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Why Are YouTube And Twitter Helping India Block A Damning Documentary Against Its Leader?

India at 75, a democracy in retreat?

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When the big screen blacked out, young people whipped out their phones and continued watching online. College students in India have been screening the BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question” after the Indian government blocked it.

And now India's Supreme Court is considering legal petitions against the ban. 

The furor only elevated the film’s question: How complicit the Indian prime minister was in a pogrom against Muslim citizens two decades ago. Whether Indians in the diaspora agree with the answer, we should also see how each one of us is associated with violence against minorities, simply by having lived through such events.

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India orders YouTube, Twitter to block BBC documentary on Modi

YouTube and Twitter India have removed links to the documentary at the Modi government’s orders. For vocal Indian users of Twitter, that’s a far cry from owner Elon Musk claiming that he'd make it a free speech platform for democracy.

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Pirated versions are now online, but watching the first episode of the two-part film on the Internet Archive before it was taken down brought back clear memories of my own experience of violence between religious communities when I was a teenager growing up in Uttar Pradesh, a state in India’s northern plains and part of India’s “Hindu heartland.”

I was working in the United States when riots broke out in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat, but reports circulated about the state’s complicity in a backlash against Muslims after the burning of a train compartment carrying Hindu pilgrims. Rioters roamed the streets for days, raping, looting and killing fellow citizens, even children.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was, at the time, chief minister of Gujarat and a rising star in Indian politics.

In one scene in the documentary, a survivor of the riot describes how Modi’s office rejected calls for help from a Muslim member of Parliament who was sheltering some families. The M.P. Then offered himself to the mob, begging it to spare the others. The mob slit his throat, said the survivor who managed to get away, and then they attacked the women, men and children hiding in the building.

The Supreme Court has since dismissed charges filed by the M.P.’s widow on Modi’s role in the riots.

The Indian government has called the BBC documentary “propaganda” reeking of a “colonial mind-set,” as if the Gujarat pogrom were less heinous when the Indian news media reported it. And the Indian media appears to have mostly forgotten its own reporting by focusing on the ban, not the film’s burning question.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told a reporter he "was not familiar” with the film, even as it made international headlines. Yet in December, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom criticized the State Department for ignoring its recommendation to put India as a country of particular concern for “egregious violations of religious freedoms.” 

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But what about the Indian people?

Ask me, for instance. I grew up in India in the 1980s and '90s.

What I witnessed of religious hate

Hindu-Muslim tensions caused the carnage of partition in 1947, when modern-day India and Pakistan were created by redrawing borders. But politicians stoked that sentiment in front of my own eyes when I was in school.

In 1990, Lal Krishna Advani, an Indian politician who adopted a Hindu nationalist platform announced a “journey by chariot” to the site of a mosque built by Muslim conquerors allegedly over an ancient temple they destroyed in one of Hindus’ holiest cities, Ayodhya. The “journey” signaled to the nation that revenge was in order, blessed by a leading political party. And revenge was had. It was had when thousands of young men followed Advani’s call and demolished the mosque.

It was had when riots broke out in many cities, including my home city of Kanpur.

At night, my brother and I listened for distant sirens in the poorer neighborhoods near us where Muslims and Hindus lived in close proximity to each other. One woman told me she kept chili powder handy to fling at Muslim rioters.

My mother’s Hindu dry cleaner broke down as he told us about the stabbing death of the tailor who worked with him, an elegant, old Muslim man who rode a bicycle and always wore a skull cap and a white shalwar-kurta. “Masterji,” or the master, an affectionate term for craftsmen, was riding home from work one night when a rioter stabbed him. 

The day before he was killed, the same old tailor had gently scolded my mother for visiting the store with us, her two children, instead of staying home where we were safe.

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Five years prior, Sikhs, another minority, became the target of violence after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh bodyguards in Delhi in 1984. Schools closed and curfew was imposed. My father came home from work one night, despondent. A Sikh factory employee was dragged out of his house with his family and lynched.

Revenge was had when a Hindu strongman interrupted my high school class and made us repeat a religious chant after him. I mouthed the words, imagining the fear in the heart of my one Muslim classmate, whom I dared not look at.

What changed in the three decades since the demolishing of the mosque? A growing culture of impunity that leaves minorities feeling more threatened than ever before in the country’s collective memory. This, in one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse nations where communities have coexisted peacefully before present-day politicians began to exploit this diversity.

In a 2020 Pew Research Center study of India, 84% said religious tolerance is central to being “truly Indian.”

 

The Modi government’s tactics against Muslims in particular feed an idea that modern India needs to create an exclusive Hindu identity. Revenge is being had.

As upper-middle class Christians, my family was generally safe from sectarian strife, but the fragile peace that existed between minority communities and the Hindu majority was like a match waiting to be lit, and it made me uncomfortably aware of the precariousness of being on the other side. In school then and among my friends, almost all of whom were also Hindus, there never was a question that the murders of Muslims and Sikhs was horribly wrong.

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However, I also knew people who would not condemn it, so the violence – by nameless, faceless mobs – was even more sinister for being commonplace and something to be expected.

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Just last month on Republic Day, India celebrated 73 years of its constitution, which enshrines the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience to practice religion. Now, those very rights are in peril.

By banning a documentary in the world’s largest democracy with 1.4 billion people, the Indian government has acknowledged this.

Mary Ann Koruth is a staff writer for The Bergen Record and northjersey.Com, part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow her on Twitter: @MaryAnnKoruth

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why are YouTube and Twitter helping India block a damning documentary against its leader?

Livestream Shopping Took China By Storm. Now Amazon, TikTok And YouTube Are Betting The QVC-style Pitches Will Take Off In The U.S.

The rise of livestream shopping on Amazon Live, TikTok and YouTube

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At her home in Miami, Myriam Sandler spends a few hours each week on a simple routine that's allowed her husband Mark to quit his job as an investment banker. The couple fills a laundry basket with the toys and gadgets that have improved life at home with their three young daughters. In their bedroom, Mark adjusts a ring light while Myriam sets everything within reach on a small desk in the corner.

Moments later, she taps her phone twice, looks into the camera, and goes live — not on the Home Shopping Network or QVC, but on Amazon.Com.

"I'll introduce myself. I'm Myriam Sandler and I'm the face behind @mothercould," Sandler said into the camera on Feb. 5 before starting her pitches. "So the first product I'm going to talk about is actually one of my favorite cleaning products. It's a spin brush. It's already 84% claimed, so it's a lightning deal."

Sandler's @mothercould brand has 1.2 million followers on Instagram and 730,000 on TikTok, where her videos have racked up 11.7 billion views. Before going live on Amazon to sell her favorite products, she lets her followers on other platforms know.

"I don't profit off any other platform that you can go live on," Sandler said. "Everyone coming to Amazon Live is essentially coming to buy something. They're there for that."

Livestream shopping took China by storm over the past three years. Chinese retail giant Alibaba launched its livestream app Taobao Live in 2016. When the pandemic grounded shoppers in 2020, it took off. One example came during the first 30 minutes of China's annual Singles' Day shopping festival in 2020, where Taobao livestreams generated $7.5 billion in transactions — a 400% jump from the year before. That same year, the livestream shopping market in China was valued at $171 billion, and is estimated to grow to $423 billion by 2022. In the U.S., TikTok,  Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and YouTube are all getting in on the game.

"People are excited by what you're seeing from China, where you see really, really high conversion rates on some of these experiences, much higher than maybe a regular website would have. You're seeing potentially up to 40% in some cases. You might see much lower return rates because people know what they got." said Daniel Debow, vice president of product at Shopify, which launched live-shopping capabilities with YouTube in July.

  

There's a rapidly growing ecosystem of livestreaming apps in China, such as TikTok's sister app Douyin, and Pinduoduo, known for rock bottom prices. Livestreamers in China — known as Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) — have made massive fortunes and there are entire boot camps devoted to the career craze of becoming a livestream shopping host.

"KOLs there have millions and millions and millions of fans, so even if 10% show up, that's still a million. That's not the case in the U.S. And Europe," said Quynh Mai, CEO of online marketing agency Qulture.

Indeed, livestream shopping has been far slower to catch on in the U.S. Than in China. Of Chinese consumers surveyed by Coresight Research, 74% said they had bought products through a shoppable livestream in 2022. In the U.S., 78% said they'd never even watched one.

"People want to buy products with meaning or products that they can't get anywhere else. And that's really what's the underpinning of live shopping in the U.S. That's very different than in China, which is all about just a mass population," Mai said.

Amazon Live

At 35% of the market, Alibaba's Taobao Live remains the world's biggest live shopping player. But the last few years have seen a flurry of U.S. Companies investing in live shopping ventures, too. First among them was Amazon, which introduced livestream shopping in 2016.

On Amazon Live, influencers pitch products live from the intimacy of their own homes. Audiences can react with emojis or stars. A chat window lets them ask questions that the host can answer live, and there's an embedded link for every product to streamline purchases.

 

Tiana Young Morris first went viral in 2020 for videos in which she tried on wigs and then reviewed them.

"I was like, 'Oh, there are a lot of people that are going to buy the product that I recommended. I need to see how can I make money off of this?' And Amazon just makes it so easy for you to sign up for the Influencer Program," Young Morris said.

After signing up for the Amazon Influencer Program, creators get their own storefronts where Amazon users can follow them, getting alerts when they go live. Before launching her content creator career, Morris said she was making about $110,000 as a private practice attorney.

"Now I make about six times that," Young Morris said. "I really, really enjoy doing this. I make so much doing this that I don't have to [work as a lawyer] anymore." 

Amazon Live creators make the most on commission, which is usually under 10% of sales from click-throughs on the livestream, although the rare category can be as high as 20%. Amazon also offers some creators a flat fee for going live regularly, and top creators can make extra from brands that pay for dedicated, sponsored livestreams.

Now Young Morris sells fashion, beauty and skin care products on Amazon Live, and hosts exclusive sponsored livestreams with major brands like Dove. Amazon Live doesn't disclose follower counts, but her TikTok account boasts about 635,000 followers.

Amazon continued its live-shopping investments with the launch of Amazon Live in India in September.

TikTok, YouTube and Meta

Social platforms are also investing big in the trend. ByteDance-owned TikTok partnered with Walmart for an hourlong livestream in 2020 where TikTok users could buy Walmart fashion items featured by creators. The duo did another livestream in 2021 after reporting the first event netted seven times more views than expected and grew Walmart's TikTok following by 25%.

"I think TikTok is going to be able to leapfrog everyone else because they have so many users now," Mai said. "Every time you use the platform, it's learning your behavior, learning your interests and serving you what it thinks you like."

But shoppers on TikTok in the U.S. Currently have to navigate away from the app to make a purchase, eliminating a big potential revenue stream. In the fall, TikTok started U.S. Testing of a new function called TikTok Shop that allows users to buy directly in the app. It's invitation-only for creators and merchants in the U.S. Right now, but it's already launched in Southeast Asia and the United Kingdom. TikTok currently faces bans in several states due to concerns it could hand user data over to China.

Meanwhile, YouTube's recently expanded live-shopping capabilities allow shoppers to buy without leaving the platform. Activewear brand founder Cassey Ho of @Blogilates and @PopFlex had her second-highest sales hour of the year promoting her products live on YouTube in November. 

"Right now, across all my social platforms, we have about 15 million followers and subscribers everywhere and on YouTube, over 2 billion views. And then in terms of sales, PopFlex on its own is an eight-figure business and then Blogilates on its own is an eight-figure business," Ho said.

There are also a handful of startups developing new U.S. Platforms devoted entirely to live shopping. There's Ntwrk that focuses on sneakers and collectibles and Supergreat and Trendio for beauty products. The biggest among them is TalkShopLive, where Walmart held 150 live-shopping events in 2022 and celebrities like Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey and Tim Tebow have gone live.

Meta, on the other hand, is scaling back its focus on shopping. It halted live shopping on Facebook in October and removed the Shop tab from Instagram's navigation bar earlier this month. 

In China, the government is enforcing greater supervision over private industries, including livestream shopping. Some of its biggest live-shopping superstars have been hit with massive fines or taken sudden unannounced breaks.

Researcher Exposes Crypto Scam Network Exploiting YouTube

WithSecure researchers have exposed a network of fraudulent YouTube videos, channels and associated web applications that are manipulating users into joining dodgy cryptocurrency investment scams.

The fraud operation appears to be promoting a USDT (also known as Tether) cryptocurrency investment scheme. USDT, which is pegged to the US Dollar and known as a stablecoin, has itself been heavily criticised over its opaque practices, and has been the subject of multiple regulatory and legal probes.

The network comprises well over a thousand videos, many of which are receiving inauthentic and probably automated engagement – intended to legitimise the videos – from hundreds of distinct sock puppet YouTube channels (some verified) set up to give the operation a sense of legitimacy. The whole setup seems to be run by a group of 30 scammers who use the encrypted Telegram application to coordinate their work.

Led by WithSecure’s Andy Patel – who earlier this year reported on the malicious use of AI language models – the team pored over a number of the five- to 10-minute-long videos, which all follow approximately the same script and are presented in a number of languages. Their findings can be read in full here.

“The scripts show you how to bring up an app or website where you can register with a username and password, and recharge the account with USDT cryptocurrency,” said Patel. “If you put in more money, you get a reward. [Of course] putting money into the app is putting it into the scammer’s wallet.”

The team found over 700 distinct URLs masquerading as investment web apps, each of them nothing more than a cryptocurrency wallet run by the scammers. Once funds were transferred from the victim’s cryptocurrency wallet to the scammers’, the victim is supposedly earning commission and rewards, and in common with other similar scams, will often be shown what appears to be evidence of this, which will never actually materialise.

The web apps also offer a withdrawal functionality, which, according to Patel, “basically doesn’t work”. The WithSecure team saw no evidence of any transfers back to the victims’ wallets. “It’s not even a pyramid scheme,” said Patel. “It’s just convincing people to give away their money.”

Hunting a white whale

Patel said the network he observed seemed to be targeting existing cryptocurrency enthusiasts, but that the videos were of low quality and did not appear to be localised, beyond being translated, suggesting that the scam is largely an opportunistic one.

“Typically this results in a large volume of small transactions. But as that volume increases, so do the odds of them getting lucky and finding someone able and willing to invest more substantial amounts,” he said.

Indeed, based only on the data his team was able to pull themselves during the last six months of 2022, the fraudulent apps generated returns of barely $100,000, from about 900 victims.

This suggests the perpetrators are playing a numbers game, and are content to extract small amounts of money from victims who are unlikely to object too violently, while looking for the occasional white whale to swim by.

Patel said the somewhat hands-off approach of the scammers via inauthentic videos and apps contrasted with the hands-on confidence-based social engineering methodology used in so-called pig butchering scams.

He suggested that one reason the scammers are using YouTube infrastructure is because it helps the scammers tap into a pool of victims without needing to pay social engineers who can speak their languages fluently.

“This doesn’t appear to be a very lucrative business when you consider the costs of registering domains, creating apps, paying creators to publish and boost videos, and managing the flow of currency they were able to extract,” he said.

However, Patel pointed out that this does not mean the scam should be considered less problematic. “They [the scammers] have clearly figured out how to game YouTube’s recommendation algorithms by using a fairly straightforward approach,” he said.

“Moderating social media content is a huge challenge for platforms, but the successful amplification of this content using pretty simple, well-known techniques makes me think that more could be done to protect people from these scams.”

Indeed, crypto scams aimed at defrauding potential investors are becoming a significant problem on social media.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts, known by some as cryptobros, are popularly stereotyped as more likely to take risks with their money, and prone to evangelising their ‘successes’ to others. These stereotypes may make them a tempting target for criminals.

Indeed, as the volume of large-scale crypto frauds and rug pulls in recent history shows, enthusiasts are prone to being exploited by cyber crime gangs and fraudsters; According to the US Federal Trade Commission, 46,000 people have reported losing over $1bn to crypto scams between January 2021 and June 2022, with almost half saying the scam originated via social media.

How YouTube can help

Patel said that given the number of channels discovered that were involved, how often they were active, and how long the scam has been running, it was somewhat surprising that YouTube had not acted, although he conceded the platform has a lot of pressing issues for its moderation teams to deal with, and added that this may change now that the scam has been exposed.

“Videos of this nature should be thoroughly enumerated and removed by the YouTube safety team, along with any other channels participating in similar operations. If this isn’t something YouTube is willing to do, they should, at the very least, suppress their algorithm’s recommendation of these videos,” he said.

“YouTube should also make an effort to understand how the SEO text found in the description fields of these videos might affect YouTube’s search and recommendation algorithms. A cursory glance at results returned by an Internet search for ‘buy YouTube views’ illuminates the existence of many services selling YouTube likes, views, comments, and subscribes.

“It is clear that inauthentic amplification is being used to boost engagement numbers on many of the videos highlighted in this report. While we're aware that detecting inauthentic activity on social networks is a difficult endeavour, with regards to the videos highlighted in this report, determining patterns and channels involved in their actions was a straightforward task that required very little API usage. It would be nice to know that YouTube’s administrators take inauthentic amplification seriously and are devising more generic methods to detect and counter such activity in the future.”

He added that the fact that the team had seen verified YouTube accounts getting involved was worrying as it conveyed the idea that verified status cannot be trusted, and that the badges are handed out too easily.