With weeks left for the national election, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has asked the information ministry to provide names of online news portals in an effort to fight fake news.
“We are initiating measures against websites publishing fake news and involved in anti-state propaganda,” Deputy Commissioner Md Alimuzzaman of the Cyber Security Division told Bangla Tribune.
According to officials familiar with the matter, in a letter sent to the information ministry on Oct 18, police said that a number of online portals are publishing fake, baseless reports and contents inciting communal hatred as well as involved with anti-state propaganda.
Using the social media, the contents are made viral and reach to large a number of people fast, it said.
According to information ministry officials, a total of 1,100 online news portals have applied to get registration while thousands of others are on the web.
Police have recently arrested shut down three portals — reportbd24.com, onlinebarta24.com and todaynews24.com for publishing fake news and arrested the people behind those — Abul Hasan, Abdullah Al Mamun and Shaon Ahmed who face charges under the Digital Security Act.
An official of the DMP cybersecurity unit said that all three of them are involved with the Jamaat-e-Islami. They ran operations from their personal computers and had no other staff.
One of the suspects, Abul Hasan operated as many as 40 Facebook pages to circulate fake news on the social media, said the official.
“We have so far shut down some 50 such news portals and there are several more,” he told Bangla Tribune.
Last week, clones of several popular news websites in Bangladesh have appeared, disseminating outright false political news.
The Bangla Tribune, the Prothom Alo, and BBC Bangla were all duplicated.
Fake news has been a major concern for the press across the world, especially in the wake of Russian interference in the US elections and the UK Brexit vote.
On Wednesday (Nov 21), the government’s rumour identification and prevention cell issued a statement identifying a fake news report on the Bangabandhu satellite that went viral on the social media.
The report titled “Bangabandhu satellite went missing” on the social media and other online portals is a rumour, the information ministry unit said in a statement.
“French company Thales Alenia Space has handed over the control of Bangabandhu Satellite-1 to Bangladesh. Bangladesh Television has been successfully broadcasting its programmes daily using the frequency of the satellite,” it said.
“Therefore, the report titled ‘Bangabandhu Satellite -1 missing’ is a rumour that has been spread intentionally.”
The information ministry urged the people not to be misled by it.
ATMBD24.website, SB24.news, DLonlinetv.com and prothombangladesh.net were found publishing the report after bdnews24 searched for it following the press note from the information ministry.
ATMBD24.website shared the report from a Facebook page bearing the logo of BBC Bengali.