Amidst reports making rounds that the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi Government has overspent on ads, an image has gone viral, which appears to be a screenshot of the pornography website PornHub. In the screenshot, it appears that Kejriwal’s ad is playing on the porn website. The Twitter user who shared the screenshot claimed that he was watching porn using VPN and Kejriwal’s ad appeared before the video.
The ‘shocking’ revelation made by the Twitter user took social media by storm. Everyone around was looking for an answer, but the majority of the Indians are not aware of how to use PornHub as it is banned in the country.
OpIndia’s investigation
When we looked at the screenshot, we thought it is our duty to fact-check if Aam Aadmi Party is targeting naïve PornHub viewers in India. As our policies do not allow us to access any illegal documents or websites, a rule that we follow in our off time as well, we thought it would be better to analyze the screenshot itself.
On deeper analysis, we came to the conclusion that the ad appeared to be leaking from the sides. A large website like PornHub would not make such a UI blunder. Also, our sources told us that the skip button on PornHub is different. Thus, we can possibly conclude that the screenshot is FAKE, and we can confidently say that, as per our information, investigation and what evidence we have gathered so far, the said ad does not appear on the porn website.
However, it has to be noted that the advertisement is indeed real and can be often seen on YouTube and other platforms. You can check the ad here.
How do online advertisements work?
There was a time when Google ads used to target ads based on the content of the website. However, nowadays, it is not the only criteria. Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms gather a lot of personal information from your computer in the form of cookies. Their algorithms then use these sets of information to determine what kind of ads will appear when you are surfing social media or websites.
For example, you recently Googled, talked about or tweeted about laptops. Based on your location, age, sex, old purchase history and other information, the algorithms will start showing you ads related to laptops. You might have noticed holiday package ads appearing on your TL within few hours of talking about a destination. It often confuses the users that how these websites know what you were looking for. The algorithms are designed to understand your behaviour and show products that you are highly likely to buy.
In the case of political ads, for instance of Kejriwal on YouTube, it will appear based on your location, age, sex, political ideology and more. As Kejriwal has a habit of publishing ads where his party has practically zero presence, it is possible that you may see his ad outside Delhi or Punjab.
Advertising platforms largely depend on the information you share, posts you make, and things you search on the internet. In case you feel like these ads are harming your privacy, you can set personalized ads off by clicking on the “why this ad” icon. It is usually around a small icon. On YouTube, you can find it on the left bottom corner right next to the advertiser’s name.
Kejriwal’s ad budget is attracting criticism
An RTI has revealed that the Kejriwal government has so far spent Rs.150 crore on ads in the first three months of 2021. On April 25, a Twitter user started counting how many times his ad appears on TV. People were shocked to know that his ads appeared 15 times within a six-hour span.
Kejriwal has an odd history with porn websites
In 2017, a porn website RedTube used Arvind Kejriwal’s photograph in a meme that attracted a lot of attention. So much so that #AapKaPorn started to trend on Twitter, and he was mocked from all directions. RedTube later deleted the tweet.
