Centre cracks down on six YouTube channels spreading fake news

The six YouTube channels were found to be operating as part of a coordinated disinformation network

Six YouTube channels with a combined subscriber base of 20.47 lakh and "thriving through monetisation of fake news" on elections, the Supreme Court and the central government among others were busted by the Press Information Bureau's Fact Check Unit, officials said on Thursday.

These channels, whose videos were watched 51.32 crore times, were "found to be operating as part of a coordinated disinformation network" by the PIB Fact Check Unit under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The Fact Check Unit released six separate Twitter threads with over 100 fact-checks to counter fake news circulated by these channels -- Nation TV (5.57 lakh subscribers), Samvaad TV (10.9 lakh subscribers), Sarokar Bharat (21,100 subscribers), Nation 24 (25,400 subscribers), Swarnim Bharat (6,070 subscribers) and Samvaad Samachar (3.48 lakh subscribers).

This is the second such action from the Unit under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting where entire channels have been blocked.

Immediately after an official statement was issued by the PIB, officials said, the channels started deleting videos related to fake news while some even changed their name.

Samvaad TV, whose videos were watched 17.31 crore times, changed its name to 'Inside Bharat', while Nation TV with a cumulative viewership of 21.09 crore changed its name to 'Nation Weekly' and Samvaad Samachar with 11.93 crore viewership changed to 'Inside India'. Nation 24, whose videos were watched 43.37 lakh times, changed its name to ‘Nation Night’.

According to the statement, these channels were spreading fake news about elections, proceedings in the Supreme Court, Parliament of India and functioning of the Union government.

The false claims included ban on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and false statements attributed to senior Constitutional functionaries, including the President and Chief Justice of India.

"The channels use fake, clickbait and sensational thumbnails and images of television news anchors to mislead the viewers to believe that the news was authentic and drive traffic to their channels in order to monetise the videos published by them," the statement said.