'IT Cells Drown Out The Voice Of The Common Person Through The Use Of Fictitious Voices'
And 5 other points made by Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang.
The term 'IT Cell’ (information technology cell) has been a part of our political vocabulary for some years now. Essentially, an IT Cell functions as a political party’s ‘department of propaganda’, and uses the tools of social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp to drive home a particular narrative. In the West, such an operation is referred to as a troll farm.
Typically, an IT Cell will have several hundred or a few thousand core employees who work with tens of thousands of volunteers to spread a particular type of message.
The BJP, which introduced the mass use of this strategy and technique in the run up to the elections of 2014, has mastered the process, but parties like the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have also wised up and formed similar operations of their own. (Hell, each country in the world has at least one IT Cell.)
But what are they like? And why should we worry about them? To understand that, we spoke to Sophie Zhang, a data scientist and a former Facebook employee who turned into a whistleblower. During her time there, she discovered five networks of IT Cells on Facebook, two of them run by the BJP, two by the Congress and one by the AAP. When Zhang reported this to Facebook, they agreed to suspend four networks, but not the fifth (you will see why below).
This podcast conversation was recorded a few weeks ago in the midst of the Gujarat state elections, but given that we are in the run up to another key election, the Karnataka state election this year where IT cells are active (both Gujarat and Karnataka have functioned as Hindutva laboratories), we thought it might be a good idea to publish Zhang’s perspectives, in text.
Zhang is a persistent and perceptive analyst, and her analogies alone are worth the time spent listening to her. The podcast is below but for those wishing for a summary of her thoughts, we present them here.
1. What work did Zhang do at Facebook and why was she fired?
Sophie Zhang:
“Suppose tomorrow the Delhi police hire a new policewoman and she is told, you should stop robbery in Delhi. This new policewoman does all of this, but also in her spare time, she works with India’s R&W or IB to catch a group of PRC hackers that are hacking into hospitals in Delhi to encrypt their data and demand a ransom to steal your money. This is technically what she was ordered to do. But it’s very much above her pay grade and very much not what she’s expected to do.
That is basically how my work on IT Cells fit in. It was considered far above my pay grade. It was supposed to be left for more important people. And so, it was work I was doing in my spare time that I was eventually ordered to stop.”
2. What did she find in India?
Sophie Zhang:
“In India, I found five networks of fake accounts [on Facebook] that would be called troll farms in the West, commonly referred to as IT Cells in India. And these were across the political spectrum. Two of them supporting the Congress, two supporting the BJP, and one supporting the AAP. So it was quite equal opportunity across the political spectrum.
And so anyways when I raised this to Facebook, it took a bit of doing, but India is an important country to Facebook. Facebook quickly agreed that this is bad, this is a violation of our policies, we should take it down. And so they agreed to take down all five.
But they only took down four, because at the last moment they realised that the fifth network of fake accounts was run out of the personal account of a sitting member of the Lok Sabha. This was the honourable MP Vinod Sonkar who represents Kaushambi for the BJP, quite ironically the chairperson of ethics in the parliamentary committee…and as soon as this discovery was made, I could not get anyone at Facebook to comment [and] to respond to me on what should be done, whether this should be acted upon or not.
After I became a whistleblower, I offered to testify and provide my documentation to the Indian Lok Sabha over the matter, and to their credit the parliamentary committee on IT voted unanimously to invite me which must have been very difficult given that my documentation implicated both BJP and Congress members. But after it was voted to invite me, because I’m a foreigner, this was supposed to go to the Honourable Speaker … to evaluate and approve my petition. And similar to my experience at Facebook, the Honourable Speaker has refused to provide an official response.”
3. How are IT cells different from bots?
Sophie Zhang
“Words are losing and changing meaning over time. Bots literally mean automated accounts/the computer scripts that do not have a real person actively running and monitoring them. But increasingly, at least in the West—I do not know whether that's the case in India—the word bots is also used to denote people sitting behind the desk, who are conducting activity that they are paid to do all day, which is very different from literal bots.
In the strict definition, bots refer to automated accounts with no real human constantly monitoring and running them. IT Cells, troll farms…these generally refer to actual people who are paid or volunteer to conduct activity all day, who may work from home, but oftentimes are given a set of devices by which they run their activity.
Computer scripts are very different from people in a number of ways, you do not need to pay a computer script, computer scripts do not need to get tired and need rest. [People]…don't work on weekends, or on Diwali. In one case in Azerbaijan, government-run [IT Cells] stopped when non-essential governmental employees were temporarily furloughed due to the COVID epidemic.
On the other hand, bots…they have no time-of-day constraints, they're able to work without sleep, as much as they want without pay.”
4 . If IT Cells are an accepted reality, why should we worry about their existence?
Sophie Zhang
“Just because an activity is commonplace doesn't mean that it should be accepted. In India, corruption is a large issue and there are many news reports about candidates running for office that have criminal convictions. This is commonplace. But just because it is commonplace, does not mean that it is accepted by the people.
Fundamentally, the use of IT Cells is a problem because it drowns out the dialogue of ordinary people. It does not matter precisely what an IT Cell is doing, in the same way that when fake votes are cast for a candidate, it does not matter who the candidate is. [Fake votes are] drowning out the voice of ordinary people, just like IT Cells drown out the voices of the common person.
And it also leads to distrust of what you see on social media. And this is normally the hallmark not of democracies, like India, but of dictatorships like the People's Republic of China, where people are obliged to be paid 50 cents by the state for every post. And that is, sadly, something…in which India can increasingly relate to today.
Fundamentally, the voices of the common person cannot be heard if they were drowned out by a tide of fictitious voices, pretending to be people.
It's most dangerous in the sense that it damages democracy. Imagine if during the emergency, critics of Indira Gandhi were drowned out by a wave of fictitious voices saying Indira Gandhi is great and [those] opposed to her are traitors.
Historically, unpopular leaders and dictators were put at an impasse when faced by the voices of the masses because they did not have the ability to respond in kind. When Mahatma Gandhi began his Quit India protests, the British Raj could not bring out a great wave of people to say we support the Raj because those people did not exist. But today, it would not be difficult for such an empire to drown out the voices of the people with fictitious masses instead.”
5. On being called both an Urban Naxalite and a Sanghi
Sophie Zhang
“I think this [polaristion] is sadly a trend that I've seen in India, whether it's across religious lines, ethnic lines, regional lines. or political political lines. Like for instance, I myself have been caught both an Urban Naxalite and Godi Media and a Sanghi, which I frankly think, it is a bit impressive.
I know that in India, the phrase tukde tukde gang is increasing. But honestly, the real tukde tukde gang are people who use words like that, to increase India's differences, to split apart people from one another. And that the left calls the right Sanghis and Godi Media and the right calls the left Liberandus and Urban Naxalites and no one listens to one another.
6 How to deal with IT cells, astroturfing, and psy-ops?
Sophie Zhang
This is a very difficult question, because, frankly, India is in a difficult state, I'm sorry, not to offer you an optimistic answer…because there are a number of potential solutions at play, none of which are very feasible or good.
Firstly, the use of IT Cells could be solved in India by electing a very ethical and honourable government and Prime Minister, that will actually follow through on the promise and remove the advantage from the government in power, which is frankly unlikely.
Another way would be international regulation. This is also tricky, because frankly, most countries are focused on matters domestically, for completely understandable reasons. The European Union is much more focused on how social media is used in Europe than in India. And America is focused on how social media is used in the United States, not in India.
And even if they could be convinced to make such regulation, it would, frankly, have pretty poor optics. In the sense of having European, American or the Western countries dictate what happens in India…the government could justifiably say that this is new colonialism, that that foreign countries are dictating what happens in India.
And a third option, I think the one that is the most likely is convincing the Indian people and sufficient public support and public pressure on the issue. This is difficult, because it's hard to convince a lot of people to do anything at the same time. But once the Indian people are united on an issue, I think there is very little that can stop them.
Fundamentally, what's going on with IT cells—like you said—it is publicly accepted, it's unfortunately part of the culture right now. But it does not have to stay part of the culture forever. Like corruption, it is also unfortunately part of the culture in India, but there are many people, dedicated people working on anti-corruption efforts. I mean, India has had plenty of history of historical traditions that it is moving away from, for instance, caste discrimination was part of the culture in India. And I'm sure it still exists today, but to a much smaller extent, because many smart people decided that this was not good. And people across the Indian political spectrum agree on that and although it still exists, it is, I think, from the outside at least, it is slowly diminishing.
And so ultimately, that is the avenue that I see as most promising. Speaking to others in India…across the political spectrum, because the problem of IT Cells is not a Congress or BJP issue, it's an Indian issue.