Dr. Chowdhury has built an expansive digital empire through online nutrition training courses, certification programs, and consultancy services. He employs a 50-strong social media team to man his hotline and share his videos across 170 WhatsApp channels. And recently, his Covid-19 rebuttal has ramped him up even more. Since early February, Chowdhury’s dozen YouTube videos about the “myth” of the novel corona virus have amassed more than 5 million views. His Telegram channel gained more than 13,000 followers in a week, and, in the past two months, his fan following on YouTube has grown by one-third, to 952,000 subscribers. Before it was taken down on April 1, one of Chowdhury’s videos — which argued that fear, not Covid-19, kills
Chowdhury’s videos about Covid-19 have amassed him millions of followers. In India, YouTube has 245 million monthly active users: it is the company’s largest and fastest-growing market. Dr. Chowdhury built his following through appearing on such channels and spreading information. Chowdhury has daringly gone after the government. He dismissed India’s coronavirus lockdown as having no benefit and disclosed the Covid-19 death toll to be nothing much by noting that upward of 20,000 people die every year of “influenza-like illnesses.”
Dr. Chowdhury’s movement has also coincided with another recent development — the rediscovery of traditional medicine. In the absence of a vaccine or proven treatment for Covid-19, many Indians who cannot afford Western drugs or medical procedures are turning to the Ayurveda, Siddha, or Unani systems for relief. Digital influencers have seized on this interest to promote their own claims and “alternative” cures. More often, they simply tell people to follow accepted advice, like eating fresh fruits and vegetables and their suggestions are widely accepted.
Seeing his growing influence, some platforms have stepped up to police the content. WhatsApp has announced restrictions on forwarding messages. Twitter has repurposed its rules to ban posts encouraging “fake cures” or promoting “misleading content.” YouTube has recently started deleting some of Chowdhury’s Covid-19 videos, and in a statement to Rest of World, the company said that it is taking various steps to address medical misinformation, including “beginning to reduce recommendations of certain medical videos,” attaching information panels, and removing posts that violate community guidelines. But even expanded moderation efforts could not keep up the spread of content urging people to not follow dangerous medical advice. Misleading and quasi-scientific content.
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