Pratik Sinha of Alt News: Mischief mongers creating havoc on Internet

Pratik Sinha, 36, gave up his career two years ago as a freelance software engineer working on offshore projects, to devote full-time on developing Alt News, a fact-checking portal.

Today, he is recognised by global giant Google as someone who sniffs out fake news, morphed videos and photo-shopped images. Hundreds of social media users contact him every month inquiring if a photo or video they have received on WhatsApp is genuine or fake. Pratik and his team of 8-10 young researchers use their online tools, make phone calls and of course use their intelligence and common sense to find out if a particular ‘story’, image or video is genuine or fake.

Unlike newspapers which simply publish a ‘correction’ in their next day’s edition regretting their erroneous reporting, Alt News explains the process they followed to establish the veracity of the information in dispute. “We want to train and educate the users on how to differentiate between truth and falsehood,” says Pratik.

“There has been an exponential growth in the number of Internet users in India. The number of Internet users in villages has grown thrice as much as those in towns. This has been because of availability of cheap smart phones,” he says. What is worrying, he points out, is that most of these people are first time users with no Internet literacy.

“It is the first time Internet users who easily fall for rumours and outright lies. They are the most vulnerable and become target of mischief mongers out to emotionally exploit people to achieve their political end,” says Pratik.

Pratik has to cut short his interview with me to attend to a phone call. “I am sorry, this was a reminder call from the organiser of my two-hour interaction with the students of mass communication of a university. A pick-up vehicle has come to take me to the university,” he says.

I ask him if I can attend his class. He agrees.

Pratik, with the help of a power-point presentation, shows to the students some photographs and video clips that had become viral on social media such as Facebook, Youtube and WhatsApp which had triggered off mob violence in various parts of the country resulting in the deaths of 26 people in a span of three months in 2018.

Shockingly, only a couple of students from a class of two dozen-odd could differentiate between a genuine and photo-shopped image of national leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Nawaz Sharief and Narendra Modi which were spread on social media.

When this was the level of vulnerability of undergraduate students, one can imagine how susceptible neo-literate, barely literate and illiterate people in villages and towns would be.

The number of Internet users in India has exceeded half a billion people in 2018. Fixed at a whopping 566 million, this success has been propelled by rural internet growth and usage. The number of Internet users in India grew has grown 18 per cent annually. Internet penetration in India has reached 40 per cent of the population.

A staggering 200 million active users are from rural areas. The most common device to access the Internet is a mobile phone, accounting for 97 per cent.

“Typically, the headman of a village and a couple of land owners become the purveyors of ‘news’ accessed by them on their smart phone. The rest of the villagers believe what the headman tells them he has received on his phone. This is how ‘news’, half-true or false, spreads like a wildfire,” says Pratik.

Fake news is made viral on social media to tarnish the image of a public figure, spread hatred against a particular community, market dubious or questionable healthcare and beauty drugs, creams and food products by political or commercial organisations, he says.

The right wing was the first to organise itself on social media much before any other political party. The Sangh Parivar first started using Facebook, Twitter and Youtube before and during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

A large majority of misinformation spread through social media is in the form of misleading images and videos with a text blurb. As much as 70 per cent of misinformation is related to inciting communal passion.

There is then an organised attempt to target minorities and show them in poor light. Another motive is to target individuals.

“We at Alt News are trying to detect and expose the business of spreading fake news. But, given the deep penetration of Internet, it is a gargantuan task for a small group like ours,” he says.

Therefore, Pratik is working with a group of software engineers to develop an application to enable individual users to fact-check. As his long-term plan, Alt News wants to come out with a curriculum for school and college students to prepare them for meeting the challenge of walking on the information highway.