YouTube channels of Barkha Dutt’s Mojo Story, Tanmay Bhat hit by cyberattack

The entire content on the YouTube channel of Mojo Story, a digital news organisation run by journalist Barkha Dutt, has been “all deleted by hackers”, Dutt said in a tweet on Monday.

Meanwhile, stand-up comedian and YouTuber Tanmay Bhat also said that his YouTube and gmail accounts have been hacked, breaching two-factor authentication.

While the Mojo Story’s YouTube page said, “This channel doesn't have any content”, Tanmay Bhat's channel still had 473 videos. Both the accounts featured US automotive company Tesla's picture, and Bhat's channel even live streamed the company's event.

Mojo Story’s content was wiped off despite “hours of urging YouTube to act” and being assured that “action is being taken”, Dutt said. “This could have been stopped… now, it’s gone.”

The founder-editor of Mojo Story had reportedly urged YouTube many times since yesterday to “freeze the platform so that the hackers could not alter it.” To which, she said, officials of the video sharing platform told her that the “process of investigation has to be followed”.

Mojo Story had 11,000 videos on YouTube, put up over four years, including three years of reportage on Covid-19 pandemic in India. “Four years of blood, toil, sweat, tears… all gone. I am heartbroken,” Dutt said in the tweet. “I feel someone took a knife through my heart is all I can say.”

Following the incident, Twitter witnessed an outpour of anger and disappointment by journalists, politicians, lawyers and viewers of Mojo Story. Many of them urged YouTube to “rectify this” and “restore the channel”.

Founded in 2019, the website of Mojo Story describes itself as a “feisty team of independent broadcast journalists”.