TNM investigation: Dubious networks on FB spend crores to fuel BJP bias, smear others

This story is part of Ballot Bucks, an exclusive series in which The News Minute and News Laundry look closely at election spending.

“I think the real name of this Kejru will not be Arvind, [but] Abdullah,” said a spiteful post published on the Facebook page Sidha Chashma on March 31. It accused Kejriwal, currently in jail for his alleged role in the excise policy scam, of scuttling a sexual violence case because the medical college professor acccused of the crime was a Muslim called Salim Shaikh. The content was a blatant violation of Facebook’s community guidelines mandated for pages promoting political content.

The Sidha Chashma account, which identifies as a digital creator, has a cartoon as its display picture – a man with a Nehru cap and oversized spectacles. Created on March 5, 2024, the page, with over 800 followers, has since spent more than Rs 21 lakh to promote the scurrilous content it serves – mostly memes, videos, and posters – targeting rival politicians from the Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress, and the Samajwadi Party.

A TNM investigation has uncovered three shadowy networks of social media pages that are promoting right-wing narratives against Opposition parties in the guise of political satire to a vast online audience, through paid ads on Facebook and Instagram. These networks, leveraging the reach and targeting capabilities of Meta’s advertising platform, have together spent more than Rs 7 crore since 2019 to infiltrate news feeds and influence public opinion with biased narratives.

While two of these networks are recent, a third one specifically targeting the Aam Aadmi Party in Gujarat and Delhi has FB pages created in 2019 and 2022. The attempt to manipulate digital platforms for political gain using proxies raises questions about the sanctity of online discourse and the accountability of social media giants in policing such activities.

Three days before the Sidha Chashma page sprang up and began pushing its political posts, an FB page called Ulta Chashma, whose network was first revealed through a BoomLive report in March, suddenly stopped sharing content.