Political

BJP leaders retweet ‘I stand with India’ tweet from parody accounts of world leaders

Written by Facto News Desk

India and China have been in a face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) from the past month. On 15th June,  20 Indian soldiers were martyred in a clash with the Chinese troops in Galwan Valley, Ladakh. Ever since the incident, several unrelated images, videos, and fake news is being spread in social media platforms. A mainstream media agency went a step further and read out a fake list of casualties of Chinese soldiers on live TV.

Amidst the rising tensions between India and China, some social media users have created parody(impersonating) accounts of world leaders like Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, and started tweeting that they support India. Some users have even created fake profiles with Chinese  names, and started tweeting against China. These impersonating accounts were trending as they tweeted pictures of world leaders with PM Narendra Modi, with a caption “I stand with India”.

Several top BJP leaders from their verified twitter handles and a prominent news agency shared/retweeted such tweets from these parody accounts. Carrie lam cheng (Chief executive of Hong kong).Here are some screenshots from two accounts impersonating US President, Donald Trump. One tweet supports India with the caption, “I stand with India”, while the other calls for boycotting Chinese products in India.

Here is screenshots from an account impersonating  Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. BJP’s top leaders, Suresh Kumar Khanna (Cabinet Minister for Finance),  Prabhat Jha ( National Vice President BJP),  Subramanian Swamy (BJP MP, Rajya Sabha) were on the list who retweeted this. The tweet went viral with over 22K RT. 

DD News and DD news Hindi also Retweeted fake Benjamin Netanyahu’s congratulatory tweet for PM Narendra Modi.

Here is another account with the name Carrie Lam Cheng, claiming to be the chief executive of Hong Kong, shared a video claiming that Hong Kong is protesting in solidarity towards Indian soldiers attacked by the Chinese Army. We couldn’t independently verify whether this video is from Hong Kong, but we are sure this account is not of Chief Executive of  Hong Kong “Carrie Lam Cheng”.

The fake account has some old tweets rooting for PM Modi in 2014. Here is a glimpse of the  account impersonating  Hong Kong ‘s Chief Executive.

Here are some other screenshots of an account impersonating Angela Merkel.

You can view the archived version <a href="http://archive.is/Idt8A">here</a>.” width=”547″ height=”185″></p>
<p>We found all the accounts which are being retweeted by many prominent leaders are of parody accounts which were tweeting in support of India and many have fallen for this trap. It is easy for a user to simply identify fake accounts.</p>
<p>Here is what we suggest our readers to check before falling for a parody account on Twitter. Twitter authenticates the accounts with a blue tick right next to the user name. The world leaders will have a verified blue tick for their accounts. You can check the blue tick and the bio before RTing. Many of those impersonating accounts have already mentioned in their bios that they are tweeting from a parody account. The final step would be going through the content shared in the past. It is possible that these accounts may still have their old tweets. By analyzing these tweets, we can easily differentiate between the original and fake accounts.</p> 	</div>

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Facto News Desk

FACTO™ is a registered trademark of FACTO Digital Media (OPC) Private Limited, Trademark registered with the trademark registry of India under the Trademark act 1999. FactO News of FACTO Digital Media (OPC) Private Limited is an independent fact-checking platform committed to fighting misinformation/disinformation, false and fake news that we come across social media and mainstream media. We provide our readers with verified facts and educate them on issues that focus on but not limited to political, communal, and social aspects.

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