that Kalidari was a
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moniker used for Mr. Amit Shah and Safeddari was a moniker used for Mr. Modi.
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And what happened thereafter was that even though there was such a huge revelation, the
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media organizations did not really pick it up.
#
You know, it was a huge revelation.
#
So I suggested to my parents that let's put all the information online.
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We have a lot of information.
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And that is how Truth of Gujarat came about.
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And because I understood a bit of social media, I understood the youth a little.
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So I said every article has to be limited to four or five paras because people don't
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have the attention span per se.
#
And that is how we started and it became extremely popular because again, even in 2013, that
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was the only sort of voice of opposition, so to say, in Gujarat.
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So during that process, while writing articles, while discussing articles with my father and
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with my mother, that is the time the conversations happened around these articles.
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And it sort of gave me a lot of insight into their work because they have worked across
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different issues from working with labor rights.
#
So for example, something as simple as if you observe, if there's a farmers movement,
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If there's a labor movement, the farmers do not join.
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You might think outside that there are multiple common causes, but it does not happen.
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People fight for their own causes and you cannot ever say that why you're not fighting
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for somebody else's causes.
#
So things like that, which otherwise it's difficult to understand and know that why
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there are so many different sections in the society which are fighting for their own causes,
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but we keep talking about unity, but that does not happen.
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And there's a reason for it, they have seen this in their...
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And again, things like, you know, that if you're in a union, you don't talk about who
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you're voting for, whether you're voting for Congress or BJP, they're fighting for
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They are not political workers, they are fighting as laborers.
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So you have to recognize, you know, in what capacity is a certain individual acting at
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any point in time to understand the outcomes of a movement, et cetera, et cetera.
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So those are the things, of course, there's so many things and it's been four or five
#
years when my father passed away in 2014.
#
But a lot of these small, small things, which I understood in conversations with them.
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Was it during this time or was it earlier or was it something that was building up over
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time that you made the decision that I don't want to be a software engineer anymore.
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This is more important.
#
What was that process like?
#
So the decision was not to be a software engineer.
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The decision, so I was working on various technologies and these were cutting edge technologies.
#
But what I realized over time is that none of that is going to reach the common man for
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a very long time, the sort of stuff that I was working on.
#
And this decision actually came around around 2016.
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My mother and I, we walked 10 days from Ahmedabad to Una.
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There were four Dalit boys who were flogged in Una and a rally was taken out from Ahmedabad
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The rally in which Jignesh Meiwani sort of came out as a leader.
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And during this rally, I documented the entire thing through Truth of Gujarat in terms of
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The thing was there was only one person from national media, one person from Hindustan
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But otherwise people for the first five, six days had almost entirely ignored this rally.
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And you know, when I started putting the videos and images and they started getting retweeted
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And then eventually the media came in and it became a big thing.
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So that is the time I realized that what is the power of alternative media?
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And I thought that I had certain skills to put some of my work in alternative media.
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At the same point in time, I was also working on misinformation right since 2013 because
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there was misinformation even in the 2014 elections.
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That at a much, much smaller scale, but I was working on that and I could see an increasing
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trend and especially starting end of 2015, 2016 when Jio came.
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So I could see a trend.
#
And I also realized that traditional journalists do not have the skills to deal with this.
#
Even though the skills required are, it is not very difficult.
#
Even with a five day training, a lot of traditional journalists will be able to bust at least
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70, 80% of the things that go out on social media.
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But it is just that they are not trained for it and media organizations, for media organizations,
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this was not a priority.
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So at that point of time, I thought that, you know, why not use some of my skills and
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some of the experience that I gained while running Truth of Gujarat and start a portal.
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So the first document that we came up with was in September 2016.
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This was right after Una Rally.
#
The first two points in the document as to what the, there were multiple points that
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we had written, but the first two points were number one, debunk misinformation on social
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media, number two, document people struggles.
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And we never ended up doing number two because number two needs finances where, so you have
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to go to a state, you have to know the local language, you have to stay, you have to pay
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for your own lodging, food, et cetera.
#
And we did not have the resources to do that.
#
So that is how we started with debunking misinformation.
#
So I'm going to take a brief digression here, a couple of digressions.
#
I'll come back to this, but you've said a few things while you were talking about this,
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which have raised sort of lateral questions in me.
#
So just indulge me while we talk about them.
#
One of the things is that when you were talking about 2002 and what happened in Gujarat and
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you used a phrase that there were vertical lines drawn between people.
#
And I just want to explore that a bit by which I'm presuming you don't mean horizontal lines,
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which would be differentiating classes or whatever, but vertical lines between Hindu
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Not between Hindu and Muslims, between Hindu and Muslims and between Hindus and Hindus.
#
So for example, again, I was not in India at this point of time.
#
All of this is what I've heard from my parents.
#
So we had a union in various organizations, the city was burning.
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And one of the organizations was close to my house.
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So my parents walked to that place.
#
They were having a small meeting and somebody who was actually used to teach me drawing
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when I was a kid, never successfully could do so.
#
But that person, while talking about the riots, he stood up and said, ki maar dena chahiye
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So that is what shocked many people in the organization, especially my parents, senior
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people of the organization.
#
That we've been running this organization for such a long time, but we did not know
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that this communal hatred was so deep rooted.
#
If you remember 2002 riots, if you think of the accused, a lot of accused in urban areas
#
were from Dalit communities, a lot of accused in the rural areas were from Adivasi communities.
#
So essentially, it was a project to bring all cast together and it was an unnatural
#
project in the sense that the upper caste and lower caste are supposed to be ideologically
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You know, one is the, there is, you know, Brahmins are and Dalits are supposed to be
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opposed in different ways.
#
But this is a project which united everybody.
#
So which is why I say that, you know, there was a vertical division essentially between
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Muslims and Hindus, but the certain section of Hindus who still believed in certain secular
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values and even between that and we continue to see that today, this vertical polarization,
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whether it is in our friends, family, et cetera, we just completely vertically divided.
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And when you sort of look at, I mean, of course, that whole project of superimposing a broader
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Hindutva identity across castes and all that is something that continues to this day and
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might even have been fairly successful so far.
#
But when you sort of look at what society in Gujarat was say in 2013 when you came back
#
and what it was earlier when you were still studying and when you were still sort of just
#
living there, do you think that there were fundamental changes within society itself
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or do you think that those divisions fault lines were always there but had now been amplified
#
So again, my understanding of this, as I said, became better only after 2013.
#
But even when I was in school, there were riots.
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So Gujarat has often very, has been a tender box.
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You know, even after Babri Masjid demolition, there were riots in Ahmedabad and things like
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In 1969, there were riots which are much bigger than 2002.
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And that time there was a Congress government, it was not a BJP government.
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And there were many Muslims who were killed.
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So Gujarat has had a history, but the polarization has definitely increased over time.
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And this is, for example, if you talk to people the age my mother, so my mother often tells
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me this tale that she's from a Jain family.
#
But her father built a house for her friend of theirs, a Muslim couple at that age because
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the family was not accepting.
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So he built sort of carved out a small portion in their house where that Muslim couple could
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So still that used to happen.
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Now those kinds of stories are very, very, you don't hear those kinds of stories in Gujarat.
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You know, you have Juhapura where all the Muslims stays, you know, basically the ghettos,
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you know, there's so much polarization that there's very little intermingling between
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different communities, except for maybe, you know, at workplaces.
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But cultural intermingling is very, very minimal.
#
My next digression is sort of, is both about politics and strategy in the sense that you
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mentioned that when your father would work with unions and so on, that one of the things,
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one of the characteristics of unions was that all of these people would come together for
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a specific cause, but they wouldn't necessarily be united otherwise.
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Now I suppose in one way this can be a bug and you can say that this unity and this organization
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is wasted because it's only for this cause.
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In another way it could be a feature because, you know, otherwise it would be impossible
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for them to unite for a cause if you allowed other issues to sort of divide them.
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But quite separate from the matter of how it plays out in terms of unions, how does
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it play out broadly in the political space in the sense that I would imagine that a coalition
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of people who are say against fake news would be a broader coalition, would have disagreements
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on many things, should be what, Congress or AAP or whoever, not vote at all, but would
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have disagreements on many other things, but could be united against falsehood.
#
So is this sort of a consideration that plays out in, I mean, what do you think about this?
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No, two are different things.
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Fighting for labor rights, et cetera, is a different matter altogether.
#
There you're talking about people, you know, if there's a strike, let's say there was
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a 27-day Safa-e-Kamda strike in August 2016, right after Una rally, which means 27 days
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You know, here you're talking about people who are living on a day-to-day basis if 27
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days of no pay means disasters for them, right?
#
So for them to now come and join another strike of another organization, give up their day
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pay is a different matter as opposed to people sitting on social media and extending support.
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So these two cannot be compared.
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You can compare people on social media extending support for, let's say, farmer's rights, you
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So there'll be urban sections of the population who would extend support for the struggle
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That could be a comparison.
#
So yes, people do unite on a common cause, but people fighting for different issues at
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the ground level rarely ever unite.
#
And you can see that in politics also, for example.
#
And this I have, again, figured out by talking to people.
#
So for example, in Karnataka, Congress and JDS have always been opposed to each other,
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And now one day you ask them to come together and form a successful coalition.
#
The people on the top may start sort of join hands, but the people who are on the ground
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No, this is a different kind of thing.
#
Here it is not that the laborers and farmers are against each other, but I'm talking about
#
a different kind of phenomenon.
#
To think that the Congress and JDS workers will suddenly be happy and working with each
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Same with SPBSP in Uttar Pradesh, we have seen all these dream coalitions, the way media
#
projects it, but we have seen this failing again and again and again.
#
So there are people who are sort of concentrated on one area and it's very rarely that you
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see sort of a wide unity of masses.
#
And moving on to a related issue, there's a term in public choice theory called the
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free rider effect, where what happens is that there might be many people who care about
#
a particular cause that are affected by it, but most of them won't actually do anything
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concrete to take action or protest, rather free ride.
#
For example, a lot of people who are maybe against fake news, maybe bothered by it, and
#
maybe they have the capacity to do some of the work themselves.
#
They can do the reverse Google searches and whatever, they can do all of that.
#
But they instead kind of choose to free ride on say an alt news, which is sort of doing
#
So does it sometimes frustrate you that, look, I'm embarked on this journey, which is so
#
difficult and there is a struggle and all these people express support, but in concrete
#
terms, it's almost like there are a few people walking alone.
#
No, it does not frustrate me.
#
See, everybody has chosen different aims and ambitions in life.
#
For me, alt news is presently a very, very important project.
#
You're doing podcasting, this is what you are doing, you know, before you're doing a
#
podcast, you're researching several hours.
#
Now, in between that, you get some misinformation.
#
I can't expect you to go up and split a video into frames, go and look up, oh, this is the
#
I don't think that is the right expectation.
#
So here we have to identify what is the problem.
#
The problem is that there are so many means of getting information, but there's an easy
#
means of getting information, but there's no easy means of figuring out what is the
#
truth behind information.
#
If you had something where, you know, you get something, you get a video or an image
#
on WhatsApp, and if you could upload it to an app and the app would tell you that this
#
is, you know, in one tab, the app gives you an answer that this is probably the fact check
#
or the real story behind this image and video, then you're more likely to do it.
#
So it is the fact that people are not doing it is a problem that needs to be solved.
#
It is not a matter of frustration.
#
One has to understand why are people not doing it and what will make people do so, you know,
#
So, you know, what does it need for people to go from not doing it to starting to do
#
So yeah, it does not frustrate me really.
#
Let's kind of go back to your journey with truth of Gujarat and then later alt news.
#
And you mentioned that there was some fake news already in 2014 and all of that, but
#
it's only in 2016 that sort of there was an inflection point.
#
Tell me a little bit about that.
#
What confluence of events came together to make fake news a real threat?
#
So what happened in 2016 was that in November 2016, Jio was launched and in anticipation
#
of Jio being launched, multiple telecom couriers were already dropping their rates.
#
So the pattern that we saw was that end of 2015 and beginning of 2016, these websites
#
which came up and which had a lot of content, a lot of misinformation and ads.
#
So people realized that there was a way to monetize this.
#
There's a way that now internet is reaching farther and farther corners of this country
#
and by writing sensational stuff and getting people to click on ads and a lot of these
#
were semi porn ads, you know, so the bola kind of ad format, you have six to nine boxes
#
at the bottom of the article, but a lot of that was essentially nude imagery or semi
#
So that is the pattern that we started seeing.
#
And along with that, these increasing forwards, et cetera, multiple Facebook pages came up.
#
We started putting whatever was on WhatsApp on their Facebook pages.
#
So essentially there were more and more people who could be reached on social media and there
#
were certain sections on the society who realized that this is a good way to monetize this.
#
That is how it started, according to me.
#
And then there were others who saw these people seeing that how easily people were consuming
#
misinformation and saw that there is a political end to this, that this can be used actually
#
for a political purpose.
#
And that is what started.
#
If you remember in November 2016 when demonetization happened, this is a different kind of rumor,
#
but just the impact of it, a rumor went about that shops are running out of sugar and there
#
were shops which were attacked by civilians just because of the fear that they are running
#
Now, somebody might think, you know, running out of sugar, why would you attack a shop?
#
But what we did not realize was that the society was in a stress state because of demonetization.
#
And you know, it was a sort of a sudden decision which people did not anticipate.
#
So then at that point of time, they were ready to believe anything that is put out.
#
So there were so many rumors about demonetization, for example, that GPS chip, right?
#
And people took in these rumors, everybody took in these rumors.
#
Some of the rumors even I might have believed, you know, because we were in such a state.
#
So it was very important to understand that the more stress the society gets, you know,
#
the more the rumors, the more will people intake these kinds of rumors.
#
So those are the observations that we had and which is why we created that document
#
in September 2016, saying that, you know, we really need to sort of start debunking
#
misinformation, create a portal for it.
#
And me and Zubair, Mohammed Zubair, both of us co-founded Alt News, Zubair used to run
#
a Facebook page, a parody Facebook page called Unofficial Subramaniam Swami.
#
I used to run Truth of Gujarat and we already had a collector following about 800,000, between
#
800,000 and a million, including Twitter and Facebook.
#
So we were in a unique position that we already have an audience, as opposed to many organizations
#
who start without an audience.
#
And we're like, let's start putting things on a portal and let's see what happens.
#
You know, one year hence, we'll see whether it works out or not.
#
Zubair continued to work, but I, you know, I stopped freelancing at that point in time.
#
And let's do this for one year, we'll figure out whether this works or not.
#
But within three months, Alt News took off quite, quite well.
#
And you said that, you know, you told me earlier that the impetus behind Alt News was really
#
You just elaborate on that a bit.
#
So a lot of these videos, some of the first few articles that we've written on Alt News
#
are videos from Mexico, Brazil, et cetera, being passed around claiming that these are
#
Muslims killing Hindus.
#
And every time at that point of time, when we used to see these videos, there used to
#
be a fear that, you know, this is going to lead to the next riot.
#
If you remember Muzaffarnagar riots, that is what happened, right?
#
There was a video from Pakistan which was put out and that led to riots.
#
And there have been other instances in Pune, there was a Muslim boy, a techie was killed
#
because there was a morphed image which was circulated of a Hindu idol.
#
And there were riots and this guy had nothing to do with any of this.
#
He was just going back to his home or to work and he got killed.
#
So we were seeing that, these manifestations of misinformation in the society.
#
And so that was a fear that, you know, this video could lead to a riot.
#
And you know, you'd write really, you know, sort of put out, try to put it out as far
#
The language even back then, we have changed some of those articles now, but even our language
#
back then, when I read back the way I had written some of those articles, you could
#
see the fear that please don't share these, you know, this is completely false.
#
We don't write that way anymore.
#
We have a more professional way of writing things.
#
But even in the language back then, I could see that there was a fear inside, which is
#
why we sort of were doing this very, very, there was a bit of desperation in the language.
#
And before we go deeper into the subject of fake news, I'd also like you to define it
#
for me, because you've written eloquently about how there are different kinds of fake
#
news as a distinction between misinformation and disinformation and so on.
#
Tell me a little bit about.
#
So actually, we hardly ever use the phrase fake news anymore.
#
We have gone away from using that.
#
I don't think I have used it even once.
#
You haven't, I have, in fact, yes, we don't use that phrase anymore.
#
We use misinformation and disinformation, or malinformation.
#
So some misinformation is essentially first disinformation is when you know something
#
is false and you still propagate it.
#
Misinformation is you're propagating it without it is false, but you don't know whether you're
#
And you're not bothered to check and you're still propagating it.
#
That those are the broad definitions.
#
So we usually stick to these two terms we don't use the unless it is very, very specifically
#
That is, a mainstream media is putting it out and it is fake in nature.
#
So usually only then or it has been framed in form of a news and it is completely fake.
#
You know, very, very few times we use the phrase fake news.
#
So just to sort of try and illustrate that and tell me if my illustrations are correct.
#
So this information would be that if I am a hardcore Hindutva person and I send out
#
this message saying that, look, the Muslim birth rate is nine, which someone once told
#
me, by the way, the Muslim birth replacement rate is nine and soon there will be the majority
#
in India and I know it's false, but I send it out, that is this information.
#
And misinformation would be if I receive a WhatsApp forward saying shops are running
#
out of sugar and I have no way of knowing whatever, but it seems like something I should
#
let people know about so they can get sugar, though sugar is poison and then I forward
#
So that is misinformation.
#
I mean, you just said something which is really interesting and I also want to now ask you
#
about that, which is the two ways in which misinformation or disinformation originates.
#
Like people have this impression about misinformation, disinformation, fake news, whatever for the
#
purpose of convenience.
#
I'll just call it fake news for now.
#
But people have this impression about it that, oh, it's these political IT cell fake news
#
factories which are churning these out and there are workers who have been paid to sit
#
and write these WhatsApp messages and they're sort of forwarded out.
#
But what you've indicated in this episode and what you once told me in a conversation
#
we had a long time ago with regard to the Rohit Sardana case, for example, is that there
#
is a lot of this misinformation happens organically, that there is a market for it.
#
And because there is a market of willing consumers for fake news, people create fake news just
#
to sort of get clicks, make money, all of that.
#
And it's not necessary that there is a political motivation or something like that.
#
I won't say there's a market for consuming fake news or misinformation, there's a market
#
for consuming sensationalism.
#
Okay, a lot of media organizations indulge in that purely because there's a market for
#
So for example, one of the example, once there was this tweet, this social media trend called
#
I support Rohit Sardana, and it was claimed that there are some X number of fatwas which
#
were issued against Rohit Sardana, and by evening, Rohit Sardana came out and clarified
#
that there's no such thing that has happened, please, you know, stay away from misinformation
#
and thank you for the support.
#
So I went and dug into this and tried to figure out where this originated from.
#
And it took me to a website, completely unknown website, which had first put this and then
#
multiple of these right wing websites had that kind in just a sort of thing.
#
Of that this is not limited to right wing, it is across ideological spectrums, just want
#
But it definitely started more in the right wing anyway, so going back to the conversation.
#
So I tracked this website, and we wrote a story, I found the Facebook profile of this
#
person, he looked like a very young kid.
#
And on his Facebook profile, there were two screenshots of him getting advertising money
#
from a couple of advertising companies, you know, some 18,000 rupees in all, I think,
#
Next day, I get a message from an anonymous WhatsApp number saying that he said this in
#
Hindi ki bhaiya main wahi hoon, jiske baare main aapne story lekh di, aapne kaise dhunna
#
So then I got his phone number and I spoke with him and it turned out that he was a class
#
12 boy who was studying in Ranchi.
#
His father was a farm help in a village outside Ranchi, earning 6000 rupees a month.
#
And he said that to pay my expense, this is what I do.
#
And interestingly, I spoke with somebody similar just a few days ago, but this was in 2017.
#
And he said that you got one detail wrong.
#
I don't make 20,000 rupees a month, I make 40,000 rupees a month.
#
But then I tried to tell him that, you know, look, you're going to get into trouble at
#
And eventually, I think he shut down the website.
#
I don't know what he's doing at this point in time.
#
And this kid said something very interesting.
#
He said that, ki main sahi likhunga toh koi padta hi nahi hai.
#
You know, only if I put this misinformation and look, so many websites are covered.
#
You know, he said it as a matter of pride that there's this other website called Hindutu.info,
#
which was sort of a very popular website at that point in time.
#
And he said, look, Hindutu.info is also written about it.
#
And he knew that it was completely false.
#
He's like, people only read when there's when you write these things.
#
So there's a market for sensationalism.
#
I won't say there's a market for, you know, misinformation per se, there's a lot of misinformation
#
That's a very nuanced point, because I had, in fact, assumed when I first heard the story
#
from you that okay, this is, you know, there's an organic demand for the, you know, fake
#
But as you're pointing out, there's an organic demand for sensationalism, which has always
#
And the sensational will often be fake.
#
And often people who are creating this news don't even care whether it's fake or real,
#
and they don't think too hard about the consequences, it's just that you want the clicks and all
#
And like, over time, as you examine different categories of misinformation and disinformation,
#
is it always clear that what is the intent and therefore you figure out where it originated
#
from or sometimes is it the case that the intent is only sensationalism and there's
#
For example, you know, earlier you mentioned that shops are running out of sugar and there
#
was that rumor during demon, like, where would that have originated from and why or is it
#
just something that someone very often you can't figure out intent and it is not always
#
So, so this was organic in the sense somebody created, but I do believe that there are individuals
#
who are tasked to do this, there's an organized way of putting out misinformation.
#
And you know, since the time Alt News started, since the time we wrote about certain websites,
#
for example, the postcard news guy, there's a guy called Mahesh Vikram Hegde, who got
#
arrested based on an Alt News story.
#
And even my thoughts about, you know, whether people should be arrested or not have changed
#
We wrote an article saying that it is an achievement and I think back and I think that it was a
#
I don't think he should have been arrested, but we can go to that later, but so what happened
#
was that the fear that you could get arrested, you know, in the US, you're protected by
#
First Amendment, so which is why the multiple fake news websites which continue there, because
#
you're not going to get arrested for writing something.
#
But here since there's a fear that you might get arrested.
#
So that business which had started in 2015, 2016 of writing communal misinformation has
#
You don't hear of postcard news, etc.
#
There used to be this website called Dhanik Bharat that has also gone down.
#
So that phenomenon has stopped.
#
So misinformation in order to make money has stopped.
#
There's other kind of misinformation like Bollywood gossip, you know, that kind, but
#
communal misinformation, knowing that, you know, it could sort of land you in jail.
#
I think that has come down a lot on websites, you know, in order to make money.
#
But what has now increased is organized misinformation.
#
You look at Balakot strikes, when Balakot strikes happened, that was one of the busiest
#
There was such a spike of misinformation.
#
So one of them was a video game, which went viral, claiming that you can see a missile
#
honing onto a building and sort of blasting the building and it was claimed that these
#
Now the person who put out that in the first place, somebody does not just come across
#
a video game video and say that, okay, this is Balakot strikes.
#
That person knows that, let me take this video and put the spin to it.
#
The first person who has done this.
#
So that is organized misinformation.
#
And the fact that when Balakot happened, so there was another one, which was group of
#
10 images, which claimed that this is the level of devastation in Pakistan.
#
And it has reached literally every phone.
#
I don't know if you've seen those group of 10 images, it has almost reached every phone
#
saying that this is the level of devastation, the picture of dead bodies.
#
What we found was, I think four of them was from a heat stroke in Pakistan, some others
#
were from an earthquake, but not a single picture was a recent one.
#
Now, somebody did not come across these pictures and said that, oh, these are pictures from
#
Somebody put that out with that narrative.
#
So there are people who are thinking of these narratives and putting out misinformation.
#
Once it is out on social media, it goes around in an organic manner, but people, there are
#
people who are sitting there and creating misinformation and every pattern that you
#
can see now, it suggests that, you know, for example, during elections, a lot of misinformation
#
was targeting political leaders.
#
So I'll give you an example of Rajnath Singh and Rahul Gandhi.
#
So Rajnath Singh was at a rally and he said that, okay.
#
And he asked the crowd to repeat that and the crowd repeats, they cut the part where
#
Rajnath Singh says this, and they only play the part where the crowd says it.
#
Now, because you're used to hearing Chaukedar Chor Hai, you think that the crowd is saying
#
Chaukedar Chor Hai, but they were actually saying Chaukedar Pure Hai and MP Congress's
#
official verified Twitter handle put out this video saying that, Dekho Rajnath Singh ne
#
So now somebody who's cutting it out at that point of time, you know, I don't know if the
#
person handling MP Congress and did it or somebody else, most likely somebody else,
#
but the person who did it knew exactly what the impact will be, right?
#
In case of Rahul Gandhi, one of the videos, which was extremely viral, where Rahul Gandhi
#
apparently says that women in UP bear 52 children in every year they bear 52 children.
#
The context of the story was it is a six year old video where Rahul Gandhi, this was during
#
the UPA time when UPA had started a scheme for pregnant women.
#
If you have institutional delivery, they give you 7,000 or 7,200 rupees.
#
If you have a home delivery, they give you 3,600 rupees.
#
This was, I think, funds coming from the union to state.
#
And according to a RTI response, the same woman's name was repeated 52 times.
#
So as part of the way politicians speak, he said that, UP main mahilayi bhawan bache
#
detiye, you know, har saal, and only that was cut off, you know, that bhawan bache.
#
And that became so viral.
#
The funny thing was, so viral to the point that Haryana CM, ML Khattar, said that in
#
a speech leading to elections, there was a BJP candidate from Madhya Pradesh, I forget
#
which constituency, he went and said the same thing that Rahul Gandhi ne kaha hai ki
#
UP main bhawan bache detiye mahilayi, what the folks in Congress did was cut his statement.
#
So now it would seem that he's saying that UP main bhawan bache detiye mahilayi, and
#
then that second video became viral.
#
So again, but people who are doing this, and now on, which is why, you know, earlier I
#
made that it is on both sides of the ideological spectrum, they know that there is this fault
#
line in our democracy, where there is a huge lack of digital literacy, they know that people
#
are not in a position to figure out whether somebody said this or not.
#
When you cut a clip like that very convincingly, people will, there's a huge section of population
#
which will fall for it.
#
And they have at this point of time, again, I keep going back to saying that we have not
#
given people tools to figure out what is true, what is not, we have given them a lot of tools
#
to consume information, we have not given them a single tool, there's not a single tool
#
on the phone, which will tell you that look, this is not true.
#
And as we progress in the episode, I will ask you about the alt news app, which I downloaded
#
yesterday and it's, and I would encourage all my listeners to download the app and try
#
But before we do that, let's talk about organized misinformation a little bit more now, like
#
at some point, perhaps around 2016, perhaps afterwards, these guys realize at a political
#
level that organized misinformation is a way to go.
#
People are gullible for sensationalism.
#
So you make anything sensational, they'll believe it and blah, blah, blah.
#
And you have these factories set up and I assume that the ruling parties factory would
#
have been there first and would have been sort of much better.
#
And now everyone does it.
#
Perhaps it's like a hygiene factor.
#
All parties have to do it.
#
Otherwise you can't survive in the information battle.
#
But like from what you know, what, what is it like, like how organized are they?
#
How well manned are they?
#
What are their processes?
#
Like do they just watch videos continuously and news continuously and decide ki isko edit
#
karke we can give it the spin or do they have strategic imperatives or heuristics by which
#
I have no insight into that at all.
#
There's no, and that is where I think we have sort of lacked because you know, a lot of
#
us don't come from a journalistic background.
#
All of that means actually getting into these places and figuring out how things work.
#
That is something that we have not worked at, but you know, a six year old video and
#
the speech was our long speech for somebody to find that five second clip in a long video
#
That means somebody is sitting and you know, looking at all these things, seeing how something
#
So somebody is spending a lot of time and somebody has been tasked to do it, but how
#
exactly this is happening, how people are being paid, where are they sitting, who's
#
We have no insight into whatsoever.
#
And in fact, two thoughts strike me here and one is that it's really, I have to say here,
#
a failure of journalism.
#
This is something that our mass media should really, I mean, this is basic investigative
#
It's probably the most important story of our times in terms of the threats that our
#
And it's astonishing that some embedded reporter somewhere hasn't done a journalistic story
#
I think Swati Chaturvedi, of course, wrote a book about the trolls of the BJP, but that's
#
like kind of different.
#
And I recorded an episode last week with Akshay Mukul, who's written the book on the Gita
#
Press, which, I mean, I don't know which of these episodes will get released first, but
#
and what struck me during that episode with him is that this whole mission of spreading
#
misinformation with strategic and tactical intent is not something that has happened
#
Perhaps it's been amplified by technology today, enabled at a much larger scale.
#
But right from the early days of the Gita Press and their monthly journal Kalyan, which
#
was set up in 1926, it has been a regular thing.
#
The editor of Kalyan, Hanuman Prasad Boddar, used to write editorials which had fake news,
#
whether it's about Hindu women being abducted and raped or whatever.
#
And this information, as you put it, not misinformation, with a specific, malified intent, and it would
#
seem technology has just taken it to a whole new level.
#
And is it the case, as people often say, that it's far easier to spread misinformation than
#
to actually then spread the fact-checking of it, like the fake news travels faster than
#
What are your thoughts?
#
I'm not ready to buy that story.
#
Yes, there has been research done in this science, very popular science magazine, Science
#
put out that, that, you know, tweets which have misinformation, they sort of go much
#
And again, I keep coming back to the thing that, where is the, you not enable people?
#
You know, we have seen, so for example, the case of vaccination.
#
There was a time when there were people who were dying of certain common ailments, which
#
now are gone because of vaccination.
#
And the society and the government, governments across the world, they took it upon themselves
#
Now, even somebody who doesn't have any idea about vaccination, that person goes and gets
#
their child vaccinated.
#
They have no clue, but they've just been told that you have to vaccinate your child, right?
#
So I do believe that once you enable people enough, there is a way to sort of push back
#
It is, you know, it may not be one-on-one example, what I'm saying with vaccination,
#
but there are certain, and people have certain biases.
#
So they would, they're more likely to believe one misinformation over another.
#
We have all those challenges.
#
But over the past two and a half years with Alt News, we have seen that people are willing
#
to go beyond what their inherent biases are.
#
We have had about 10 million views or more than 10 million views.
#
During the election time only, we had about 4 million views over the past four months.
#
And I think there are at least a good 50,000 to 100,000 people who read Alt News on a regular
#
basis who may not be consuming every story, but consume multiple stories.
#
And I think that I have seen these people.
#
I know that if you look at the Twitter timeline, et cetera, you know that they support a particular
#
dispensation, or they are against a certain dispensation, either of them.
#
But I have seen many of them people go against their inherent biases and tag Alt News on
#
Twitter or other places, Prateek, can you check is this true?
#
Alt News, can you check is this true?
#
So I think there is a way of creating critical thought in the society when some person is
#
told again and again that look what you got yesterday, what you got day before yesterday,
#
And when you do that again and again, there is a point in time when that person will be
#
okay, let me first check whether this is true or false or not.
#
And I believe that that is the model that we are hoping can be replicated on a larger
#
And once that is done, you know, at this point of time, in case of India, most of the misinformation
#
on WhatsApp, and I keep coming back to the point, you can keep talking about yes, people
#
are putting out misinformation, but what has anybody done for them to be able to counter
#
So when you don't have that, let's say when you don't have a vaccination of misinformation,
#
then what is the point of research which says that misinformation travels faster?
#
That is where I am, yes, maybe three years hence, when we have more tools, and when that
#
research is done, I would take that research more seriously than what I do now.
#
This episode is proceeding along far more optimistic lines than I had assumed.
#
We'll take a quick commercial break and we'll return to the conversation.
#
Hey everybody, welcome to another awesome week on the IVM Podcast Network.
#
If you are not following us on social media, please make sure you do.
#
We're IVM Podcasts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
#
You know, I have been asking you guys to do this.
#
I think some of you are, but some of you aren't.
#
Have you told your best friend about your favorite podcast?
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Please make sure you do that as well.
#
You are our ambassadors, if you don't go out and evangelize on our behalf, who's going
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So please go out and tell somebody about the podcast you're listening to.
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If you think there's somebody who would enjoy it, refer them to IVM Podcasts and tell them
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about all the stuff that they can find on our app or on our website or, you know, Spotify,
#
Saavan, everywhere you're listening to podcasts, right?
#
Also, guys, I'm going to be at Podcast Movement the coming week from the 13th to 16th of August.
#
Podcast Movement is a conference in Orlando where we're going to be doing all kinds of
#
If you're in the area, please do come by and say hi.
#
If you're not in the area, you can follow along with me by following, I guess, my social
#
In this case, it's Doshi Amit on most things.
#
On Cyrus says, Cyrus is joined by renowned filmmaker, writer and producer, Anis Buzmi.
#
He talks about his work as a child artist, the changing canvas of Bollywood, the role
#
of the screenwriter in it, his slate of blockbusters with Salman Khan in the late 2000s.
#
I really think this was a fun conversation.
#
Anis is a really fun guy to listen to.
#
On 9XM Soundcast, Eva Bhatt is joined by popular Punjabi singer, Milind Gaba.
#
They talk about his strong belief in spirituality and how his love for melody changed his destiny.
#
On Gana Tantra, Alok and Suryu discuss the abrogation of Article 370 and its implication
#
on the future of Indian federalism.
#
On the Pragati Podcast, Pawan talks to Dr. Mandir Akala and Shampa Vinayak about the
#
pros and cons of the DNA Technology Regulation Bill.
#
On Marbles Lost and Found, Zain and Avanti talk to musical artist, Bhrigu Sahani about
#
learning to express yourself through journaling.
#
On Stages of Anarchy, peace educator, Chintan Modi joins Hamsini Hariharan to discuss what
#
peace between India and Pakistan could look like.
#
On Keeping It Queer, Naveen and Farhad talk about emergence of TikTok comedy and how it
#
On our Kannada Podcast, Thalle Harate, Dr. Harini Nagendra joins Surya and Pawan to talk
#
about trees, their connection with cities and their history in Bangalore.
#
And with that, let's get you on with your show.
#
Welcome back to The Scene and The Unseen, I'm chatting with Prateek Sinha, founder
#
of AltNews, about misinformation, disinformation, malinformation and the resistant movement
#
against falsehood, though that's my phrasing, not his.
#
Prateek, you were telling me earlier when we had breakfast before this that there was
#
a specific reasoning to your setting up AltNews as a not-for-profit as opposed to a for-profit.
#
Like, I was making the argument coming from where I come from that, look, I think you're
#
creating something of enormous value.
#
And what I would really love to see is you guys flourish as a for-profit company where
#
consumers who recognize that value, and there's a means of your getting rewarded for that.
#
But you told me that no, you set up as a not-for-profit for a specific reason.
#
Can you go through that?
#
So AltNews, there are two things that we are trying to experiment.
#
One is how to promote critical thought in the society and debunking misinformation is
#
The other thing that we are experimenting is how to set up a media organization in a
#
democracy where the institutions are being compromised.
#
So let's say if you take the example of US and right now, there's New York Times, Washington
#
Post, CNN, they are going hammer and tongues against Trump, but you don't see them being
#
raided every other day.
#
You know, there's still space for people to talk against the government.
#
In India, the media has gone exactly the opposite way where there's very little criticism of
#
the government that is coming out.
#
And I think a part of the reason is because there's so much money that goes into media
#
and there are these big investors who are putting in money.
#
And in India, we keep talking about ease of doing business, but we know as a matter of
#
fact that even if somebody wants to do an honest business, that person has to cut so
#
And eventually, let's say this person thinks that he wants to invest in a cause such as
#
Alt News and puts his or her money.
#
And then what happens is the government goes after them and their tax rates, even if there's
#
nothing, they'll try to harass you.
#
And that is when either the investor pulls out, which means that you started something
#
you're dependent on an investor and suddenly you don't have the money.
#
So you have to let go people, the thing dies.
#
And then the investor says, well, can you not write about this?
#
You write about these things.
#
And then day after day that things about, can you not write about this?
#
That category keeps increasing.
#
And eventually, you're sort of completely stifled.
#
So I think that is what has happened with a lot of media organizations today, either
#
of these two phenomena.
#
So when we started Alt News, the first idea was how to keep it sustained without getting
#
a big ticket investor into the picture and by educating people that they need to willingly
#
donate to such an organization if they want something which is without a filter, you know,
#
because again, I keep saying that this is a cross political ideologies and if tomorrow
#
there's a new government in power, let's say if there is a change, they will have the same
#
kind of animosity or, you know, they're not going to be huge fans of Alt News just because
#
now they are in power and now they're promoting.
#
It's the same thing that happened with Ravish.
#
You know, there are many people who during UPA time, many people who are opposed to UPA
#
were big supporters of Ravish and now the same people don't like Ravish.
#
So it happens in this journalism cycle.
#
So we wanted something which is completely funded by people create again, it is part
#
of educating people that you need to give us money if you want us to keep doing it depending
#
There are kids, there are college kids who will give 10 rupees, the minimum donation
#
for Alt News is 9 rupees.
#
They'll give 10 rupees and they'll say that brother, I don't have a job now, if I get
#
a job, I'll give you more money, but please keep doing what you're doing.
#
So that is what we want to see in people, people willing to give money because they
#
know that number one, they become a part of the whole thing, you know, they have a sense
#
of ownership and second, that they know that it's only through their money can they guest
#
honest journalism, so in a democracy where institutions are compromised, you need to
#
devise newer and newer method to keep these organizations running.
#
I'm not saying that this will work for everybody, for example, just yesterday I was speaking
#
to another gentleman and he told me that, you know, your model will never work for me
#
because Alt News has a certain political impact.
#
So people tend to, you know, give more donation, but if I'm working on rural journalism, nobody
#
is going to give me money.
#
So it's not that this model will work for everybody, but there are at least a certain
#
group of media organizations for whom this model could work.
#
No, and that's a great point you make that, you know, and Ravish, of course, we're recording
#
this on August 4, Ravish just this week got the Max Esse award and more power to him.
#
And what good journalists do like Ravish and what you are also doing though, you're not
#
doing journalism, but what you're also doing is constantly speaking truth to power.
#
And that necessarily means that whoever is in power won't like you very much.
#
And for the benefit of my listeners, I just kind of want to elaborate on this because
#
this is not something we recognize.
#
It is impossible for any business in India today to be compliant with the law.
#
Just as an illustration of that, I had an episode a long time back on restaurant regulations
#
where the guest I was doing that episode with told me that when he was running a restaurant,
#
he found that there were two contradictory regulations he had to comply with.
#
One was the excise regulation, which was controlling the sale of alcohol on the premises, even
#
though he had a license for it, but they control and their regulation was that they can only
#
be one entry to the restaurant so they can monitor how alcohol is being taken in and
#
And meanwhile, the fire safety department had regulations that every restaurant has
#
to have multiple doors.
#
So basically what this meant was for my friend running a restaurant is that he could not
#
comply with both their opposite regulations.
#
So he was always breaking the law and effectively he was bribing both people and he was actually
#
bribing 40 people a month, which is what most businesses face.
#
And every single business in some way or the other will be breaking the law.
#
If you really want to go after them, you can, you'll find something or the other.
#
Now the issue with our big media houses is, you know, the companies that own them and
#
run them are not only into media, they're in a lot of other businesses.
#
You know, for example, the company that runs HD media will have a lot of other business
#
They'll have chemical factories, they'll have this, they'll have that.
#
And the government will choose to put pressure on one of those till the message comes across
#
that, boss, you better behave, otherwise the whole edifice could collapse.
#
And you see this and this pressure comes from across governments, you know, like recently
#
when Bobby Ghosh of HD started the hate tracker, boom, he had to leave.
#
But a few years earlier when Chidambaram was upset at Raju Narisetty, you know, Raju was
#
out of there soon enough.
#
In both cases, political pressure applied.
#
We don't know the exact method in which it was applied.
#
Both men made graceful exits.
#
But this is essentially what happened.
#
So any established media house, therefore, you can put so much pressure on them that
#
independent journalism becomes hard, which is a separate subject and a separate rant.
#
I often go on to and there are people like Scroll and Wire and Alt News which are fighting
#
I just wanted to elaborate.
#
And I want to make an additional point.
#
This is not just limited to media organizations, it extends to every organization.
#
So for example, I have this inherent trust deficit when it comes to organizations like
#
Facebook, Google and Twitter in terms of a variety of things.
#
So for example, there's a huge issue of privacy going on, right?
#
So tomorrow, let's say a government comes after any of these organizations.
#
Again, when they're operating in India, they are operating according to the law of the
#
Indian, they are not operating on the US laws, operating on the Indian laws.
#
And when somebody goes after them and says that give me this data, their choice is to
#
let a billion dollar company go or give the data of a few individuals that the government
#
And I think they will always take this other route.
#
And that also has to do with multiple decisions that they make, that they always want to keep
#
So it is not just limited to media organization.
#
This applies to many other organizations who are impacting us in their day to day life.
#
Social media and these chat apps are the medium for misinformation and their inability to
#
have done anything about or doing enough about this.
#
I think it is also because they don't want to go on the wrong side of the government.
#
And a lot of fake news, as you mentioned, happens on WhatsApp, but it also happens on
#
But WhatsApp is one of the major, this thing is owned by Facebook and so on.
#
And we've seen them do little things like, for example, when a message is forwarded,
#
that stamp comes on it forwarded.
#
So people kind of know, I mean, I'm sure it makes some difference.
#
But in general, a three part question, what is it that they can do about it?
#
The tech companies in terms of whether it's Facebook figuring out that, you know, what's
#
making it harder for people to spread fake news on WhatsApp or Google changing a search
#
algo's in such a way that fake news sites don't come up in the results and so on.
#
Number one, what can tech companies do about it?
#
Number two, how effective is pressure from civil society on these tech companies to change
#
And number three, in your experience, how seriously are tech companies actually taking
#
So I think that is a very big question.
#
I don't think I have answers to everything.
#
But I do understand some of the tech that is going in.
#
I'll give you a quick example.
#
Let's say when an image or video goes viral and which has an element of misinformation,
#
the pattern is that it will be shared from thousands of accounts with almost identical
#
This is the pattern that we see.
#
OK, so for example, there was this video which went viral, which said that, in Hyderabad,
#
a Marwadi woman was killed and burnt to death in order to wear burkha.
#
The heart-wrenching video shares it so much that it reaches Modiji and takes Modiji's
#
This was a four and a half minute video, one of the first videos that we debunked, which
#
was the most grotesque video you'll see.
#
A young woman was beaten up and burnt, and the video recording stops only when she dies
#
Now, this is being claimed that it started with that this is a Marwadi woman burnt because
#
of not wearing a burkha.
#
She married in a Muslim family, did not wear a burkha.
#
The video is actually from Gautamala.
#
The case was that there was three people, including this girl, they allegedly shot a
#
The mob came after them.
#
The two guys could run away.
#
She got caught in a mob and she was killed.
#
Now, whenever you see these videos, and we always put the screenshots when we write and
#
all these articles to show the extent of spread, you'll see that the same text that I said
#
word to word will be copy pasted across many, many, many accounts and the same video.
#
Whenever there's a pattern, technology is very good at recognizing patterns.
#
What Facebook has done now, for example, is that they have teamed up with various fact
#
checkers like Boom Live, etc.
#
Boom Live is doing very good work.
#
And so these fact checkers are supposed to go and point at instances of misinformation
#
that you know, this is a video and this is the actual fact.
#
And that is where now you see that thing on Facebook.
#
It says that this has been fact checked and you could you can read this fact check.
#
You know, so Facebook is trying to say that we are doing something about it.
#
But the thing is that fact checkers are humans, they are not going to be able to mark 10,000
#
They are only going to be able to mark two, three, four, five instances of it.
#
The rest of the 9,995, that is where tech comes into picture.
#
That is where if you really want to sort of fight against misinformation.
#
And many times on Facebook, things are shared privately.
#
I won't even see it in public, you know, with that private status, you're sharing it only
#
If you really want to sort of go after misinformation, then mark everything as false using tech.
#
That is one example that you can do.
#
And especially political misinformation always follows a pattern because it is different
#
from medical misinformation.
#
Here, you are generating complete fiction.
#
You're taking a video from Gautamala and you are saying this, that story is never going
#
to change throughout the duration of that particular misinformation.
#
So it is very easy to take down every instance using tech.
#
So that is my grouse that they have not done it.
#
For example, snobs.com had a partnership with Facebook for the same thing and they withdrew
#
I think two companies have withdrawn, two big companies from Facebook because they said
#
that it is a completely manual process.
#
Give us an API, you know, we don't see that we are making impact.
#
And so this is a common grouse that people have with these platforms.
#
And my question is, why have they not done this?
#
And again, when we talk about the alt news app, we can speak about it and that is exactly
#
You feed us a video, you feed us an image and we'll tell you this is the story corresponding
#
Tech can do a lot of things, even in terms of rankings, et cetera.
#
My experience in tech is limited to Wi-Fi and embedded systems.
#
So it's like an orthopedic talking about neuroscience, right?
#
So I'll talk about what I understand, but I do know, I do understand that there are
#
The second question was...
#
The second question was, what are the ways in which people in civil society can put pressure
#
on tech companies and do they take it seriously?
#
They do take it seriously.
#
And which is why they do things like WhatsApp saying that we'll limit the forward limit
#
We're going to put the forwarded tag.
#
I think the latest thing that they are going to roll out is frequently forwarded.
#
So it is not just forwarded and it is frequently forwarded.
#
They have not released any statistics internally as to whether, you know, it is a successful
#
And I don't have any data to speak of, but observationally, over elections, this forwarded
#
thing came before elections.
#
Observationally, over elections, I don't see it having made an impact.
#
Again, we have to continuously acknowledge that misinformation during these elections
#
was an organized attempt.
#
You know, so instead of one person putting it out to 100 groups in one time, you'll have
#
to put it out to five groups at one point in time.
#
There was a story by Huffington Post about how a tool, simple tool made to hack WhatsApp
#
web, not hack as in sort of use that to put out bulk misinformation was used.
#
So there are means and ways of getting around these.
#
You know, these are not the solutions.
#
And I keep calling this as their way of fighting.
#
It's a PR battle that they're fighting.
#
They're not trying to solve an issue.
#
So when there's pressure either from the government or from civil society, they do these little
#
little things to show that they are working on things, but these are not concrete solutions.
#
And that already kind of answers my third question, which is what tech companies are
#
And, and would it be fair to then sum that up and say that what they're essentially doing
#
They are reacting either to government pressure or to civil society pressure in sort of jugar
#
ways that, okay, there's a PR shitstorm happening, let's control it by doing this, but not really
#
thinking deeper about what the problem is.
#
And let's proactively figure out ways to fix it and see what would be coming.
#
And so for example, what happened in Myanmar, let's say, you know, it is my understanding
#
of social media and world in general is that if something happens one place, it is going
#
to repeat in patterns in other places.
#
So what happened in Myanmar was this whole Rohingya thing and Facebook, you know, a lot
#
of misinformation on Facebook, then it happened in Sri Lanka, it happened in Philippines.
#
So there's a pattern again, we should not forget that media tech companies are not the
#
So I'm not saying that, you know, that all the blame lies with tech companies, there's
#
a huge amount of blame which lies with government, especially the child kidnapping rumors, I
#
would put the blame much more on government than the tech companies.
#
And we should talk about it.
#
But despite that, you know, I don't think they have done enough, even though they know
#
that, for example, child kidnapping rumors are viral again.
#
We just wrote last week, six, I think, five to six articles about how these child kidnapping
#
And we actually sent it to the rep and WhatsApp.
#
We said that, and we did not blame WhatsApp in the tweet we put out, we said that it is
#
a police and government which has to take note of it, because in this, there's a very
#
limited thing that WhatsApp can do.
#
Last year, when the child kidnapping rumors happened, what eventually helped is not this
#
changing or forwarding limit, none of that, because that the child kidnapping rumor was
#
there over and it is a very, very interesting phenomenon.
#
Maybe we should talk about it.
#
Let's talk about it now.
#
So it was there over a certain period of time and it created a fear.
#
So for example, people in rural Telangana, Telangana gets as hot as Ahmedabad or Delhi,
#
etc. and there's a lot of poverty there and people would come out of the houses in summers
#
Okay, this last summer, they were sleep inside the house and they created this self vigilante
#
groups to look for these child kidnappers.
#
What did this rumor say?
#
The rumor said that it was a blurb of text with multiple images and one or two videos
#
The text said that there are X number of people, 500 and 600 people coming from outside, they're
#
going to kidnap your children, traffic their organs and this message has been sent out
#
by the following police commissioner.
#
And then there are videos of dead people, bloodied people.
#
There's one video, which was actually from Pakistan, where in the original video, there
#
are two people on bike who come and there are these little kids who are playing cricket
#
They pick up a kid and go away and then they come back and show a placard saying that this
#
is how easy it is to kidnap children in Karachi.
#
That part where they show the placard was cut off and only the part where they show
#
the bikers come and that clip video was circulated along with this, essentially trying to say
#
that these are the people on prowl in your area.
#
Now a few aspects of this, what eventually stopped it and which is where the government
#
responsibility comes is that when 30 people died, eventually Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad made
#
I know that this is a state law, law is a matter of a state, but when it is happening
#
all over the country, that is when the union government should have reacted much before
#
and eventually the police and the administration, they fanned out into different areas physically
#
and telling people that, look, this is not true, this is false, this is not true, this
#
is false, this is not true and that is what eventually stopped the killing.
#
So it is nothing that Facebook or WhatsApp could do to stop the killing.
#
It was a quick educational initiative, a small, you know, on just that little point that look,
#
this is, you know, there was fear among people and all you need is somebody you trust and
#
authority to tell them that this is not true.
#
That is one aspect of it and which is where I completely blame the government for what
#
happened and what continues to happen that they have not taken any initiative as far
#
as digital empowerment is concerned.
#
But the very interesting part of these child kidnapping rumors was that it happened in
#
multiple states, which meant that all these rumors were being translated.
#
And as it moved from town to town, for example, if it is in Kutch, it will say that the Kutch
#
police commissioner, it has given this thing.
#
If it is in Ahmedabad, it will say, Ahmedabad police commissioner has given this thing.
#
So who's changing that?
#
Who's changing in Dhule, five people were killed.
#
Again, it was a local police commissioner.
#
So what intrigued me and I don't think anybody has been able to answer that question was
#
there was somebody who is changing these things, you know, this tiny bits of information in
#
otherwise the rumor is same.
#
The translation is same.
#
But as it went from place to place, the name of the police commissioner, it kept changing.
#
And that intrigued me a lot that who's doing this?
#
You could never figure out and it is viral again now.
#
There were 15 attacks in Madhya Pradesh when we wrote the article.
#
Today I haven't confirmed this, but I just read just before coming to this podcast that
#
there have been three attacks in Bihar, but I have not confirmed this, but I just read
#
Recording this on the morning of August 15 is really interesting because I can imagine
#
someone starting that rumor because it's sensational and that sells.
#
And then it's misinformation where people are spreading it, but it's not out of malice.
#
But then there's an element of disinformation because people are actually changing the detail
#
of who the commissioner is and all that.
#
And you have any theories on what's going on here?
#
I don't know who would do that.
#
There's no political gain out of it.
#
Or at least I don't understand if there is a political gain.
#
And like, you know, so when I was growing up in the eighties, if the government wanted
#
to make an announcement, you had one television channel, Doordarshan, and somebody would come
#
and say, okay, whatever, typhoon expected here, don't go out or whatever.
#
Today, of course, media is completely dispersed and so on.
#
How is it then that when misinformation spreads like this, what is it that the government
#
The government has every tool on its address display.
#
Even now you have All India Radio in villages, etc.
#
I mean, these kinds of things, you know, I'm not talking about, again, there are multiple
#
different strategies needed to counter different kinds of misinformation.
#
But let's talk about these child kidnapping rumors.
#
There was a person who was killed in Ahmedabad.
#
We did a story five days before this person was killed.
#
And in a city like Ahmedabad, if you can read a WhatsApp forward, you can read a billboard.
#
There are billboards at every, every crossroad.
#
All you have to identify is the areas in which this, you know, where people are more likely
#
to fall for this misinformation and put billboards that if you come across this, this is false.
#
I mean, there are so many things that can be done.
#
You know, you ask the radio organizations to keep broadcasting it.
#
When there's a need to do it, government finds a way.
#
And now, for example, Orissa doing such a good job at getting people in shelters, because
#
in the last two, three years, they have been battered with cyclones and floods, but they
#
have made sure that people, you know, are not caught in the storm.
#
And how do you do that?
#
By communicating with people, right?
#
So there are means and ways for the government to communicate with people.
#
You use those same means to fight misinformation.
#
It's just that they have not recognized this as an issue of high priority at this point
#
So Orissa government is a great example, I mean, of, you know, where there was a will,
#
they actually went out and got it done.
#
And at the same time, you could say that there's no rule of law in most of the countries.
#
So I mean, this is classically fall under the rubric of you need to maintain the rule
#
I want to take you back to a bigger philosophical question and something that you alluded to
#
earlier in the show when you spoke about how the postcard news guy got arrested and at
#
first you welcomed it, but then you had second thoughts about it.
#
And you know, just sort of thinking aloud, I'm a free speech absolutist.
#
So I just totally believe in that you should not find reasons to clamp down on the free
#
However, if I mean, there's also the harm principle.
#
If someone is actually putting out free information that leads to people being killed, whether
#
it's used to people being lynched or whether it's these child kidnapping rumors, if somebody
#
willfully does it, then I believe that the law has a right to sort of take action against
#
him in only those cases where it's direct and it's sort of malified in that sense.
#
How has your thinking on this evolved?
#
My thinking on this has evolved in the sense that number one, there's no way to find out
#
who actually put out the disinformation.
#
We are in a world of end to end encryption, whether it's WhatsApp signal, et cetera.
#
So if we ever create laws more specifically to target misinformation, number what we will
#
be doing is not criminalizing misinformation, we'll be criminalizing information.
#
Misinformation is a subset of information.
#
And so what we will be doing is criminalizing information.
#
Now there are different kinds of rumors.
#
So for example, medical misinformation, when the NEPA virus thing happened in Kerala, message
#
went viral claiming that if you have Jelsimium 200, a homeopathic drug, it will protect you
#
Now NEPA virus had an 85% mortality rate, a rumor like this is very dangerous at this
#
But the people who are forwarding it are again forwarding it from a position of fear and
#
concern that it might help somebody who I know in Kerala.
#
There's no mal intent here.
#
If you create a law which criminalizes misinformation, or as I said, information, the court is not
#
going to see whether this is political misinformation, whether there's mal intent.
#
I mean, we know how judiciary works.
#
And there's a likelihood that somebody who's just put it out because of genuine concern
#
First of all, you can never find who started that.
#
And the police just in order to make a case that they're doing something, they'll pick
#
up a couple of people who probably have nothing to do with the starting of the rumor and put
#
That is how I see this playing out.
#
And again, the same thing with political misinformation also, a lot of people are just forwarding
#
The creators are very few and we don't know who the creators are.
#
There's no insight into who the creators are.
#
Most of the people are just forwarding and forwarding.
#
How do you just start arresting people just because they're forwarding misinformation?
#
And again, here I have another point to make, which is if you don't teach a child how to
#
cross the road, you can't blame a child when the child crosses the road and is unable to
#
Just teach the child to cross the road.
#
So we have not taught people how to deal with a world where there's so much excess of information.
#
It is not just misinformation, there's excess of information.
#
And how do you deal with it?
#
I mean, you have a cough and you go on Google and you say that I have a cough.
#
Depending on what sort of mental state you are in, you might conclude that you have cancer
#
or you have an ordinary cough.
#
So we have not taught people how to deal with a world where there's so much information.
#
And in that, when people make mistakes, to criminalize information is something that
#
And I'll ask you to elaborate on both these sub points of medical misinformation, number
#
one, and number two, the need for education.
#
But before that, is it then fair to sum up your position on this to say that whether
#
or not a law against willful, malified disinformation is justified or not, in practice, what will
#
happen is that any such law will become a very blunt tool, which is used to randomly
#
crack down on misinformation and therefore will be a threat to free speech in the hands
#
And especially again, the way things go about in India, it will be used by the ruling party
#
against people in the opposition.
#
So that will also be a consequence of that, that it will be used selectively.
#
I mean, the law enforcement agents will not do their due diligence, that is one part,
#
but it will be used selectively by the ruling party against people in the opposition.
#
These are very wise points and I agree with you entirely.
#
Now, elaborate a little bit, like most people think of misinformation, disinformation, fake
#
news, whatever you call it, as something that is political in nature or sensational rumors.
#
And one of the things that you've been pointing out to me is that medical misinformation
#
is something that we need to look at very, very seriously.
#
It has grave consequences.
#
So medical misinformation is the other thing that we concentrate on.
#
The editor of Alt News Science is Dr. Sumaya Shaikh.
#
She is a neuroscientist based in Sweden.
#
It might be interesting to have a conversation with her because she's also working on aggression
#
So the medical misinformation is equally dangerous.
#
So for example, in Gujarat, in certain villages, there was a rumor that the measles rubella
#
vaccine, RSS has mixed something in it, and people who will take it will become impotent.
#
And the vaccination rates drop dramatically in these villages.
#
Now, these are the things which will never get reported by media because you never know
#
Political misinformation, you can see how it plays out, but a bunch of kids not getting,
#
taking vaccine and what happens in their life cycle, you will never know, right?
#
You don't know who has taken a vaccine, who has not taken a vaccine, why that person did
#
So when the dengue season happens, there's always this thing that if you have papaya
#
products, it will help in increasing your platelet level.
#
So Sumaya wrote an article saying that there's no conclusive research to say that that happens.
#
But somebody who falls for that, they may ignore what is a prescribed medication.
#
And right now, I would also again blame the government of India for a lot of pseudo information
#
they have created that's this entire ministry called Ayush.
#
And there's so much pseudo information, pseudo medical information that goes out of it that
#
they are creating a culture of anti-science, they are creating a culture of the pseudo
#
science and that is extremely dangerous.
#
And which is why, and people again, in political misinformation, there's a pattern that as
#
I was talking about, you're weaving a fiction and it follows a pattern.
#
In medical misinformation, there is no pattern.
#
Once in your head, you think that papaya cures dengue, you'll create a video about it, you
#
So it disperses without a pattern and it is extremely difficult to track misinformation.
#
A very important aspect of fighting misinformation is the ability to track misinformation and
#
medical misinformation is very, very difficult to track.
#
One point you made that I'd like to amplify is that this carries an opportunity cost like
#
when I rail against homeopathy, which is a complete pseudo scientist nonsense.
#
The problem isn't only that the medicine will not work because people assume that okay,
#
sugar pills, what harm can it do?
#
The problem also is that you could be relying on that instead of something that will actually
#
And the cost of that could even be and has been in some cases, death, right?
#
And people say that there are no side effects.
#
Yes, of course, you're going to take sugar.
#
You know, unless you have diabetes or something like that, but you know, these are the kind
#
of theories that are propagated that, you know, take it, you know, it has no side effects
#
and that is a worst shoe that it is propagated that it has no side effects.
#
But the fact is that, you know, it is not going to cure anything.
#
I mean, just essentially.
#
So how do you sort of fight medical misinformation like this?
#
Like, is it a different kind of battle at old news?
#
Because you know, when somebody spreads a picture and says a picture of, you know, a riot, for
#
example, in Muzaffarabad, and you have your tools to do your reverse image searches, and
#
you figure out where the image is really from, and you can correct it immediately.
#
But medical and I guess you guys are very trained eyes and kind of now being immediately
#
able to spot what is rubies.
#
But for medical, it must be much harder, surely, it is much, much harder.
#
And the main issue is tracking medical misinformation.
#
There's so many videos on YouTube, it is impossible to go and listen to every video
#
saying what they are talking about.
#
But there is a lot of medical misinformation out there and people are going to YouTube
#
listening to these videos, whatever, you know, and you know, if you have this, this is going
#
And at this point of time, we, you know, I think we've had much more strategy in terms
#
of rebelling, not the word rebel, but sort of going against political misinformation.
#
But medical misinformation, it is still we are trying to figure out what to do.
#
And this especially needs a wider support.
#
Even media organizations are so terrible at reporting.
#
Just the other day, somebody said that Tata salt has cyanide.
#
One gentleman at a press conference said that Tata salt has cyanide.
#
Everybody printed it, everybody without any fact checking.
#
Some university in Jamnagar killed a few cells using cow urine.
#
Office of India has an article next day, cow urine can solve the issue of cancer.
#
So that is terrible, terrible journalism and we have seen real life impact of it.
#
A personal example, there was a person who was working with us in the unions and his
#
son got lung cancer at the same time my father got lung cancer, but it was a less aggressive
#
When he eventually died and when you went for his final rites, we were told that the
#
last two weeks of his life, he was fed only cow urine.
#
And they starved the person to death and that person was anyway going to die and you made
#
his last two weeks the most terrible one can imagine.
#
But none of this will get reported.
#
Political misinformation has real ramifications, has sort of, you know, it is something that
#
you can observe, but medical misinformation has ramifications in this form, having in
#
houses across the, and they don't even know that they have been fed misinformation, so
#
it will never get reported.
#
So medical misinformation is something we don't recognize and the pseudoscience that
#
we are putting out more and more and there's so much support for pseudoscience now that,
#
you know, it is very dangerous.
#
And the pseudoscience and these dangerous ways of beliefs are just actually embedded
#
It's not as if you need a misinformation campaign to get it out, it's more of a corrective
#
that you need to take, which brings me to my next question about education.
#
You know, you've pointed out the importance of educating people on how to recognize misinformation,
#
dealing with misinformation.
#
Tell me a little bit about that.
#
Yes, so there are three parts.
#
So one is we started off as a journalistic intervention, Alt News.
#
We've now come up with an app, it's a technological intervention.
#
But I think one of the most important things is educational intervention, where multiple
#
So Alt News is planning, these are things that we are planning that have not been executed.
#
But over the next five years, we want to go to low income communities, for example.
#
Now, these are the communities where we know that the Alt News brand is never going to
#
reach, especially because we can only publish in two languages, English and Hindi.
#
And even Hindi is not going that far.
#
So what we realized is that there is a need to create quote unquote, misinformation doctors
#
or fake news doctors in these low income communities where you create influencers.
#
The way a lot of these rural areas work is that there are social influencers who have
#
a huge impact on the society.
#
So what we want to be able to do is go and identify certain individuals in various communities
#
and teach them how to spot misinformation and create a network for them.
#
They may not be able to sort of have answers to 100% of misinformation.
#
But through the app that we are creating, we want to create a network for them so that
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they can query us and sort of say that, okay, this is the misinformation that is being circulated
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What could be, you know, what is the truth about this and things like that.
#
So we want people to be able to go to this local influencer and ask, is this true or
#
You know, this is from the point of view of these child kidnapping rumors, et cetera.
#
If there are enough influencers in a small area where, you know, the person can go and
#
ask or if then there's a mob going on and somebody can say that, no, look, this is wrong.
#
And I think it will have an impact in terms of local communities.
#
Second thing that we want to do is start, create curriculum at school level, especially
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This is the time when your prejudices haven't completely set in and this is a time when
#
a corrective measure will most especially work, whether it is against misinformation
#
in science and health or misinformation in politics and especially science and health.
#
So that is where you teach these students and these also students again, you know, who
#
will have to go to Google and figure out which university they want to join.
#
There'll be 10,000 websites which will say this university, this is good, this, you know,
#
Now, how does a student handle this excess of information?
#
So we also are hoping to deal with that to teach students not only how to spot misinformation,
#
but how to handle excess of information that is at school level.
#
And then we want to concentrate on two things.
#
One is journalism schools, where again, we are talking with certain universities where
#
we go and create a module, a two week module or a one week module where we teach journalism
#
students how to look at misinformation.
#
The hope is that you have more and more people looking at misinformation, there's less and
#
less of misinformation, even though they may not be at editor level, but I think if there's
#
a larger mass of journalists who are able to spot misinformation, there will be a louder
#
voice against misinformation in mainstream media, leading to steady decline of misinformation.
#
Mainstream media also puts out misinformation.
#
That is also a thing that needs to be done.
#
And second thing is we want to get in touch with people who work on ground, social workers,
#
et cetera, and teach them how to spot misinformation and again, create a network for all of these,
#
teach academics because we did some trainings in partnership with Google and data leads.
#
We taught about 120 or journalists and what we have observed is the academics who have
#
been the most active in going out and furthering that, that look, we, you know, taking those
#
trainings and training other people.
#
So we want to teach multiple academics, people who are teaching in those journalism colleges,
#
because once you teach an academic, that person can teach year after year.
#
So it has much more repetitive effect.
#
We don't know how far we will be able to go.
#
This is a massive task that we want to take up.
#
We don't have either the money or resources, but these are things that need to be done.
#
And the hope is that once you start at a small level and you have more people getting into
#
it, then sort of, you know, it increases organically.
#
Has there so far been any interest for these courses from either journalistic organizations
#
or media or sort of institutions?
#
We have spoken to multiple institutions and they are willing to include such a module,
#
one week to two week module where students are taught various tools of how to spot misinformation
#
Yes, there has been interest.
#
Do you see an online MOOC on it as well so that people can kind of learn online all the
#
There are, for example, there's a website called firstdraft.com.
#
They have an online training.
#
They have two trainings.
#
One is a short training and one is a longer training, which is meant for journalists.
#
People can go, it's a free training.
#
People just have to sign up for it and they can do that.
#
Something that can, like that can be done at a larger level, definitely.
#
But there are already resources out there.
#
Let's talk about the Altnews app, which was just released, which I downloaded yesterday,
#
played around a bit with it.
#
And what was the impetus behind it and what does it do?
#
So we are trying to solve a small section of the issue of misinformation.
#
The observation that we made that a large majority of misinformation, especially things
#
that get circulated more viral, is in the form of images and videos which are circulated
#
with a certain text blurb.
#
And usually the misinformation is in the text blurb.
#
That is, you take a video image from somewhere and you say that this represents an event
#
So we saw that a large majority of misinformation is this kind.
#
Now the thing is that, again, coming back to technology, Google started whatever X number
#
of years ago and it was a wonderful search engine for text.
#
That is, you put in a text, you put in a few keywords and it throws back results, okay?
#
But that was okay in a world when the content was text heavy.
#
Now we are living in a world where the content is image video heavy.
#
There's so much video content, image content being created every single day.
#
And again, it brings back to the point of Jio, et cetera, and cheap mobile phones that
#
it enabled people to capture videos, capture images, and put it out on social media because
#
of the cheap data connections.
#
And let's say about 20, 25 years ago, because camera equipment, all of that was so expensive,
#
that most of the video and imagery that was coming out, we knew who's putting out, we
#
know the photographer, we know all of that does proper attribution.
#
But now people just take videos anywhere and you don't know where that has happened.
#
There's no sense of time or place.
#
So there is a need to document videos and images at a large scale and create a search
#
So what this app does is that we are trying to rethink search engine in terms of misinformation.
#
We are not a Google where we can create a worldwide image video search engine.
#
But what we are doing is we have created a search engine of images and videos against
#
our database of fact checks.
#
And we also taking content from other fact checkers.
#
So you throw an image or video at this app.
#
And if you already fact checked it, it will search against our database using various
#
algorithms and throw back the corresponding fact check.
#
And the hope is to do it at a, create a much larger database where we are documenting because
#
there are so many videos, especially violent videos that come out these days.
#
And we have seen that eventually they become a source of misinformation.
#
So start documenting all these images and videos, even if there's no misinformation
#
corresponding to it, but start documenting that because we ourselves will forget there's
#
so much video inventory.
#
I have only, you know, these days we can look at a video and said, okay, we saw it at this
#
point of time, but eventually it'll be impossible to do that because just because there's so
#
So if we start documenting it now, even though we have debunked a video, let's say two years
#
ago, I might forget two years down the line, but I can throw a video at this app and it
#
will give me a result that look, you wrote a fact check for it two years ago.
#
So that is what we are trying to do with this app that is create a video slash image search
#
engine at a limited level against what, you know, things that are typically being used
#
for misinformation or there have a proclivity to be used for misinformation in the future.
#
And does the app also serve as a means for people alerting you to stories you might not
#
have already covered, but alerting you that, hey, you know, here's this image that came
#
And even if you haven't already done it, do you then get those images and decide if you
#
should do a story or not?
#
So there's a separate app that we will create for it.
#
We are calling it the misinformation scanner.
#
So like the virus scanner, where that will be proactively looking at your gallery.
#
And we won't be uploading images or videos, but it will be like you have been exposed
#
to misinformation, that kind of a thing.
#
That is another idea that we are working on that, again, all this database that we are
#
collecting, there's an API layer, essentially, this is a layer which answers to the question,
#
what is a fact check corresponding to this image or video?
#
Now, this layer can be connected to various things like a Twitter bot or Facebook messenger
#
So in the application that we are thinking is a misinformation scanner, you install this
#
application and you'll keep looking at your gallery, it is not going to upload your images
#
So there's no issue of privacy getting compromised, it is going to upload only certain parameters
#
of those images, video.
#
And if we determine that you received a video, which has been circulated with the element
#
of misinformation will alert you.
#
And so I am quite excited, hopefully that app will come out in six to eight months.
#
So that will be sort of proactively telling people that, look, there's misinformation.
#
So when they go back to the WhatsApp groups, they'll say, oh, I saw this, you know, all
#
these are already done an article already, let me push an all news article.
#
And then they can use this other app to look for a fact check corresponding to misinformation.
#
So there are things that can be done in technology to sort of push back against misinformation.
#
And it also strikes me that, you know, you've been a pioneer on all this in building these
#
systems, building all news, you've practically, you know, made it a mission to do all of this.
#
But the thing is that any big media company, if it had the will, could also have done all
#
And I think at some level, you would be very glad if all news wasn't needed, if people
#
were doing it all, all over the place and it absolutely.
#
And again, it goes back to the not for profit.
#
So we create a not for profit, knowing that we cannot have 100 employees, we can have
#
15 to 20 employees max, because that is, you know, a crowdfunding cannot fund a hundred
#
So which means that we can never imagine to have an impact that mainstream media does.
#
We impact the mainstream media.
#
That is, we create models which others can follow.
#
So Alt News started as a fact checking thing, now Times of India is fact checking, India
#
Today is fact checking, Dhanik Jagran is fact checking.
#
That is where I take, you know, I think Boom Live and Alt News can take some credit that
#
it is we who forced them into fact checking.
#
You know, it is we who created the model and forced them into fact checking.
#
Similarly, in case of this app, I won't say media companies, but I would say tech companies.
#
They could have given us an app, something like this.
#
It's a very simple thought.
#
It is not a complicated thought, right?
#
You know that there's more image and videos and you need a search engine to figure out
#
It's a very simple thought.
#
I mean, you can build it into Google for that matter, the Google app itself.
#
So now, so what we are trying to do is create this and then create all these applications
#
So let's say you tag Alt News, where the Twitterbot is being developed right now.
#
So let's say you tag Alt News on a video image.
#
If you have fact checked it, it will give you an automated answer, right?
#
Now create all these things and then tell the tech companies that look, we have done this.
#
Why haven't you done this?
#
So that is what we are trying to do again when it comes to the educational initiative.
#
Create a module, create a model, if you can successfully implement it in one small section,
#
then first of all, you know that there is a success story there that we could implement
#
it in this one small section and that ways of replicating it otherwise.
#
When a neighboring district sees that, okay, this has implemented, let me do that.
#
And as it grows, the hope is that the model gets replicated.
#
So as a small not-for-profit website, the focus will always be on creating models that
#
can be replicated because we can never imagine having an impact with people who have a lot
#
So create models and hope that others sort of take those models and go further.
#
Pratik, now I'll segue into, you know, as we approach the end of the episode, I'll segue
#
into the personal and just ask you that man, you know, you live in Ahmedabad for God's
#
sake, but there have been threats against you.
#
And you know, to me, you're one of the bravest people in the internet space in India.
#
How do you deal with it?
#
I mean, do you feel scared sometimes, do you feel worried?
#
Does it impact your social life or the way you live?
#
Number one, first of all, you know, we are publishing, writing, talking in English.
#
We are talking to a largely urban middle-class crowd.
#
That is a privilege in itself.
#
We have seen so many people getting killed in India in rural areas.
#
You know, somebody covering a mining story, that person is, a truck runs over that person.
#
Remember the name of the reporter, right?
#
Because that person was never there in the urban scape.
#
So this privilege itself gives you a sense of immunity that if tomorrow something happens
#
to me, probably there are journalists who have done much more work, but if something
#
happens to them, they will be forgotten.
#
But because I have these 150,000 followers on Twitter that I'm tweeting every day and
#
people know me by name and some people know me by face.
#
So that is a privilege in itself.
#
So I think threats against journalists in urban areas, as opposed to rural areas, people
#
play up the threats against people in urban areas much more.
#
What people in rural areas, journalists, string reporters are at much more danger of being,
#
having physical elimination.
#
Second thing is that when it comes to a physical threat, it doesn't matter where you are, whether
#
in Ahmedabad, whether in Bangalore, we saw what happened to Gauri Lankesh.
#
So location doesn't matter.
#
The only thing that matters at that point of time is again, something that I have learned
#
from my parents and my mother is the director of the company and she is the rock behind
#
the company who makes sure that we don't falter.
#
That is having everything speak and span when it comes to finance.
#
So for example, we have donations.
#
We don't take a single rupee of cash donation.
#
The bank has given ratified, made sure that only the right kind of people make bank accounts.
#
There's no cash transaction whatsoever.
#
So that is what we're doing.
#
We're keeping everything speak and span, paying our taxes, doing everything.
#
So again, these are experiences that are not necessarily mine.
#
These are experiences which my parents have been sort of working against.
#
In 79, there was no BJP government in Gujarat.
#
It was Congress government.
#
BJP government came only in 95 and the organization is working since 79.
#
So they have the experience of working in various establishments and that experience
#
is an extremely important experience which can be sort of taken ahead for different such
#
And you know, to a lot of people listening to this episode, you're already a hero.
#
I mean, I'd call you, I don't want to embarrass you, but I'd call you one of the heroes of
#
But I actually have a question for you, which is a functional question, which is that if
#
people listening to this are convinced by this cause and they want to help you, they
#
want to help AltNews, they want to help all the things that they're doing.
#
So for example, if you're somebody who's a software programmer, we need help in developing
#
We are going to open source all of this.
#
AltNews, again, something that AltNews, all the things that we have written, it's always
#
So our content is under Creative Commons license.
#
We have never charged a single penny for our content.
#
We always say, take our content, do whatever you want to do with the content.
#
So let's say if people want to translate that content, take our content, translate it in
#
your local languages, put it out in our portals, just all we need is credit that it was originally
#
written by AltNews, but start translating content in your local languages.
#
If you're a techie, we need help in terms of, you know, being able, getting software help.
#
It becomes a challenge to organize people coming from different people.
#
And we have not figured out a way, if we, we are actually getting a lot of help, a lot
#
of people email me saying that I want to help you, I want to help you.
#
The problem is how do you manage all of these people in different places?
#
In Ahmedabad, all of us sit in a small office and, you know, you can shout across, but when
#
people are sort of in geographically different areas that manage, the managerial overhead
#
So we have not figured that out, but there are various ways in, you know, if you're,
#
if you're an academic, you know, we want to come out and sort of train you all, you know,
#
if all academics can come together, it'll be easier for us to train 30 academics sitting
#
in one room and telling them that this is how you look at misinformation.
#
So there are a variety of things that can be done.
#
And I think, you know, I don't think all the ideas and solutions need to come from here.
#
People are very ingenious when it comes to these things and they will have their own
#
ideas of how to do things.
#
So, yeah, I mean, the thing is to do things at small levels and we can sort of bring those
#
efforts together under a platform.
#
Prateek, thanks so much for being so generous with your time today.
#
I learned a lot talking to you.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do head on over to altnews.in and download
#
the AltNews app and give it a test drive.
#
You can follow Prateek on Twitter at free underscore thinker, that's free underscore
#
You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in, thinkprakriti.com
#
The Scene and the Unseen is supported by the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre
#
for research and education and public policy.
#
Takshashila offers 12 week courses in public policy, technology policy and strategic studies
#
for both full time students and working professionals.
#
Visit takshashila.org.in for more details.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
India's a massive subcontinent home to truly stunning diversity.
#
Behind the veils of smoke that obscure our thriving cities, our history is still alive,
#
glimmering like sequins waiting to be discovered.
#
And if you, like me, are straining to hear the echoes of our past, this podcast is for
#
I'm Aniruddha Kanissetti, a history and geopolitics researcher and I host Echoes of India, a history
#
podcast about India, by Indians and for Indians.
#
In Echoes, we journey through the complex histories of South Asia and what they can
#
teach us about our globalised world.
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Tune in every Wednesday on IVMPodcast.com or your favourite podcast app.
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Find new episodes every Wednesday on IVMPodcast app, website or wherever you listen to podcasts.
