"Slander, Lies, and Incitement: India’s million dollar election meme network”, 28 April 2024

Our [The London Story] new report with Ekō & ICWI, Slander, Lies, and Incitement, unveils disturbing findings about how Meta is facilitating serious harms in India ahead of the elections.

We found:

• A coordinated network of pages sharing content, hashtags and ad payments, which amassed 10.53M interactions over 90 days and appears to have breached Meta’s ad transparency policy
• 36 ads potentially breaking Indian election laws pushing hate speech, Islamophobia, communal violence, and misinformation amassing between 65-66M impressions
• Ads depicting Muslims as sexually violent invaders and calling for India to be a “country for Hindus” only
• Ads depicting the BJP opposition as a “virus”, “demon”, and “poisonous snake” and violent rhetoric to “break their spine”
• 23.13M interactions on 22 far-right publisher pages over 90 days