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The Hindu
The Hindu
Lifestyle
Prashant Baid, Saptaparno Ghosh

The game no one’s talking about: Internet manipulation is on the rise in India

Until last week, 17-year-old Firoz Chaudhary was listed as a singer on the IMDb page for Tom Cruise’s 2022 hit Top Gun: Maverick. His profile described him as an actor, musician and model associated in varied capacities with several big English and Hindi movies, including Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) and Jayeshbhai Jordaar (2022). A quick search for the teenager “from a small village in Uttar Pradesh” pulled up a verified profile on the music app Spotify and a Google knowledge panel (the snapshot dashboard that appears alongside search results).

Akash Noatia, an 18-year-old from Tripura, enjoys similar fame. Internet search introduces him as a digital marketer and social media influencer, while the teen’s IMDb profile enumerated his experience as an actor, music ‘supervision’ and title track singer (separately) for movies such as Malang (2020), Shershaah (2021) and Sooryavanshi (2021).

Also read | Fudging reality: Of fake profiles and platform gaming

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