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[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

We often speak of loving things like a cosy sweater or new camera. But this talk is not generally taken literally. It’s a kind of emotional shorthand. We use it to express our fondness for precious objects.

Life and love are complicated, however. And sometimes, people do proclaim romantic love for inanimate objects. They form intense emotional attachments to sex dolls, body pillows or holographic avatars of fictional characters. One example is Akihiko Kondo, who in 2018 “married” Hatsune Miku, a computer-generated pop singer famous for starring in video games and touring with Lady Gaga. Kondo knows Miku isn’t real, he says. But his love for her is.

AI is generating a new kind of “thingly” love. An increasing number of people say they’ve fallen in love with an AI chatbot – both personally tailored companions created by popular apps like Replika or Character AI, and everyday large language models like ChatGPT and Claude. AI love is on the rise.

Read more here ⬇️
https://t.co/kHjWMV26SM

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

Two videos, one showing a group of boys assaulting a man tied to a tree and another of an altercation between a group of people on a road, are being falsely circulated on social media claiming to show mistreatment of Muslims by Hindus in Nepal.

BOOM found that both videos are from Bangladesh and are unrelated to the current communal unrest in Nepal.

#FactCheck #Nepal #Bangladesh
https://t.co/b8MHdVI0cF

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

A video is viral on social media with the false claim that it shows a man who underwent plastic surgery to become a dog.

Some posts identify the man in the video as Toco, a Japanese man, and claim that he purchased a hyper-realistic dog costume to fulfil his lifelong dream of living as an animal.

BOOM found that the video is AI-generated and has no connection to Toco. We found multiple visual inconsistencies in the clip, while AI detection tools IsFake and TruthScan flagged it as manipulated.

#FactCheck #AIgenerated
https://t.co/bF4HwCqJt1

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

A viral video showing Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke receiving a ceremonial scarf is being falsely linked to the ongoing student protests in Ranchi.

The Claim: Video shows Abhijeet Dipke Arrving in Ranchi for Jharkhand Student Protest.

The Fact: BOOM found that the video is from July 19, 2026 and is unrelated to the ongoing Jharkhand student protests.

Read the full fact-check. 👇
https://t.co/jAokGr8KLm

#FactCheck #AbhijeetDipke #Jharkhand

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

Full signal bars, but zero internet. Midnight code takedowns. Videos blocked under laws that don't even authorise content removal.

When anti-paper leak protesters took to the streets of Delhi on July 20, an unprecedented digital crackdown unfolded alongside the physical one. From unannounced telecom blackouts to targeting Bitchat's open-source code on GitHub, Decode's Archis Chowdhury (@chowarchis) investigation exposes the state playbook used to control the narrative.

Featuring insights from DW reporter Sadhika Tiwari (@sadhika_tiwari) and @SFLCin Executive Director Mishi Choudhary.

#CJPProtest #Delhi

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

When Shradha Singh posted a seven-second Instagram reel from Delhi's Connaught Place, she did not expect it to follow her home.

The 23-year-old yoga instructor from Madhya Pradesh had joined thousands of young people at Jantar Mantar, protesting against exam paper leaks. Like many others, she filmed a quick reel using a trending audio clip from a cleaning liquid advertisement — meant, she says, as a passing joke.

Within hours, troll pages recirculated the clip, framing it as an insult to the armed forces and “setting her rates"— shorthand for pricing her as a sex worker. By the next day, television channels had amplified it further. What began as a fleeting post turned into a national talking point — and a target on her back. She briefly lost her Instagram account to a fake copyright claim.

During the Gen Z protests at Jantar Mantar, women who posted on Instagram found their phone numbers traced, personal details circulated, and inboxes flooded with threats.

@HeraRizwan1 reports

https://t.co/oEo43GqXul

#CJPProtest #JantarMantar

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

S, a 35-year-old Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) worker, begins each morning the same way. She hoists two large bags stuffed with close to a thousand Special Intensive Revision (SIR) forms and walks toward a Bharatiya Janata Party office tucked behind a residential society in Palghar district, roughly two-and-a-half hours by road from Mumbai.

The office is a set-up because the alternative — carrying a thousand sheets of paper from one voter's home to another — is physically impossible.

For each voter she meets, S must fill out two copies of an enumeration form: one for official records, one for the voter. Both copies need signatures. Then she enters the same details a third time, into the Booth Level Officer (BLO) app, a government application built to digitise the Election Commission of India's voter verification drive. After that, she photographs the form and uploads it. The voter's face must be authenticated before submission.

The process for a single person can take between 45 minutes and an hour, she estimated. On the day DECODE observed her, she completed three forms in three hours.

A BLO verifies electoral rolls for the Election Commission. ASHA workers, however, are community health volunteers, not regular government employees. The SIR is a house-to-house voter verification exercise that has previously been conducted in Bihar and West Bengal. In West Bengal, nearly 27 lakh names were reportedly deleted ahead of the recent Assembly elections.

DECODE @AnmolAlphonso spoke to BLOs in Maharashtra about the hidden costs of the SIR electoral roll exercise: a crashing government app, nearly 1,000 paper forms per worker, and frontline staff forced to use their own phones, skip lunch, spend their own time and, in some cases, pay out of pocket.

https://t.co/mFM2uHtIAX

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

A digitally altered video of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in which she is heard asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to merge East and West Bengal into a single province called Bangla, is viral on social media as footage from her first media address on August 5, 2026

BOOM found that the video has been digitally altered with an AI-generated voiceover, and AI detection tools confirmed it was synthetic.

🔗 Read the full fact-check on BOOM: https://t.co/CXZ5pOjpj7

#FactCheck #Deepfake #SheikhHasina #BOOMFactCheck

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

🚨 Did Bangladesh ban Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir?

A social media post by Zee News claiming that the Bangladesh government has designated Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing as banned organisations under the Anti-Terrorism Act is FALSE.

🔍 What BOOM Found:
1. BOOM found that no such notification has been issued by the Bangladesh government and the the organisations have not been banned.

2. Bangladesh’s Attorney General, Ruhul Quddus Kazal, also denied the claim, confirming to BOOM Bangladesh that it was “not true”.

📖 Read the full fact-check report: https://t.co/93dU7sudrl

#FactCheck #Bangladesh #BOOMFactCheck

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

India's Gen Z mobilised on Instagram. The state answered with an off-the-books internet shutdown, questionable takedowns of posts showing police excesses, and a fact-check unit calling verified footage fake.

When mobile data died, protesters moved to Bitchat: Bluetooth, no servers, untappable.
India's share of Bitchat's global downloads jumped from ~1% the month before to 85% in the week of July 17–23. (Sensor Tower/TechCrunch)

Then GitHub got a takedown notice.

@chowarchis on the CJP crackdown

Read the full report here
https://t.co/gZwkHVfN6U

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

Read the fact check here:
https://t.co/ZtHv1OJIKN

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

24 million views on a video of a woman who doesn’t even exist.

During the CJP protests, viral photos of young women sparked massive online outrage and shaming. The catch? The photos were fake and AI-generated.

Worse, virality was just step one. These fake accounts were funnels directing millions to Telegram channels selling explicit AI content—using outrage for profit and political smearing.

@amrutha_2312 explains

Read the full fact check below ⬇️

#FactCheck #CJPProtests

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

What happens after a protest goes viral?

For 23-year-old Shraddha Singh, a reel from Jantar Mantar brought millions of views; and with a deluge of rape and death threats. Trolls used details to trace her number. Now, it’s daily abuse.

Sakhi, a DU student, saw her videos taken down after mass reporting. But copies still circulate—used to harass and doxx her with misogynistic and queerphobic slurs.

A pattern is emerging where coordinated abuse is being organised, while platforms often flag the victim instead of the network behind it.

@HeraRizwan1 explains

#CJPProtest

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

A photo is being shared online with the false claim that it shows Ram Prakash, an official from the Indian High Commission to the United Kingdom (UK), attending a protest in the country over issues related to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

BOOM found the claim with the photo to be false. A test on OpenAI's image detection tool confirmed that the picture was modified using OpenAI tools.

Read the fact check here:
https://t.co/VVHRC52Cqc

#FactCheck #RamPrakash

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

A single number is at the centre of a fight over how India feeds its poorest households. The Union Food and Public Distribution Department wants to cap grain entitlements under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) at 7 kg per person — replacing a flat 35 kg per household that has been held since 2013.

On paper, it reads like a technical fix. Critics say it's something else: the formal codification of an exclusion that digitised welfare delivery has been quietly engineering for years.

The Union Food and Public Distribution Department released a draft amendment to the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, in June. It was open for public comment until July 13.

With this amendment, India's food security law may be heading toward a major structural change on paper. But critics argue the real transformation has already been underway for years — quietly, through technology, data systems, and administrative redesign that have steadily reshaped who can actually access welfare.

The question the amendment forces into the open: has access to food already been narrowed long before anyone put pen to this draft?

@HeraRizwan1 reports

https://t.co/hBcRPFSrHG

#AntyodayaAnnaYojana

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

An old video of a man climbing the minaret of a burning mosque to pull down its crescent moon is being falsely shared by social media users as a recent incident of communal violence in Nepal.

BOOM found that the video is unrelated to Nepal and dates back to 25 February, 2020, when a mosque in Delhi's Ashok Nagar was set on fire by a mob during the Delhi riots.

Read the fact check here
https://t.co/ZervJgS4Bv

#FactCheck #Nepal

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

Watch the full report at BOOM's YT:
https://t.co/SZNLhfJdeD

[BOOM Live @boomlive_in]

Every time facial recognition scans a crowd, it doesn’t just identify, it decides.

But under what law is this data collected? How long is it stored? And who is responsible if the system gets it wrong?

Apar Gupta (@apar1984) of the Internet Freedom Foundation warns that facial recognition often works on partial, low-quality images from crowds, assigns probability scores, and matches them with outdated databases—like old ID photos. The result? Real risk of misidentification.

And if that happens, accountability is unclear.

Watch the full video on BOOM’s YouTube channel. LINK below

#CJPProtest #FacialRecognition