Analysing Indian Social Media Users Spreading Bangladesh-Related 'Fake News'
A report claimed that 72 percent of all misinformation related to the Bangladesh crisis came from Indian accounts.
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An analysis by a Bangladeshi fact-checking organisation Rumor Scanner found that “72% of the accounts spreading… misinformation” related to Bangladesh’s interim head Mohammed Yunus and the socio-political climate “are located in India”.
The Quint’s WebQoof, which also has been working to debunking mis and disinformation, related to the crisis in Bangladesh has published at least 70 discrete fact-checks since August. In our work, we were able to identify six unique X accounts, all subscribers of X Premium, which routinely spread harmful narratives and misinformation related to Bangladesh - with some having millions of followers and garners even more views.
It was not just X, users on other social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube were also responsible in spreading disinformation on the topic. We also covered misinformation spread by Hindi and English media organisations. In this month’s analysis, we look at the Indian social media users and media organisations who were responsible for spreading misinformation about the situation in Bangladesh.
The Context:
The public unrest over quota reforms and the political turmoil which followed in Bangladesh led to the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina being ousted from her position in August 2024. Hasina fled to India, after which the country formed an interim Mohammed Yunus-led government. This period was marked by all kinds of violence, including politically motivated attacks.
Bangladesh’s population is majorly Muslim, with only 7.8 percent of its population belonging to the Hindu community. At times, the Hindu minority in the country has faced violence, especially around the time of Durga Puja.
The Big Players
The most prominent account we came across was ‘@RealBabaBanaras’, 14 of whose posts The Quint has debunked. These posts carrying misinformation saw massive engagement, cumulatively amassing over six lakh views on them and were shared by more than 10,000 users.
The first viral piece of misinformation this account shared was related to Bangladeshi cricketer Liton Das. At the beginning of the political unrest, ‘@RealBababanaras’ had shared a video of a house on fire alongside Das’ photo, claiming that he had been attacked due to his Hindu identity.
The account's first viral post sharing Bangladesh related misinformation.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
In reality, we found that video was of former Bangladeshi cricket team captain and Member of Parliament (MP) Mashrafe Mortaza's house being set on fire.
It also saw high engagement on false claims about Hindu places of worship being targeted by the Muslim community in Bangladesh.
It received a lot of views on this communally charged content.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
This is another piece of debunked misinformation.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
Several of this user's posts have been marked with X's Community Notes, which adds context to misleading or false information.
Many of the account's posts carry Community Notes.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
The account has nearly 70,000 followers and got ‘verified’ in September 2024, weeks after its misinformation about Das’ house went viral.
X’s ‘verification’ system allows people subscribing to the platform’s ‘premium’ subscription to make money off their posts, which increases when the account sees high engagement.
Apart from using misleading visuals to claim that Hindus are constantly attacked in Bangladesh, the account also shares posts vilifying the Muslim community in India, spreading Islamophobic sentiments and sharing pro-Hindutva content.
These posts share misleading content targeting the Muslim community.
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
A strong example of this are two posts that this account shared, showing right-wing organisation Hindu Raksha Dal’s Pinky Chaudhary attacking and demolishing a shanty in Ghaziabad, accusing its residents of being ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’.
The user incorrectly shared these videos as those of "illegal Bangladeshis."
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
Team WebQoof went on the ground to find out the truth behind this violent act and viral claim, to find that the people had simply come to Ghaziabad from Uttar Pradesh’s Sahranpur, looking for work.
You can watch this episode of our series on the real impact of fake news here.
One of the claims about Hindu places of worship being attacked was shared by several other X accounts. Sharing a video of a shrine of a Sufi saint being demolished in Bangladesh, the account falsely claimed that it showed people from the Muslim community vandalising a temple.
This claim was widely shared across social media platforms.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
This false claim was reshared by the other notable accounts we came across in our investigation, which included @ssarath1 and @jpsin1.
The first account here, which goes by the screen name ‘Tathvam-asi’, has also shared at least five communal claims that The Quint debunked, ranging from false claims about Hindu temples being demolished to sharing videos of politically motivated clashes as those of Hindu women being harassed due to their religious identity.
One claim that went viral with over 18,500 views was a video of a cafe on fire, which the user falsely shared as one of a Hindu temple which was set ablaze during the initial days of the turmoil.
This claim, too, is false.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
Similarly, out of the seven fact-checked claims that user @jpsin1 shared, three of them falsely claimed to be recent incidents of Hindu temples being attacked in Bangladesh, while the remaining incorrectly claimed that they showed instances of Hindu men and women being targeted for killings or abuse.
We noticed several common false, communal claims that all the top accounts had shared.
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
The nature of this disinformation is exceptionally troublesome, as Singh’s account is not only verified, which may act as a monetary incentive to share posts which invite engagement but also has nearly 93,000 followers.
The first account, too, follows this pattern of being a ‘premium’ subscriber, with more than 55,000 followers
Repeat Offenders
We also saw some of the usual suspects sharing Bangladesh-related misinformation, which was more often than not communally charged. These accounts include those of ‘Mr Sinha’, Megh Updates, and Kreately Media.
While these accounts may not have shared disinformation as frequently as the others mentioned, their history of sharing false content while being ‘verified’ accounts poses a risk, as people tend to believe disinformation which comes from sources that have the ‘blue tick’ and have a large following.
Mr Sinha’s account gained a significant amount of followers during the ‘Boycott Maldives’ trend on social media amid diplomatic tensions between the two nations in January 2024, which is also when he ‘verified’ his account i.e, subscribed to X premium.
The account saw an uptick in followers after the Maldives row.
(Source: SocialBlade/Altered by The Quint)
With a growing number of followers and an opportunity to monetise high-engagement posts, we saw that the account went on to spread political disinformation ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which was overwhelmingly pro-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
It has continued to follow this pattern, as seen in false, communally coloured claims that it shared related to Bangladesh and the condition of the Hindu minority there.
It kept sharing disinformation despite being tagged with Community Notes.
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
Both Kreately Media and Megh Updates have been called out for spreading mis- and disinformation by several media organisations, social media users, and fact-checkers in the past, and have previously faced suspension from the platform.
Together, these three accounts amass over 10.9 lakh followers, and have repeatedly been called out for disinformation.
We also found other ‘verified’ accounts which had shared these falsehoods and communal claims.
These include JIX5A, Jaipur Dialogues, FrontalForce, and SaffronSunanda, all verified accounts, which have routinely shared misinformation which Team WebQoof has debunked.
(Swipe)
The video shows a college protest.
The clip is one of an activist in Bangladesh, who spoke up against a political party.
The video is one of an announcement which temporarily placed restrictions during a festival.
The woman was forcefully abducted by her former partner from the same community.
What About Facebook?
The content spread by these spilled over to other social media platforms as well. However, on Facebook, the platform’s policy of partnering with third-party fact-checkers may have helped it combat misinformation more proactively than X.
One of the core features of the platform’s fact-checking policy is that it deranks content flagged as misinformation, lowering its visibility for all Facebook users. Due to this policy, we were unable to find many pages or users who had consistently shared disinformation as compared to X users.
A group of pages with names which were different versions of saving or advocating Hindus in Bangladesh shared misinformation at least once during the course of our analysis.
The Facebook page ‘Voice of Bengali Hindus’, run from West Bengal, is one example of a page like this, sharing at least three false claims which The Quint had debunked since August 2024. Since the page has a very small follower count, the impact of this page in promoting falsehoods is uncertain.
The page has shared several posts carrying misinformation.
(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)
In a set of two posts, a verified entertainment page called ‘Filmibeat.com’, shared the same video of women being tied up to pillars, linking it to violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.
However, there was no communal angle to this incident, as it shows student protesters tying up workers of the Bangladesh Chhatra League.
We debunked the video shortly after Hasina fled the country in August.
(Source: The Quint)
Similarly, the page shared two other posts which shows a woman, surrounded by a mob, being manhandled, claiming to show harassment of Hindu women in the country.
This video was shared claiming that it shows a Hindu woman being targeted in Bangladesh.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
This claim, too, is false, as the woman in the video was also identified as a Chhatra League worker who belongs to the Muslim community.
We identified the woman and found that she belongs to the Muslim community.
(Source: The Quint)
However, social media was not the only source of mis- or disinformation.
'India is Responsible'
While Rumor Scanner’s analysis that most of the misinformation related to Bangladesh on X came from India, other Bangladeshi news organisations, such as The Daily Star and Prothom Alo published reports about “industrial scale of exaggeration” of events by media outlets, with the latter pegging the number of organisations involved in spreading misinformation at 49.
The report names several leading Indian media organisations.
(Source: Prothom Alo/Screenshot)
In a previous analysis, The Quint explored how bad actors had shared communal and AI-generated misinformation related to students protests and political crisis in Bangladesh in August 2024.
Disinformation in the Media
These ‘bad actors’ include the media, which have misreported information, fuelling communal or political misinformation.
For instance, in August, news agency ANI shared a video of an elderly man in distress, claiming that it showed a Hindu man looking for his missing son amid the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.
However, the man was identified as Babul Hawaldar, from the Muslim community, who was looking for his son Mohammed Sunny Hawaldar, who went missing in 2013. Read here.
The man, a Muslim by religion, has been looking for his son for over a decade.
(Source: The Quint)
ANI issued a clarification related to the misinformation and deleted its X post, but the damage had already been done. This was evident in a post by X user ‘RealBababanaras’ who shared the same video and received 32,500 views and issued no clarification.
Despite ANI's correction, the misinformation went viral.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
The nation’s former leader, Sheikh Hasina, was not spared either. Several media organisations, including The Economic Times, Moneycontrol and Firstpost shared a false statement which stated that Hasina had accused the US of being involved in the coup that led to her ouster.
Her son, Sajeeb Wazed, denied that his mother made this statement, calling it “false and fabricated,” while the US denied any involvement in the turmoil that led Hasina to quit office and flee the country.
As Indian netizens pushed for the protection of minorities in Bangladesh, specifically Hindus, since August, BJP leader and West Bengal’s Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari attempted to assuage these concerns in August.
Speaking to the media, Adhikari said, "One crore Hindu refugees will come to West Bengal. I urge the governor and the chief minister of West Bengal, be prepared. Consult with the Central government, there is CAA," referring to the Citizenship Amendment Act. With this, he implied that Hindus fleeing Bangladesh would qualify for citizenship under the Act.
Adhikari made the misleading statement amid reports of targeted violence against the Hindu community in Bangladesh.
(Source: The Quint)
Adhikari was incorrect while pacifying people, as only those who entered India before December 2014 are eligible for Indian citizenship under CAA.
This deep dive has only looked into mis- and disinformation related to Bangladesh, and how social media accounts grow by spreading falsehoods and misleading narratives.
As seen earlier this report, the phenomenon is not restricted to the Bangladesh issue. Our team found similar patterns of prominent accounts sharing incendiary content during other crises, such as the one in Manipur, Israel's attacks on Gaza, Russia's invasion into Ukraine, and many more.
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Published: 31 Dec 2024,04:19 PM IST