How Google Advertisements Are Funding Disinformation Campaigns in India

In August 2022, 4 Muslim males had been arrested after they had been accused of inflicting lethal floods that hit the north-east Indian state of Assam. 

A barrage of feedback on social media claimed that they had been waging “flood jihad” within the Hindu-majority metropolis of Silchar by intentionally damaging flood defences, however the police discovered no proof of this. Investigations by the BBC and Indian fact-checking outlet Alt Information additionally discovered these claims to be false on the time. (Disclaimer: this creator used to work for Alt Information.)

But, at the least 4 web sites not solely proceed to hold tales in regards to the debunked conspiracy principle, but in addition to revenue from them by means of commercials positioned on these articles. Via Google’s Adsense programme, these on-line publishers are estimated to earn $10-$20 for each 1,000 views on these tales – even whereas Google has actively promoted its efforts to combat on-line disinformation and a coverage in opposition to hateful conduct. 

Bellingcat searched on Google for articles revealed between 2022 and 2024 that repeated 17 falsehoods that had beforehand been debunked by Worldwide Truth Checking Community (IFCN)-accredited organisations or Alt Information, a number one fact-checking web site in India, and that match Google’s definition of “hate speech”. 

We manually checked articles to search out people who repeated the hateful disinformation as truth, as a substitute of debunking it. In whole, we discovered 53 distinctive web sites, together with 21 media shops, carrying 91 energetic articles repeating these statements. 

Google confirmed that 44 of those web sites – lots of that are well-known inside India’s disinformation and hate ecosystem – had been actively monetising 72 of the articles we recognized by runnings advertisements by means of the AdSense programme.

That is prone to be the tip of the iceberg: our information solely consists of articles containing debunked disinformation in English, with a small portion in Hindi. Our search was additionally restricted to websites we discovered listed on Google. In all probability the universe of internet sites getting cash on this method may very well be a lot bigger.

(Editor’s word: We aren’t sharing our full dataset of websites and articles containing hateful disinformation to keep away from amplifying this content material. Nonetheless, in case you are a journalist or researcher who’s fascinated with acquiring this, please electronic mail Pooja Chaudhuri at pooja@bellingcat.com.)

Actual World Impacts

As within the “flood jihad” case, disinformation in India is ceaselessly used to focus on minorities and performs on insecurities of the mainstream Hindu inhabitants. Its proliferation particularly by means of media shops with a large attain can have actual world impacts, such because the arrests of harmless individuals and selling hate in opposition to sure teams. 

For instance, 16 Muslim males had been arrested in 2021 beneath sedition and nationwide safety fees after a video was shared with the declare that they raised slogans praising Pakistan – with whom India has a fractious relationship – at a spiritual celebration within the metropolis of Ujjain. Though Alt Information debunked these claims, discovering that the crowds had been as a substitute chanting to welcome an area chief, quite a few web sites proceed to hold the disinformation. No less than 17 of them, together with eight media shops, characteristic energetic Google advertisements. 

Bellingcat requested Jaskirat Singh Bawa, International Head of Editorial Operations at Logically Information, an IFCN-accredited fact-checking organisation, in regards to the function of media within the disinformation ecosystem in India. 

“It’s undoubtedly disheartening to see publications with the means and the wherewithal to have a large attain and amplification being irresponsible with the content material that they generally put on the market… whether or not that is being pushed by political motivations, or whether or not it is being pushed by greed to get extra income primarily based from advert clicks, we do not know,” he stated.

Google’s Contradictory Strategy

In principle, Google doesn’t permit content material that incites hatred in opposition to, promotes discrimination of, or disparages a person or group on the premise of their race, ethnic origin or faith. Google additionally requires publishers to stick to equally worded writer insurance policies which additional prohibits content material “related to systemic discrimination or marginalisation” throughout all of its merchandise, and has invested a big quantity in fact-checking initiatives. 

However in actuality, disinformation continues to look each on the corporate’s search engine and the websites that its advertisements seem on. Google has stated that it neither removes nor downgrades content material on its search engine primarily based on fact-check studies as a result of it “doesn’t endorse any of those truth checks”. And as our investigation has discovered, the corporate’s advertisements proceed to generate income for the very sources spreading dangerous disinformation. 

The corporate stated that it has traditionally eliminated all advertisements from a writer’s web site for many coverage violations. Nonetheless, in 2017 it rolled out a page-level coverage motion for publishers that concerned eradicating advertisements from particular person articles, and solely taking sitewide motion if violations attain a particular undisclosed threshold.

When requested about Google advertisements being positioned alongside articles selling hateful disinformation in India, a Google spokesperson stated: “Defending customers is our high precedence and we don’t permit advertisements on content material which incites hatred in opposition to, promotes discrimination of or disparages a person or group on the premise of their race or ethnic origin, or faith. Once we discover content material that evades our detection we take speedy motion and take away advertisements from serving.”

Google added {that a} majority of the articles containing hateful disinformation, which had been debunked by recognized fact-checking organisations, didn’t violate its insurance policies and people which did had been blocked from serving advertisements. It didn’t share an inventory of the blocked pages with us when requested.

Moreover, the advertisements had been on particular person articles and never from complete web sites regardless of the presence of “serial offenders” together with OpIndia – one of the vital outstanding far-right web sites in India – in our dataset. Google continued to serve us advertisements on OpIndia articles after we had flagged them as containing hateful disinformation.

Google is listed as a vendor on the advertisements.txt file of a majority of internet sites in our dataset. The advertisements.txt file, which is often offered by web sites that characteristic programmatic promoting, lists distributors authorised to promote or resell the web site’s advert stock. The file might not at all times be up to date to indicate the latest energetic distributors.

Google stated that two out of the 46 web sites that we discovered to be working digital advertisements don’t monetise with AdSense. However by offering companies to 44 of them, Google stays the biggest advert companies supplier in our dataset.

Arielle Garcia, Director of Intelligence at digital promoting watchdog Verify My Advertisements, instructed Bellingcat that it made sense to count on platforms like Google, that are being paid to monetise content material, to do due diligence on their prospects. “There’s precedent for this in different industries,” she stated.

Different Advertisers

A number of different advert tech corporations are additionally serving to such content material to generate income. Bellingcat was served advertisements by two different programmatic promoting suppliers, Taboola and iZooto, on an article falsely linking a Muslim pupil protestor to the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. The web site working these advertisements – Newstrack Dwell – has listed New York-based Taboola as a direct vendor. Neither Taboola nor iZooto had responded to our requests for remark by publication.

The identical false info was carried by OpIndia which listed Microsoft’s AppNexus, and Indexexchange as authorised distributors in its advertisements.txt. A Microsoft spokesperson instructed us that the corporate was “investigating this report and can take applicable motion the place needed in accordance with our platform insurance policies”. It didn’t elaborate on what this “motion” might entail. Indexexchange didn’t reply to our electronic mail.

Bellingcat reached out to OpIndia, The Pissed off Indian, and different publishers named on this piece for remark. As of publication, none of them had responded. 

Manufacturers In The Darkish?

In contrast to conventional digital promoting, the place corporations buy advert house on particular web sites, programmatic promoting schemes reminiscent of Google’s AdSense use algorithms to routinely decide which advertisements are positioned on which web sites. 

Which means advertisers are sometimes in the dead of night about their manufacturers showing alongside hateful, or false, info.

From July to August 2024, Bellingcat was served advertisements for e-commerce web site Temu, internet hosting firm Bluehost, Simple View, a browser extension, and Joyalukkas Jewellery whereas viewing articles in regards to the 2022 “flood jihad” conspiracy on 4 web sites. 

Considered one of them, The Pissed off Indian, claimed that the Assam floods had been a “new type of jihad in opposition to kafirs”. Kafirs is a time period, usually utilized in a derogatory context, referring to non-believers within the Islamic God. One other web site, Sanatan Samachar, referred to Muslims as “devils” who’re at all times looking out for alternatives to create havoc.

We reached out to the businesses informing them that their advertisements had been showing subsequent to an article selling hate in opposition to Muslims in India. 

Temu was the one firm that responded to our electronic mail. It eliminated its advertisements from Sanatan Samachar and three different web sites – Newstrack, OpIndia and Jaipur Dialogues – which had additionally revealed different hateful disinformation tales associated to India that we identified to them. 

“We had been unaware that our Google advertisements had been showing on the web sites you talked about. We don’t function in India, and this example occurred with out our information. We have now taken speedy motion to stop our advertisements from showing on these web sites by including them to our unfavorable checklist. We’re dedicated to making sure our advertisements usually are not related to disinformation or hateful content material and can act promptly to rectify any such scenario,” it stated.

Other than Temu, insurance coverage firm Hiscox, on-line advertising and marketing firm Fixed Contact and journey web site Expedia additionally stated that they blocked OpIndia from displaying their advertisements after we reached out to them.

Google Advertisements coverage web page says that advertisers can choose out of showing on web sites or content material they don’t align with. “Content material exclusion settings allow you to (advertisers) choose out of displaying your advertisements alongside sure classes of internet sites, movies, and cell apps that will not be applicable on your model or serve your promoting targets,” it says.

However in accordance with Garcia, this isn’t simple for advertisers. “The difficulty right here is that advertisers merely would not have entry to all the info that they want in an effort to truly examine their advertisements. It is extremely tough for them to get entry to log stage or impression stage information from the platform,” she stated. 

“If manufacturers are given management of the place their advertisements run, and transparency into the place their advertisements run, then it turns off the spigot that’s feeding these websites,” Garcia added. 

Nonetheless, Bawa from Logically Information stated he believed that manufacturers wanted to share accountability for funding hateful content material. “This isn’t an advert tech drawback alone … We regularly do see statements the place the manufacturers say that they do not need to connect their title to such type of content material, however I do not assume there’s an precise disincentive for them to take a stand and in addition stress advert tech platforms,” he stated. “I feel it is solely after they get caught [that] each the advertisers and the platforms truly step up.”

Bellingcat is a non-profit and the flexibility to hold out our work relies on the type help of particular person donors. If you want to help our work, you are able to do so right here. You may as well subscribe to our Patreon channel right here. Subscribe to our Publication and comply with us on Twitter right here and Mastodon right here.