An alleged Times of India tweet is doing rounds on social media which reads – “As a result of massive boycott by the hurt Hindu community because of a Hindu shaming derogatory ad by Surf Excel, the company has already faced loss amounting close to Rs 10 crores which is expected to rise further.” Among those who circulated the tweet was a Facebook page ‘The Right Direction.’
A similar claim viral on social media adds that Flipkart has removed Surf Excel from its e-commerce website. An individual named Spreeha Roy Chowdhury posted the claim on a Facebook group called ‘We Support Republic’.
Fake tweet
If one looks up the alleged TOI tweet on Twitter, no results are thrown up. However, there still remains a chance of the tweet being removed by the media organisation.
To figure out the authenticity of the tweet, we checked it for any abnormalities. In the collage below, the tweet on the left is picked up from the official Twitter handle of Times of India. The tweet on the right is the one viral on social media. If you notice the sentence alignment and the placement of the TOI logo on the left tweet, they all fall in a straight line. Contrastingly, the alignment in the image on the right is botched-up.
It is, thus, clear that the viral tweet ascribed to Times of India was manufactured. Furthermore, as far as Flipkart is concerned, neither has the company put up any statement declaring the removal of Surf Excel from the site nor have any media organisation reported the same.
Since HUL’s advertisement portraying Hindu-Muslim communal harmony, several people on social media called for boycotting the company’s products. However, there are no media reports stating that HUL faced heavy loses due to the backlash.
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