A shady Meta and YouTube black market threaten India's election integrity.

In 2019, Tushar Giri, a political consultant, found himself in a room with a distressed veteran leader from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This politician, a five-time legislator and former chief ministerial candidate, had recently lost in state legislature elections, leaving his team puzzled about the defeat. Seeking to alter the narrative, they turned to Giri with a clear demand: to purchase shadow Facebook pages. Giri provided them with a page from his firm, which amassed nearly 800,000 followers by promoting BJP's Hindu majoritarian themes under the guise of a current-affairs platform. This page was eventually retired by the BJP after the leader's exit from electoral politics.

As the 2024 election campaign unfolded, Giri found a buyer for the page: a political defector in Madhya Pradesh seeking to appeal to far-right voters. Repurposed to promote the Madhya Pradesh politician, the page continues to operate, showcasing the fluidity of such pages in Indian political campaigns.

Investigations and studies by various groups expose the thriving black market of Facebook pages in India, which are traded to influence voters while circumventing the platform's scrutiny of political advertising. Despite Meta's rules against selling or operating accounts under false identities, these violations persist throughout India's lengthy election cycles, facilitating the spread of divisive content, conspiracy theories, and disinformation targeting religious minorities.

These surrogate pages have become integral to political campaigns, particularly during crises, serving as parallel business models. Giri's firm alone manages nearly 40 pages primed for sale. This black market is also validated by studies, with nearly half of the top political advertisers on Facebook in the last 90 days being surrogate pages with obscured ownership.

The primary motivation behind this market is to evade Meta's scrutiny, enabling campaigns to bypass the verification steps required for political advertising. Furthermore, these shadow pages provide a platform for pushing content that may not be suitable for official campaign channels, allowing candidates to disassociate themselves from contentious material while avoiding the associated costs.

While the BJP prominently utilizes such pages, other parties, including the Congress, also engage in this practice. However, BJP-affiliated pages dominate the top spenders list. Recent research highlights a concerted effort on the far-right to exploit this black market, amplifying divisive narratives and targeting opposition leaders and minority groups.

Efforts to address this issue have been met with limited success. Despite Meta's claims of rigorous review processes, investigations reveal significant gaps in detecting and blocking problematic content. YouTube, another major platform, has similarly failed to prevent the spread of election misinformation, raising concerns about the platforms' commitment to safeguarding democratic processes.