Here’s how engineer-turned-fact checker Pratik Sinha fights the never-ending battle of misinformation on social media..
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00:00We're happy that the recognition has come in whatever form it was.
00:16I am Pradeep Sinha, and I'm the co-founder and editor of Alt News.
00:24If we can hire Time Magazine to do PR exercise for Alt News then, you know, yeah, we have
00:29actually sort of reached our financial goals, which I know we haven't.
00:35Sometimes we are just shocked that we have to fact-check certain things, you know.
00:55It is farmers protests, CNRC, Russia-Ukraine conflict, Balakot, everything, every narrative
01:02is controlled, and we come and bust some of those narratives.
01:06But we are used to the trolling, I mean, we get trolled every day of our lives, so that
01:12is not new.
01:13In fact, to a certain extent, the more the trolling, at some level, it is satisfactory.
01:23When everybody goes to town and says that the Prime Minister faltered at the teleprompter,
01:27irrespective of how I think of him as an individual, we were the first to put out a story that
01:33no, there was somebody behind who was prompting him.
01:37Someone from the admin, his admin team prompted him and asked him, he can you check whether
01:43the other side can hear you properly?
01:44And that's why he stopped, not because, you know, he faltered at the teleprompter stop.
01:53If one goes and reads Zubair's tweet, number one, it is not a manipulated video.
02:07I had put a thread the following day stating how it is exactly the same clip that was put
02:12on.
02:13Number one, there was no manipulation, okay.
02:17Number two, what did Zubair say, that how is the host letting such a conversation happen
02:24without controlling the conversation?
02:26Why is such a conversation happening on mainstream media at all?
02:30Zubair did not produce that content, Zubair only posted what he created.
02:35And as a media critic, he has every right to do that.
02:37Now it is not Zubair's fault that the video went viral and then whatever repercussions
02:47that Anupam Sharma had to face as a person, it is not right what she has had to face.
02:53It is *** responsibility, but people did not question ***, people questioned Zubair.
02:59When an organization like *** has a fact-checking app, then it looks good, you know, it becomes
03:10a PR point that, hey, we are fact-checking.
03:13But have they ever fact-checked their own stories?
03:14The answer is no, you know, *** was the organization which said that there was no rape in Kathura.
03:23*** increasingly has put out a lot of information which has been proven to be false.
03:37People do not have the relevant education which would let them survive in this time
03:45and era where there's information being bombarded from every direction.
03:50How do you process so much information?
03:52How do you figure out what is authentic, what is inauthentic?
03:55You can reach anybody from Kashmir to Kanyakumari within a matter of seconds.
04:00So realization that how powerful the tool this is, political propaganda, you can do
04:06it 24 by 7.
04:07You do not have to wait for an election.
04:13The more amount of time you spend on a social media platform, the more money they make because
04:19the more advertisements you see, the more time you spend.