In a bid to check rumors and false news from spreading to cause damage, the Ministry of information and Broadcasting has called out a few channels on YouTube for a ban.
The Fact Check wing of the Ministry has sought an immediate ban on six channels that have almost subscribers amounting to 20 lakh. Even last month, Fact Check Unit of the PIB exposed around three channels that peddled fake news. While the government has asked these channels to pull the plug, it is to be seen how far this goes!
Inner details
The top names that have emerged in this fiasco are Nation TV, Samvaad TV, Sarokar Bharat, Nation24, Swarnim Bharat and Samvaad Samachaar. The economy of fake news has been growing in leaps and bounds. The official statement goes, “Last month, the fact-check unit of PIB had busted another three YouTube channels which were spreading false information in India. These channels had nearly 33 lakh subscribers and their videos, almost all of which were found to be fake, were watched over 30 crore times.”
PIB had woken up on the issue of fake news since this contributes to more harm than imaginable. Such YouTube channels had earlier talked of purported ban on the Electronic Voting Machines, and also attributed false statements to a number of Constitutional functionaries, such as the Chief Justice and the President of India.
Summing up
The Ministry further added, “The channels use fake, clickbait and sensational thumbnails and images of television news anchors of TV channels to mislead the viewers into believing that the news was authentic and drive traffic to their channels in order to monetise the videos published by them.”
Earlier in December of 2022 the Ministry had exposed Sarkari Updates, Aaj Tak Live, and News Headlines and ensured that these had been removed from the platform.
