Millions of 'followers' and 'likes' among online propaganda managed by IT companies, finds Operation Blue Virus
Social media campaigns of political leaders, corporate houses and even NGOs are often make-believe bubbles created to mislead people and sometimes even to slander opponents, according to investigative and news portal cobrapost.com.
The website on Friday exposed nearly two dozen IT and consultancy service companies in Bangalore, Mumbai and NCR region to whom social media campaigns are outsourced. For a price – ranging from a few lakhs to a few crores – these companies, cobrapost reported, create millions of fake ‘followers’ and fake ‘likes’ for their clients, add false blog posts, send promotional SMSes, and use the reach of sites, such as facebook and Twitter to spread propaganda and smear campaigns. To hedge themselves and prevent detection, these companies use proxy codes, servers in international locations, wireless or separate internet connections obtained using fake IDs. Sometimes, they even launch ‘project-specific’ companies that are wrapped up once the ‘project’ (read smear campaign/propaganda) is over. Some IT and services companies even claimed to Cobrapost that they would manage booth-level voting by showing data of voters at the booth level and claiming to intimidate them by various means.
Cobrapost’s revelations, dubbed Operation Blue Virus, essentially mean that with money in hand, any person or corporate entity, can create an impression of immense popularity and a larger-than-life persona in the online world.
“We call it going by the mob mentality … to put it in simple language … if 50 people like a page, 20 others will like the page just because these 50 are doing that,” Mahendra Bedekar of Mumbai-based Tridat Technologies told Cobrapost’s associate editor Syed Masroor Hasan, who went undercover and approached these companies on behalf of a ‘Netaji’ for online reputation management and to spread a smear campaign against Netaji’s rival.
To malign rivals, Bangalore-based Trikam Patel, co-founder of Triams, told Hasan that he will deploy dubious means to dig up the person’s past for dirty details. “You need a devil’s mind for that … that kind of job is done by goons … I know many friends who run detective agencies … I will approach them and get two fellows on the job … what is the subject of his interest … where does he go … where he does come from … what are his personal relations … they will give us all kinds of information on the fellow … we will store it in our database,” Patel told Hasan.
Among the users of these services, the companies said, are political parties, including the BJP and the Congress, big and small corporate houses, NGOs and even tainted government officials. Citing the Muzaffarnagar riots, Cobrapost said that these online media campaigns are even used to fan communal violence. Cobrapost linked the business of online reputation management to “Goebbellian propaganda” to “sway” the opinion of “gullible public”.
The website on Friday exposed nearly two dozen IT and consultancy service companies in Bangalore, Mumbai and NCR region to whom social media campaigns are outsourced. For a price – ranging from a few lakhs to a few crores – these companies, cobrapost reported, create millions of fake ‘followers’ and fake ‘likes’ for their clients, add false blog posts, send promotional SMSes, and use the reach of sites, such as facebook and Twitter to spread propaganda and smear campaigns. To hedge themselves and prevent detection, these companies use proxy codes, servers in international locations, wireless or separate internet connections obtained using fake IDs. Sometimes, they even launch ‘project-specific’ companies that are wrapped up once the ‘project’ (read smear campaign/propaganda) is over. Some IT and services companies even claimed to Cobrapost that they would manage booth-level voting by showing data of voters at the booth level and claiming to intimidate them by various means.
Cobrapost’s revelations, dubbed Operation Blue Virus, essentially mean that with money in hand, any person or corporate entity, can create an impression of immense popularity and a larger-than-life persona in the online world.
“We call it going by the mob mentality … to put it in simple language … if 50 people like a page, 20 others will like the page just because these 50 are doing that,” Mahendra Bedekar of Mumbai-based Tridat Technologies told Cobrapost’s associate editor Syed Masroor Hasan, who went undercover and approached these companies on behalf of a ‘Netaji’ for online reputation management and to spread a smear campaign against Netaji’s rival.
To malign rivals, Bangalore-based Trikam Patel, co-founder of Triams, told Hasan that he will deploy dubious means to dig up the person’s past for dirty details. “You need a devil’s mind for that … that kind of job is done by goons … I know many friends who run detective agencies … I will approach them and get two fellows on the job … what is the subject of his interest … where does he go … where he does come from … what are his personal relations … they will give us all kinds of information on the fellow … we will store it in our database,” Patel told Hasan.
Among the users of these services, the companies said, are political parties, including the BJP and the Congress, big and small corporate houses, NGOs and even tainted government officials. Citing the Muzaffarnagar riots, Cobrapost said that these online media campaigns are even used to fan communal violence. Cobrapost linked the business of online reputation management to “Goebbellian propaganda” to “sway” the opinion of “gullible public”.
No comments:
Post a Comment