Fake news is fuelling majoritarian politics, says Pratik Sinha 

In a span of less than one year, Alt News has emerged as one of the top-ranking fact-checking websites in the country with over 37000 followers on Twitter and 64,000 on Facebook. A former soft-ware engineer and co-founder of Alt News, Pratik Sinha has been persistently debunking viral fake videos, misleading pictures, conspiracy theories and bullying in cyber space. In an interview with the National Herald, Pratik asserted that fighting purveyors of fake news is becoming increasingly imperative as it has reached epidemic proportions, leading to brutal killings in the country and communal polarisation. Here’re the excerpts:

Q: How did you get the inspiration for setting up Alt News?

A: Well before I started my fact-checking website in February 2017, i was already doing this kind of work with the (anonymous) administrator of the ‘Unofficial Subramanian Swamy’ Facebook page.

Q: What are the major challenges that you are facing at Alt New?

A: Our reach is limited. Even if we debunk a fake news story, our story doesn’t reach the desired number of people and goes largely unnoticed. We want our content to be translated into as many languages as possible to reach the masses. But for all this we need financial resources. We largely bank upon donations by concerned citizens. We want to emerge as a credible voice and create an impact. It will become possible the day our stories start killing viral fake stories and malacious propaganda on social media. Initially, we worked voluntarily for at least ten months. Subsequently, we got our organisation called Pravda Media Foundation registered as non profit organisation. From November, we have started crowd funding. We have hired some people and look forward to building a dedicated team.

Q: How serious is the menace of fake news in India?

A: It’s certainly growing. It has reached dangerous proportions. It has created animosity between different communities leading to riots in some places and led to brutal killings. In Jharkhand seven people were beaten to death earlier this year over a false WhatsAap message that had gone viral. The message warned of strangers who could possibly be “child lifters”. The victims were mistaken as members of child lifting gang. There are a lot of issues involved: Fake news is being used for polarising opinions and make electoral gains. Fake news has been used against various individuals for character assassination for raising their voice against political establishment. It has been used by political parties to reap political dividends. If it keeps growing at this pace, it is likely to create law and order problems in future and create rifts in the society. It has become imperative to counter this menace as smart-phones and affordable data-packs have given internet access to millions of people. Social media is increasingly becoming a carrier of fake-news and misleading information.

Q: Who do you think gets benefitted from the production and circulation of fake news?

A: Clearly, those who pursue majoritarian politics. Multiple fake videos, pictures and other content is put out to stoke communal passions so that Hindus kill Muslims and Muslims kill Hindus, so on and so forth. The only aim is to create rift between various communities of the country. But as far as who does it, there is no evidence unless one gets caught. It’s difficult to figure out the source of fake news. In the world of WhatsApp, for instance, every message or video or a picture shared between two parties has end to end encryption. It has a unique set of keys even when the same message is further passed on. So the trail of the fake news can’t be located; even WhatsApp would find it difficult to track it.

Q: What kind of tools do you use for your work?

A: Mainly it’s a lot of Google searching and reverse image search, twitter search and Facebook search among other search engines. We make sure if some information or video or picture regarding a particular event is already there on internet and then relate the two to find out the facts.

Q: How do you evaluate the role of mainstream media in countering fake news?

A: It’s not doing enough. A lot of dedication, time, investigation and analysis go into fact-checking before exposing a fake-story. There is hardly any decent investigative report we get to read in national dailies. Or for that matter, electronic media seems more interested in just grabbing more and more eyeballs. In fact, we have exposed Times Now and Republic TV. Times Now ran a prime time story based on a seven year old photoshopped picture. Similarly, we also debunked how Republic tweeted out “first and exclusive pictures” of JEM militants , passing off an old photograph.

Q: Major exposes of fake-news by Alt News in 2017?

A: The one that created a lot of noise was how Home Ministry used picture of Spain-Morocco border to show Indian border floodlighting in its annual report. We also exposed the person who was indirectly threatening NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar over WhatsAap and is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Twitter. We also exposed those who were abusing Gauri Lankesh. During Gujarat elections, we exposed how both BJP and Congress used photoshopped pictures to influence elections through misinformation campaigns. Basically, we go beyond fake news, we fact-check and expose false information, videos and pictures circulating on social networking sites. Additionally, we report news which the mainstream media often skips or provides inadequate coverage on issues ranging from caste and religion based atrocities and discrimination, labour struggles and farmer struggles etc.

Q: Do we need a legislation in our country as a deterrent for those who generate and spread fake-news?

A: I don’t think so. Fake news can’t be checked with legal methods. I would recommend an educational approach in a country like ours. Just like the government issues weather advisories, it can do the same when it comes to major fake stories or rumours doing rounds on social media. It can be done in an apolitical fashion. Radio is an effective medium and can be used for this purpose. Unless the mainstream media dutifully performs its job of educating and informing the people and government takes constructive measures, fake news propaganda can’t be checked.