We can judge the impact of Facebook’s advertisements by the fact that Pragya Thakur, an accused in the Malegaon blasts of 2006 won a seat in the lower house of the Parliament. She won while she was out on bail during her trial. This happened after an advertisement on Facebook showed that she had been acquitted of all the charges. Astonishingly, that advertisement which Facebook ran garnered almost 300000 views in a day. A month before the elections had commenced, an advertisement aimed to subtly ridicule the then-president of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi. The ad which ran under the cover of a news report made a mockery of Rahul Gandhi by cherry-picking his words completely out of context. He was mocked for apparently calling Masood Azhar (head of a terrorist outfit in Pakistan) ‘JI’ (which is placed after a person’s name to give him/her respect). The ad ran with a logo of NEWJ and acquired almost 700000 views in just four days. But here is the interesting surprise. NEWJ is a part of Jio Platforms Ltd. which is owned by the Reliance Group of billionaire Mukesh Ambani. With the help of surrogate advertisements, backed by the Reliance group, which could run due to some loopholes in the ruling of the Election Commission of India and smart use of Facebook algorithms, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity could be boosted ultimately leading to his triumph. Surrogate advertisements are not funded directly by the candidates but the candidates are promoted by them. In an apparent bid to take a whip at the game of surrogate advertisements, Facebook did eventually target the ads but they were mostly which were promoting Congress which is BJP’s main contender. Between February 2019 and November 2020, almost 536070 political advertisements were placed on Facebook. The ad data was jointly analyzed by The Reporters’ Collective and Ad-Watch. The data was accessed via Facebook’s Ad Library API. In the report of the analyses, it was found that BJP was given a significantly unfair edge over its competitors because of how Facebook went on target its competitors. Lets us now see how surrogate advertisements on Facebook were made to work in BJP’s factor due to a legal loophole in the ruling of the Election Commission of India. NEWJ claims itself to be a start-up that provides authentic news exclusively to people from small towns and villages. However, the company instead buys premium ad space on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to produce and promote politically radicalized content. The advertisements that they run have a single agenda and that is to promote BJP. Their advertisements also were rife with hatred against Muslims and misinformation to the masses. Paid advertisements are meant to reach the masses and not just the followers. The advertisers can make use of the data collected by Facebook like the users’ location, demographics, behavior, etc. in a bid to appear fair and transparent Facebook started enlisting all ads related to politics in its ad library. The ad library had nearly 170 ads which mostly had content that favored BJP, its policies, and PM Narendra Modi. The content also mocked leaders of various opposing parties and their campaigns. The advertisement strategy relied heavily upon o n public sentiments too and was interspersed with brief videos about India’s rich culture, heritage, and various other non-political issues.
But who is behind NEWJ and the whole idea of surrogate advertisements?
The founder of NEWJ is Shalabh Upadhyay who interestingly is closely associated with both Reliance and BJP. He is the son of Umesh Upadhyay who works in a prestigious position in Reliance Industries. Shalabh Upadhyay is the nephew of Satish Upadhyay who is the former president of BJP’s Delhi unit and is currently a leader in the party. However, NEWJ does not formally declare its connections with BJP as well as Reliance.
So, what is the legal loophole that could help BJP with its strategy of surrogate/ghost advertising?
Under Indian law, any surrogate or ghost advertisements that are not directly funded by the candidate himself are a crime. This is to hold the candidates responsible for the information they put out. So, how come NEWJ was able to push BJP’s agenda and policies to the masses? This restriction on surrogate advertisements is not applicable on digital platforms. Meta which is the parent company of Facebook also conveniently didn’t implement this rule which led to NEWJ heavily promoting BJP across all social media platforms. Frances Haugen leaked Facebook documents which revealed that Facebook had pushed IAMAI to work with the Election Commission of India to not impose any stiff regulations for promotion on social media platforms. Despite claims by Facebook about the crackdown on such surrogate advertisements, their actions were greatly ambiguous. In many countries, Facebook removed 687 accounts and pages which according to it were pushing Congress’ agenda. On the contrary, only 14 accounts and one such page which was promoting BJP were removed. But ironically, Facebook imposed a global freeze on such takedown from within a country. In effect, it meant that only the pages which were linked to Congress were targeted and taken down. And any other pages which were linked to the other party’s advertisers were not touched. Hence, the NEWJ page continues to promote and advertise BJP before and during the elations in several states of India. Between Feb 2019 and Nov 2020, the ads placed on these social media platforms were viewed more than 290 million times. Even after the 2019 elections, NEWJ continued to post stories that steered inorganically in favor of the BJP government.
How did the Election Commission of India and Facebook’s slack in regulations lead to misuse of surrogate advertising?
The Election Commission of India has very stringent rules in place to regulate the amount of money a candidate can spend on a campaign. Even if a third party spends money on a candidate’s advertising in print or electronic media, the ECI considers it as an expenditure by the candidate only. Even if it finds that some news piece that was used to promote a candidate was paid for the actual or notional expenditure is added to the candidate’s budget. But all these rules are inapplicable to social media. In 2013, the ECI passed a rule which made it mandatory for all parties and candidates to get their social media advertisements pre-approved and also record the money spent on them. But this rule excluded Thord parties and also agencies that were not officially linked to the candidate out. This exclusion left the window open for surrogate advertising.
