In India, social media apps are being used to spread misinformation and incite hate to gain an electoral advantage.
As the influence of online platforms increases,cases of them influencing election results have been reported, but platform operators are taking their own measures, such as requiring disclosure of political ads or blocking them . However, in India, some social media apps are being used for election campaigns with little restriction, and they are helping to spread false information and incite hatred, according to a report by The Reporters' Collective , a non-profit investigative journalism media.
New Home for Hate
https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/new-home-for-hate
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known as a Hindu supremacist politician. In April 2024, as the parliamentary election campaign intensified, Modi slammed Muslims, saying, 'Congress is trying to collect wealth and give it to those who have more children.' However, The Reporters' Collective criticized Modi's remarks as 'inflammatory lies.'
Modi's remarks incited his supporters, resulting in countless hate posts and messages against Muslims on the Internet. Anshuman Singh, an executive member of the Kashi branch of the Hindu organization Vishva Hindu Parishad, also took to the Internet to criticize Modi's remarks, saying, 'Muslims are poorer than Hindus, but they are giving birth to more children.' Singh also claimed that welfare programs proposed by the Congress in the run-up to the 2024 elections would result in Muslims receiving exorbitant benefits.
Supporters of Prime Minister Modi exchange opinions in a chat group called the 'Team Modi Supporters Association,' creating a cult-like gathering in a place that is evasive to the surveillance of hate speech monitoring groups and the Election Commission. The Team Modi Supporters Association communicates not on 'theoretically monitored platforms' such as Meta's Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Discord, but on ' Kutumb ,' a community app that targets grassroots political activities.
The Team Modi Supporters Association chat group on Kutumb has 700,000 users and is used to spread the Bharatiya Janata Party 's political message.
While scanning and analyzing more than 1.3 million political ads published on Meta and Google during the 2024 election cycle, The Reporters' Collective discovered several online communities operating under the radar of election commissions and private watchdog groups.
These communities are built on apps run by political strategists, Indian entrepreneurs, and shady groups. The apps have few restrictions and allow political content to spread unchecked, which The Reporters' Collective noted 'can create a powerful and insulated digital world. And on these apps, hundreds of Indians can incite others without fear of being identified as problematic.'
The Reporters' Collective has conducted a thorough investigation into Kutumb and other apps that have proven to be extremely effective in election campaigns, revealing that they play a major role in spreading online hate and disinformation, and pointing out that the Bharatiya Janata Party is the leading political actor running political campaigns on these minor apps.
Indian-origin social media apps like Kutumb operate largely free of oversight, and are not held to the same standards and disclosure requirements that big tech companies, at least on the surface, follow when it comes to political messaging.
'There are inherent risks in imposing additional government control over these apps,' said technology policy researcher Prateek Wagle. 'History suggests that overreach is quite possible, and governments could use this opportunity to censor any digital political organization that is not to their advantage. It's also difficult to clearly define what a 'political app' is. Even apps that perform common functions like collecting petitions or sending newsletters, like Change.org, could be classified as 'political apps.'' He pointed out that imposing regulations on social media apps used for political campaigns comes with its own risks.
As online election campaigns become more prevalent, Indian political parties have welcomed shady apps and organizations, The Reporters' Collective noted. The reason is simple: at the time of writing, there is little regulation of apps in India.
There are many different types of apps being used for election campaigns in India, but one that has attracted attention is Kutumb. Kutumb calls itself a social networking app and has established itself as a local political networking site. Compared to social media apps with stricter content moderation policies, Kutumb has almost no restrictions and is said to be an alternative for many Indians.
Kutumb has created group chats with all sorts of names, including political party names, where users can view and post content related to the political party they support. Kutumb claims to have over 20,000 political groups. Kutumb is popular because it allows users to post comments freely without being bound by rules or guidelines, without fact-checkers or being challenged by opponents.
Kutumb is owned by a startup called Primetrace Technologies and is funded by venture capital firms such as Sequoia, Tiger Global, and Whiteboard Capital. Co-founder and CEO Abhishek Kejriwal said of Kutumb, 'When we started the app, we were already seeing momentum. It was clear that a platform like Kutumb was needed because many groups, including small political parties, city halls, and other communities, didn't have a way to communicate with each other.'
When The Reporters' Collective investigated the type of communication taking place on Kutumb, they found that the Team Modi Supporters Association, created by supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was spreading online propaganda and gathering local supporters to raise awareness.
In the Bharatiya Janata Party group chat on Kutumb, a large amount of radical false information was posted, such as 'The Indian National Congress Party protested against the Ram Temple,' and extreme claims such as 'A vote against the Bharatiya Janata Party is a vote against Hinduism itself.' However, according to a survey by The Reporters' Collective, group chats on Kutumb supporting rival parties such as the Indian National Congress did not post as radical posts as the Bharatiya Janata Party community.
According to Meta, Kutumb's operator, Primetrace Technologies, has been running political ads on Facebook for many years. Primetrace Technologies and its affiliates ran 1,702 political ads between September 2020 and February 2025, and these ads were viewed a total of 173 million to 203 million times.
The Reporters' Collective noted that the election ads posted by Primetrace Technologies featured photos of the party's most prominent politicians with captions such as 'Join the Kutumb community and work together to ensure the victory of your party.'
Most of these advertisements were posted by Swatantra Verma, who served as Kutumb's head of business and partnerships from February 2021 to July 2023, and the total advertising expenditure is said to exceed 188 million rupees (about 320 million yen).
Kutumb isn't the only app being used for election campaigns. The Reporters' Collective also discovered a fax app network for generating political posters. The app network is run by the political consultancy Political Academy, whose former directors and key executives are also connected to Jarvis Technology & Strategy Consulting, another consulting firm that developed the Bharatiya Janata Party's custom app, Sangathan Reporting and Analysis.
Political Academy distributes three apps on Google Play: Share Post, Post Karo, and Political Poster Maker. All apps have the same UI and allow you to create posters for political campaigns for 99 rupees (about 168 yen) per month. According to privacy activist Srinivas Kodali, this type of political poster creation app is intended to allow people to participate in digital election campaigns without a PC.
Another app found supporting the Bharatiya Janata Party was 'Posters for B'. According to information on the app's page on Google Play, the app was developed by an organization called 'Dzine Box Consulting Solutions'. On its website, Dzine Box Consulting Solutions is based out of Novus Towers in Gurugram, Haryana, but on the Meta platform, it is based out of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, and neither address could be used to identify the company.
Despite being a defunct company, Dzine Box Consulting Solutions has apparently invested over 6.5 million rupees (approximately 11 million yen) in political ads on Meta, including Posters for B, which recruits Bharatiya Janata Party activists to help create political posters for election campaigns.
The Reporters' Collective contacted Dzine Box Consulting Solutions directly, but the company responded, 'We are not affiliated with any political party and simply provide a solution for adding names and photos to posters provided by users. Posters for B is a software solution, not a content provider.'
However, the Posters for B landing page displays the Bharatiya Janata Party logo alongside its own logo, 'BP.'
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