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Journalism of Courage
Two weeks before the third phase of voting in the Lok Sabha elections on May 7, the top 20 advertisers on Meta platforms paid Facebook and Instagram nearly Rs 17 crore to run political advertisements. At least 30 of these advertisements, paid for by surrogate accounts, had communal undertones that primarily targeted the minority community.
Of the top 20 spenders between April 23 and May 6, 15 were paid for by surrogate accounts and five by political parties, who advertised from their official Facebook and Instagram pages.
In the two weeks before the May 7 voting, the BJP spent the highest amount (Rs 5.63 crore) on political ads on Meta platforms, followed by the Congress (Rs 4.81 crore) and an affiliate page of the Biju Janata Dal called Ama Chinha Sankha Chinha (Rs 2.15 crore). Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar and Manamodi, two surrogate accounts with a history of running pro-BJP ads, spent the fourth (Rs 57.64 lakh) and fifth (Rs 42.17 lakh) highest amounts on political ads respectively. These surrogate accounts outspent political parties like the Telugu Desam Party (Rs 32.16 lakh) and the Trinamool Congress (Rs 23.84 lakh), which, apart from the Congress and the BJD-affiliate page, were the only non-BJP supporting advertisers among the top 20 spenders.
The Indian Express had earlier reported how a number of surrogate advertisers had placed pro-BJP ads on Meta platforms in the run-up to the first phase of voting (April 19). Many advertisers flagged by this paper then had placed ads with communal overtones. According to Meta’s policy, political advertisers on Facebook and Instagram are required to provide their phone numbers before placing the ads. However, the phone numbers shared by these advertisers that The Indian Express tracked were found to be switched off.
Queries sent to the Election Commission on surrogate advertising on social media platforms remained unanswered at the time of publication.
In an email response to a detailed query, a Meta spokesperson said, “We enforce (rules) against ads that are found to be violating, and repeated failure to comply may result in penalties against the advertiser. People that want to run ads about elections or politics must go through the authorisation process required on our platforms and are responsible for complying with all applicable laws.”
A person aware of Meta’s community guidelines said most surrogate ads do not violate the company’s policies, which require that advertisers, which is why the platform did not take them down despite being flagged.
In the past, Meta has said that it takes down ads violative of its policies, which includes ads that attack people on the basis of “protected characteristics” such as people’s religious beliefs. The company had told The Indian Express earlier that surrogate advertisers attempting to circumvent its policies by not disclosing their party affiliations are “subject to strict enforcement measures”.
While political parties did not run ads with a communal undertone from their official handles before May 7, those placed by surrogate advertisers on Meta platforms not only had communal undertones.
For example, an animated video posted on BJP’s Karnataka unit’s X handle depicting the Congress appeasing Muslims at the cost of the Scheduled Castes (SCs), the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) was run by Political X-Ray, a surrogate advertiser, as an ad on Facebook and Instagram. Calling the video “violative of the extant legal framework”, the Election Commission had directed X to take down the video on May 7. While X took the video down a day later after voting ended, the video-turned-advertisement stayed on Meta between May 2-5. From April 23 to May 6, Political X-Ray, which is known to run pro-BJP ads, spent a total of Rs 27.6 lakh on Meta ads.
Sidha Chashma, an account that also runs pro-BJP ads, recently ran an ad with a similar theme, which alluded to the Congress allegedly favouring minorities at the cost of other sections of society. Eight instances of this ad, which ran on Facebook between April 24-27, collectively got over a million hits. Sidha Chashma spent over Rs 16 lakh on them, according to Meta’s ads library. The same ad was run by another page, Mudde ki Baat, this paper had earlier reported. While Sidha Chashma spent Rs 31.64 lakh on pro-BJP ads, Mudde ki Baat spent Rs 21.4 lakh.
Since 2018, after it was accused of being weaponised to target voters in the US, Meta policies require advertisers running ads related to social and political issues to disclose their details to the company, with their promotional content being accompanied by a “paid for by” tag under it. While the idea was to ensure transparency, surrogate advertisers who may not be forthcoming about their affiliation to a party or candidate may defeat the purpose of such a tag. Last month, the European Union opened an investigation against Meta for the spread of disinformation on its platforms, poor oversight of deceptive advertisements and potential failure to protect the integrity of elections.
Besides ads primarily targeting the Opposition, misleading content, including old videos that have allegedly been doctored, that could impact BJP leaders has also been shared on social media platforms. For instance, an old video of Home Minister Amit Shah, where he was talking about removing the 4% reservation for Muslims that is in place in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, was edited to allegedly make it appear like he was saying that all reservations, including quotas for SCs and STs, would be scrapped.
The social networking platform has said that the video was first uploaded through an IP address in Telangana. At least five Congress workers have been held by the Telangana Police for allegedly sharing the video, even though the Telangana High Court has ordered that no coercive action be taken against them.
Last month, deep fakes of popular Hindi film actors Aamir Khan and Ranveer Singh went viral on social media, purportedly showing them criticising Prime Minister Modi and urging the people to vote for the Congress instead. Both Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated videos ended with the Congress election symbol and slogan: “Vote for Justice, Vote for Congress”.
A delegation of senior BJP leaders, comprising Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, chief spokesperson Anil Baluni and party leader Om Pathak, have also brought to the notice of the Election Commission the use of “deep fakes” of Shah, and the two actors “to peddle fake narratives”.
