‘I REALISED THAT PEOPLE WERE GULLIBLE’
Mumbai’s Pankaj Jain, 39, is a businessman by day and a hoax slayer by night. He was fed up of being bombarded by inane, fake news through family and friends’ WhatsApp groups. In August 2015, he created a Facebook page called Social Media Hoax Slayer.
“I’m the guy who has long debates about the veracity of stories at family functions and gatherings with friends,” he says. “I soon realised that people were gullible and one message was enough to cause communal hatred. That’s when I decided I needed to reach out to a larger
number of people.”
By October, he had also launched a website, smhoaxslayer.com. His Facebook page now has 56,000 followers and his Twitter account, 12,000.
“I spend a few hours updating the website after work every day,” says Jain. “It’s the constant requests on chat and WhatsApp from people asking me to verify information that get really difficult to manage single-handed.”
His system of cross-checking information usually involves a thorough Google search. He has become good at spotting Photoshop modifications.
“The first step is always to reverseGoogle search an image. Then I look for signs of tampering,” he says.
For example, he says, a recent viral picture showed political activist and proud teetotaller Hardik Patel sitting beside a bottle and glass of alcohol. “It was clear that they had been added to the picture, because they had no shadow,” he says.
In other cases, he relies on government reports and statistics. And sometimes, just common sense.
Recently, actor and politician Paresh Rawal shared a fake story on Twitter about former President APJ Abdul Kalam saying Pakistan had tried to get him to betray India. “I saw that the text had spelling and grammatical errors and wondered how someone like Paresh Rawal could fall for such an obvious hoax. I pointed it out to him on Twitter,” Jain says.
The downside, Jain says, is that he gets quite a few threats and angry messages; people call him ‘anti-national’. “One guy said he knew where I lived and would ‘take care’ of people like me who spread false news,” says Jain, laughing.
At the same time, he gets a lot of appreciation from people.
“In the end, I know I am just a curious guy who believes in statistics and proof,” he says, “and wants others to do the same.”