Between Borders and Lies: Fact-Checkers on Navigating the India-Pakistan Conflict

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

Following a deadly terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, a swift escalation of conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan led to both countries claiming victory after agreeing to a truce on Sunday. The rapid escalation had raised fears of a full-scale war.

In the wake of the most intense India-Pakistan escalation in two decades, experts are still trying to make sense of the role that the information war played in the physical one. In this episode, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir speaks to two experts from India and Pakistan who have tirelessly navigated the deluge of disinformation during the crisis:

• Pratik Sinha, co-founder and editor at Alt News—one of India’s major fact-checking websites, and
• Asad Baig, founder of Media Matters for Democracy—a non-profit focused on media literacy and development in Pakistan.

The two experts reflect on how the India-Pakistan conflict played out across digital platforms—and how it revealed a deeper, more dangerous dysfunction in the information ecosystem. They describe a media environment where traditional outlets now chase the same viral incentives as TikTokers, blurring the lines between journalism and content. Trust in platforms has cratered: not only are trust and safety teams seen as powerless, but the platforms themselves are viewed as actively amplifying conflict rather than containing it.

The guests discuss the stark double standard in how platforms apply free speech principles—upholding them in Western contexts while abandoning them in politically sensitive situations, revealing how vague, internal policies often override consistent commitment to expression. As the platforms’ influence grows, both speakers express deep frustration and fatigue as they try to hold the line in an information war where the odds are stacked against them.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Ramsha Jahangir:

I'm Ramsha Jahangir, associate editor at Tech Policy Press. As tensions between India and Pakistan exploded into the most intense violence in two decades, the digital front lines lit up just as fiercely. In a region already teetering on the edge, the intersection of geopolitics and online platforms is not just concerning, it's dangerous, with real-world consequences unfolding in real time.

Over the last week, we saw the rapid spread of unverified information from recycled videos presented as current events to AI-generated content blurring reality, all amplified by unchecked hyper-nationalism. Compounding this was the immense pressure on fact-checking organizations in both India and Pakistan, who faced an overwhelming demand for their services amidst dwindling support from platforms and trust and safety initiatives. These developments raise critical questions about platform responsibility, the sustainability of truth-seeking efforts, and the future of online discourse and fundamental freedoms during crisis. To shed light on these critical dynamics, particularly from those who witnessed it firsthand in India and Pakistan, I'm joined today by two experts, Pratik Sinha from Alt News in India, which is one of the country's most trusted and leading fact-checking organization, as well as Asad Baig, founder of Media Matters for Democracy in Pakistan, which focuses on media literacy and development.

So maybe to start off with you, Pratik, let's start with what this past week or maybe the past month has been for you and your team as the conflict escalated.

Pratik Sinha:

It started late in the night and most of us were asleep. Zubair, who's also the co-founder of Alt News, he sleeps late and he happened to be awake when the conflict first started and then he stayed up all night debunking all kinds of misinformation.

Day one, we saw a lot of misinformation from both sides, but also primarily from Pakistan. But day two onwards, then things changed and then we started seeing much more misinformation from the Indian side, and the last four or five days have been crazy. Typically, we do two, three stories a day, but we've been doing anywhere between 11 to 15 stories a day.

Ramsha Jahangir:

And Asad, what's it been like on your end? What have you been witnessing on the Pakistani side? Was the scale the same?

Asad Baig:

I think it's very interesting. I would say the scale was the same. Look, one, there is disinformation which is primarily created on the platforms, right? In which case, we are talking about Twitter posts or AI-created videos and so on. Some of them are obviously fake, so you obviously don't need to check. Others are slightly more sinister, AI-generated videos, for instance, which have this ability to fool a lot of people, and obviously, those are the kind of content you fact-check. But then there is a third category, which obviously has become painfully obvious in this whole, like the past one month or so. It's that the misinformation which is actually generated by mainstream media outlets, which makes its way to the platforms in which way I'm talking about news anchors for instance, talking about a certain thing that, "Oh, this has happened and this is happening right now," and that ends up on the mainstream platforms. I'm sorry, on the timelines, and that becomes really interesting because that obviously, people generally have a lot of trust in the media.

And in Pakistan, we've seen, for instance, we've done a number of studies, particularly around the COVID time and before and after that as well. A lot of people say that they trust the journalism media. Now that becomes really tricky because if mainstream media itself is generating disinformation and that ends up on the timelines and that is feeding the trolls and obviously the whole organized disinformation is getting amped up by the fact that disinformation is being created by the mainstream media, that becomes really tricky. And I think in this whole scenario, that was the third category of disinformation was probably the most prevalent in my view.

Ramsha Jahangir:

And it's coincidental because I saw that we last spoke, the three of us, for a story I did in 2019, which is the last time a conflict of the scale unfolded between India and Pakistan. And we were talking about the scale of disinformation then as well. Pratik, how has the volume and as well as the content and the type of misinformation, the scale of it changed since previous instances of Indian Pakistan tension?

Pratik Sinha:

Not much really. It's most of the same. In fact, we even debunked some of this misinformation, which was circulated in 2019 post-Pulwama and Balakot and again this year. There were images of old Indian airplane crashes which were circulated and we checked them this year as well.

Yes, there has been some AI-generated misinformation, but not much. I think there were, I personally saw two or three, two of them were of the spokesperson of Pakistan's military, which were there two AI-generated videos of that person. And then I think I saw another AI-generated video where India was claiming that Karachi has been attacked and it was the shot of Karachi, which was AI-generated. But otherwise, as always, most of the misinformation is quite rudimentary in nature, which is old images, old videos, something taken from Gaza, something taken from Lebanon, something taken from Sudan, and all of them being regenerated just like last time we had a lot of Arma 3 videos and which as a fact-checker, which are the most boring to debunk because then you have to sit and watch hours and hours of video games to find an exact match to be able to fact check them. But yes, I would say the scale was enormous again, and post Pulwama, Balakot also we saw a huge scale. It was just for a shorter period, this time it was a longer period.

Ramsha Jahangir:

And how are you changing your work? Have you changed your work at all since 2019 to be better equipped to address the scale of misinformation and also the introduction of AI, even though, like you said, it's not at that scale yet?

Pratik Sinha:

At Alt News, we are a bigger team that surely helps, and otherwise, no, not really, not much, because as I said, the issue is not the misinformation server. It doesn't take a lot of skill to figure out what the misinformation is. It takes an image search, a video search, etc., to find where the misinformation is coming from. It is the volume that is being generated and being used to create a narrative, is the speed at which it is coming. And as I pointed out, the mainstream media played a huge part, even in India in terms of creating this information. So that becomes a challenge, and plus, as a fact-checker, the other thing is that you start, we've got many videos of dead bodies and dead, all of that, and to look at all that is also quite challenging.

Ramsha Jahangir:

And also there's the role of government censorship in all of this, right? Of course, it is a political, geopolitical conflict at the end of the day. We've seen content blocking. We've seen the role of platforms as well where we've not just seen news websites being blocked, but also accounts being withheld locally. So how do you see the role of platforms and governments shaping out during conflict as well?

Asad Baig:

That's a very loaded question. Obviously, this is one topic that we've been working on for quite some time now. I can say now I have a very evolved view of this whole situation specifically after this and the past one month of crises that we have seen. There are a couple of things.

One, obviously, the censorship in the way that we saw the channels were dropped down in India first, and then obviously reciprocating and probably reacting channels were taken down in Pakistan as well. That really is not the question. The question really is what the platforms are doing in response to this.

Now, this has changed a lot of notions that I had frankly, speaking of platform regulation and the views that I had or had formed in the past few years very quickly by me and I don't want to hog all the time. But what Pratik said about disinformation, I've started to feel that it's not an AI problem, it's not the problem of the people who are creating them. It's not even the problem of the mainstream media who is now we say actively trying to create dissent. It's actually the problem of distribution. It's actually the problem the way misinformation is being distributed and the way algorithms are actually amplified. That really has become now painfully obvious is that this really is the ball of contention when it comes to this largely. I'll give you an example of why I'm talking about that and I'm sure Pratik would also probably be able to add to that.

Anytime we fact-check, we find that we only have probably one or 2% of the reach of the disinformation content that otherwise has on the platform. In that way, we always find ourselves in late game, in terms of challenging the platform's algorithms. We always feel that we are working against the algorithms when we are fact. And if you think about it, who is to blame in this all or in all of this situation number one?

Number two, I think this year with due respect, I'll disagree on what Pratik was saying, that this year it's not the same. It's not the same like 2019. It's actually much, much more intense. And I'll tell you why.

Number one, fact-checking support by Meta has been taken away. Number two, X has those community notes now or community, whatever that they call them, so in fact, they very conveniently put the responsibility of fact-checking on the people who can. Similarly, YouTube's community standards have also evolved and changed and so on. They're very political. And similarly, a lot of support which was coming from American donors on fact-checking and empowering users and empowering journalists and journalists across the world in terms of fact-checking, that has completely stopped.

In Pakistan, I tell you Ramsha, there were about 500 or something projects which were terminated, which were funded by the US. About, if I'm not wrong, about 25% of them were specifically on disinformation. And Media Matters had five of our major projects cut down in which we were working directly with the media, directly with the journalists. We had this fact-checking tool, which was serving 14 newsrooms called ‘Facter’. So all of that was suspended because of the US cuts. So all of this combined, plus I feel that there is a certain feeling or perhaps an understanding within the owners of the platforms that they are not responsible for this disinformation and they don't want to do anything about it as opposed to let's say four years, five years ago or even in 2019 when they were actively putting in effort to support the people who are fact-checking.

So this time I think it was actually much worse because all of this combined. And then obviously there's, once again, I don't want to hog all the time that he constructed all of this depth in view of the articles that I've written recently, it's the media, the media in general, the journalism media. Now, they're basically competing against TikTok and YouTube and Facebook and even on the OTT platforms or Bollywood in general when it comes to revenue, most of the revenue in India and in Pakistan is actually going towards the digital media stuff.

So the television news is not really talking to the people who are watching television now. They're talking and creating content for the people who are online. And if you take into account the kind of polarization that we have and the amplification of hate that is happening on the platforms and how the algorithms are actually amplifying the hate in a way that there is no other content in comparison, which comes even close to that. I don't see any other options for the journalism outlets who want to survive either they close shop, like we've seen a lot of media houses, a lot of newsrooms have essentially shut down. Either that or they do what we see now and what is happening essentially to survive, mainly to survive.

So platforms really are the biggest culprit when we talk about hate and disinformation in any real way, not even the governments now. I think the platforms have even surpassed the governments when it comes to content manipulation damage.

Pratik Sinha:

Yeah, two things in India, journalism became a caricature 10 years ago, so it's not a new thing for us. And regarding the role of platforms, yes, absolutely true. Alt News never got any money from Meta or anyone. Alt News is a donor-funded organization and we get donations from Indian citizens in India and across the world, and that is how we run. From a financial point of view, we didn't see any difference if at all. We've gotten record donations this month in recognition of the work that we did this month. But the other fact-checking organizations, I think they're still getting some money from Meta as far as I know. I could be wrong.

But as far as the fact-checking efforts are concerned, I think India has about 10 to 11 fact-checking organizations all doing different kinds of work. There are some who are not questioning the narrative that is coming out of the government and some who are, but largely there's a huge bunch of fact-checking websites in India. So if at all, the work has expanded since 2019 in terms of fact-checking.

But yes, the point about platforms is absolutely true. That is, at least back then, they were at least pretending that they want to do something about misinformation. They are not even pretending anymore. And the problem is that they are hiding behind the excuse that you can't figure out what is the intent of misinformation. They are hiding behind the excuse that you cannot penalize anyone for misinformation. Only if you can figure out the intent that you can penalize someone. And they have been hiding behind this excuse for a very long time, and I think that actually is not true because in India there are a lot of repeat offenders who have been putting out disinformation for about 10 years now. It is very easy to figure out who are the prominent ones and ensure that they don't have access to the platforms.

But obviously, that is not what the platforms want. The platforms want the people that are creating disinformation on the platform because they create engagement. These are the tweets which are being seen 2 million times, 3 million times. These are the posts, the YouTube videos, which are being seen many million times.

Ramsha Jahangir:

One interesting thing, I think this is a difference between the landscape in India and Pakistan, the media model, but also the funding landscape. And you both have talked about that, but Pratik curious to know what are the alternate support mechanisms that fact-checking organizations or groups have in India? Because this is not just an India-Pakistan issue, it's a global issue with platforms rolling back their support for fact checking and media literacy generally. So maybe there's a lesson there or maybe there's some guidance there and what the Indian case can inform others in this space as well.

Pratik Sinha:

I think the subscription model is working in India. There are a few independent organizations in India beyond the fact checking organizations where people are subscribing and they have a decent sized start. There is Newslaundry, there's NewsMinute, there is Wire, has a donation model. I don't know if that is working in Pakistan or not, but definitely in India at least few organizations are able to sustain themselves through subscriptions.

There are also some grant-making organizations in India. I know some of the independent organizations are getting grants from a body called IPSMF, the Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation. They have also recently, IPSMF has also recently been targeted legally for supporting independent media, but I think they continue to support at least a few independent media organizations. And I think there are some people living outside India, NRIs, who are also supporting certain independent media ventures. So I think that is how some of the independent fact-checking and independent journalism is being supported in India.

Ramsha Jahangir:

One question I have for both of you is broadly, what does this recent flare-up between India and Pakistan tell us about how modern conflicts are shaped by digital platforms? And you both have mentioned bits and pieces of ways platforms have made this worse by not being involved in their lack of moderation, but are there other warning signs that come out from this experience?

Asad Baig:

There are two or three things. One, would like to respond to what Pratik said. Alt News is still working probably because you never taken money from Meta because if you had taken money from Meta, like the other fact-checking organizations that we see, you'd probably not be partial right now because the business model that they had for the independent fact- checkers was designed in a way that they would completely rely on the money which was coming from it. And obviously, you can't really do anything in terms of investigating disinformation when you are a, "partner", with Meta because that's not what they want. They don't want you to talk about how the disinformation is being spread or how we are actually profiting from it. They only want you to fact check.

And once again, why probably the fact-checking organizations have died because of the fact that they were taking money from Meta. One, very deliberate. That's number one. Number two, I think what we have seen now, sorry, one more thing that Pratik said on the context of free expression topic of why they do what they do, because in general we keep hearing a lot of things about how the platforms are operating on the principles of free expression and so on. This concept is basically thrown out the window anytime they need to censor anything, which is, let's say, coming from Palestine or coming from anywhere else. So then if the expression argument doesn't apply, but everywhere else it does apply. Basically there is absolutely no reason for what they're doing except for their own policies, which we don't know, by the way. We don't know how they are.

Number three, I think at this point in time, we obviously had evidence before as well in terms of what happened in Myanmar, or what happened in Palestine, earlier this year that is. So we do have evidence, but now this time I think it is painfully clear that containing is another matter. The platforms might actually be amplifying the conflict, forget containing, and that really has become, for me personally, that really has become a big question because we don't have access anywhere even close to the platforms or the people who are making decisions in those spaces.

Whenever you talk to somebody who's seemingly, "representing" one of these organizations, they give you answers which make you go around in circles. And you have, once again, it becomes painfully obvious that the people you are meeting have absolutely no say in whatever happens in the platform. So they're basically doing it as a decoy just to distract. I think it really has become really important at this point for the civil society. And I'm not talking about governments once again talking about civil society, to start thinking about how this security or how this some kind of coalition building that can actually help in terms of putting pressure on the platforms. Because the governments can't do that. Whenever the governments step into the process, they would want to, and we've seen once again in the history, that they would want to use this kind of power political. So the governments obviously can't.

The civil society organizations, they're not just the organizations, but civil society in general has now this responsibility to talk about the transparency and essentially talk about why and how these people are doing what they're doing in terms of, because I'm just, by the way, just one more thing and I'll stop after that.

Right now we're working on a study basically trying to see what kind of reach some of the disinformation posts have enjoyed as opposed to some of the reach that the fact-check organizations have achieved this, let's say past one. And for whatever we have right now, we obviously don't have the whole data, but for whatever we have right now, it gives you a glaring insight into what has been happening. So when I say that the platforms are actually amplifying the content, the conflict in this situation or in any other way, that's based on the data that I was talking about.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thanks so much Asad, really look forward to more details and data from your report. Pratik, what are your final reflections on all of this?

Pratik Sinha:

See, so the thing is, firstly, let's start with the platforms. If there's an organization whose balance sheet shows that they are selling shoes, we call it a shoe company. That is where they make most money from. So we call it a shoe company. The reason why Alt News never took money from any of these big platforms is because from day one, we had the understanding that they are making money by selling ads and they are very good at it and there's nothing to fix there. They are excellent at selling ads. One platform calls them a video platform. One platform calls them a search engine platform. Another platform calls them a social media platform, but the money they make from is by selling ads. And this is a scenario that cannot be fixed. We have to have alternative imaginations of what a social media company is, what a search engine, and what a YouTube, what a video hosting platform is. That is number one.

A lot of the Alt News work consistently delves in platform accountability, during elections, after elections, the kind of ads that are running the violence in the ads that are running and we are looking at that all the time. Now because it is these companies, these are platforms which are efficient at selling platforms, which means that they collecting a lot of data and this is the same data that politicians want. They want what people like. Just the way the advertisers want to know what people like is the same thing that the politicians want. They want to know what the people like.

So the two things are meeting beautifully, and that is where all of this comes from, whether it's Cambridge Analytica and all of that, where the advertisers are selling, but at the same point of time, we steal that data and we use that to influence elections. Now that we have established what platforms are for, then there are two kinds of interventions that are possible. There's day-to-day intervention, which is three kinds of interventions, actually.

There's day to day fact-checking, which we have been doing. And because the platforms are as they are, we see tremendous amount of abusing what that platform is for. So in India, people who are creating disinformation are protected legally. People who are fact-checking, they have police complaints and police cases against them. The co-founder of Alt News, Zubair, spent 23 days in jail in 2022. As an organization, we have cases against us from defamation cases to other cases. Zubair has some six, seven cases against him. Many independent organizations or journalists in India have many cases against them.

As far as free expression is concerned, I don't think even if we keep talking about democracy, I don't think that is something that we truly believe in. Recently, about 8,000 accounts, Indian accounts were withheld on Twitter. And this included people who were commenting on daily things and their accounts were blocked. Some very senior journalists, some based in Kashmir, etc. Their accounts were blocked. Some media organization, their accounts were blocked. So clearly the platforms don't mind blocking anything. It just needs a government directive. For example, Musk came with this huge thing about, "Oh, I'm going to be a free speech advocate," but we see that he's very happy to bend over and block as many accounts as possible. At least before this Musk era, there was some amount of pushback where Twitter would say that, no, we are not willing, or platforms would say that we are not willing to censor people. But there is widespread censorship now. And again, this is across Facebook, YouTube, etc.

India is a huge destination for any kind of business. We are 1.5 billion people. There is no one who wants to upset the government, whether it is Amazon selling in India, whether it is Google as a company operating in India, whether it is Meta as a company operating in India. Upsetting the Indian government means not being able to do business. And I think after probably US or maybe some of the other countries, India is the biggest market for any tech company. So they will never upset the government and they will do whatever the government wants and that goes against any kind of democratic principle.

So this whole particular situation that India is in is being abused every single day. There is never a time when there is any lull in disinformation as far as India is concerned. This whole thing is abused every single day to create a narrative, to create anti-minority narrative. There's not one day which goes by without somebody trying to put out disinformation against minorities, in India, for example.

I don't see, yes, the volume and all of that, it has increased during this time, but the amount of disinformation that we deal with on a day-to-day basis is almost war like. Every event in India, there is so much narrative building. It's almost war like, CNRC protests, huge amount of disinformation, farmers protest, huge amount of disinformation. Everything, there's information warfare. Yes, this is a case where we are dealing with in terms of volume, but seriously it is not very different from what we see in India at other times.

Ramsha Jahangir:

This is actually a good reminder to end this conversation on why the work of fact-checkers is so important, not just because of the scale, but also how normalized disinformation has become. So thank you so much, Pratik and Asad, for your time. This was a very thoughtful conversation, and hoping sense prevails on our borders. Thanks so much.