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The Wire vs Meta – All you need to know about the controversy

We break down the ups and downs and back and forth in the Meta vs The Wire saga that has been going on for over a week now.

Anurag
Meta
All you need to know about Meta vs The Wire saga (representational image)
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On October 10, Leftist propaganda portal The Wire published a report with the title ‘If BJP’s Amit Malviya Reports Your Post, Instagram Will Take it Down – No Questions Asked’ authored by Jahnavi Sen, deputy editor, and executive news producer at the portal.

In the report, The Wire claimed that Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT Cell Chief Amit Malviya has such power in Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, that if he reports any post on the platform, it gets removed by the system, no questions asked. It further claimed that even if the publisher of the post that was removed from Instagram appeals against the removal, it does not get accepted by the system as “Malviya has privileges of being on the XCheck list.”

XCheck is a “Meta Program” that allegedly provides special privileges to high-profile users like actors, politicians, and other influential personalities on the social media platforms under Meta. The said program was first ‘exposed’ by Wall Street Journal in September 2021.

How it all started?

On October 6, The Wire reported that Instagram removed a photograph of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s ‘temple’ for violating its guidelines. As per the report, the image was uploaded by Instagram handle @cringearchivist, and it was removed over ‘sexual activity and nudity’ restrictions. There was, indeed, nothing sexual in the image that was uploaded. However, the mocked CM Yogi.

It seems that the publisher and The Wire presumed it was removed under the wrong category and thus began the investigation. Notably, @cringearchivist dislikes the Hindu RW section of Indian society, comparing them to the Nazis. In several posts, the group that runs the account has done so. After the removal of this post and some others, they even wrote to Meta criticizing them for removing content that is a “satirical attack on the Nazis.” Interestingly, they skipped the fact that they compared Hindus or Right Wingers to Nazis without any evidence or proof.

The Wire clearly noted that cringearchivist has a history of comparing Hindu RW to Nazis. Source: The Wire

The Wire’s report read, “In the past, @cringearchivist has posted several memes comparing the Hindu Right in India with Nazi Germany. Since one of the recent posts removed is also of that kind, the administrators are worried that older posts may too be flagged, perhaps leading to the entire account being taken down.”

Interestingly, in communication with Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity at Meta, @cringearchivist admitted to spending money on its propaganda posts, and The Wire proudly published it in the report. It read, “We have been engaging in public philosophy, satirizing all authoritative icons, from Modi to Putin to Uncle Sam. However, your dysfunctional AI — and Community Guidelines reviewers — have flagged two of our posts for “dangerous and violent groups” and “nudity and sexual activity.” We would like to draw attention to the comicality of these steps, which have now pushed our movement, which is in a nascent stage, to the edge of complete takedown. We felt compelled to escalate this matter before any absurdity in that direction materializes.”

In a communication to Meta, cringearchivist admitted to having spent money to propagate posts against RW. Source: The Wire

It added, “We have also spent money on ads, but what have we got in return? Our organic growth has been killed, and we have been stopped from using branded content tools because of this wrongful censorship? For satirising Nazis? Does your company consider Hitler a sacred figure? This AI-linked blanket ban is a joke; critics of Nazis also use symbols of Nazism, which, technically, imbecile minds will never understand. Will your technology now censor Holocaust Museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Center? (In reality, your AI and reviewers are performing very poorly, you must accept it. For they never removed fanatical posts we submitted for reviews. They didn’t remove a recent Islamophobic post by India’s ruling party which Twitter removed, for instance).” As per The Wire, Rosen never replied to them.

‘Amit Malviya can get your post removed, no questions asked,’ claimed The Wire

Four days later, The Wire published the ‘explosive expose’ that the video of CM Yogi’s temple was allegedly flagged by none other than BJP IT Chief Amit Malviya. It further reported that the appeal against the removal was denied because of the privileges Malviya enjoyed for being on the XCheck list. Also, The Wire claimed that 100% of over 700 posts flagged from Malviya’s account were removed almost instantly.

The Wire also provided “proof” for its fantastical claims. They shared a document they claimed to be the review report for the post. The report suggested that it not only skipped auto-moderation, but the review was also not required just because Malviya has the so-called XCheck privileges.

Rebuttal from Meta

Soon after the report was published, Meta officials took onto Twitter to refute the claims made by The Wire. Communication personnel Andy Stone while replying to WSJ reporter Jeff Horowitz said, “Where to even begin with this story?! X-check has nothing to do with the ability to report posts. The posts in question surfaced for review by automated systems, not humans. And the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.”

This was only the beginning of a ‘war of rebuttals’ between Meta and The Wire. Following Stone’s rebuttal, The Wire came up with another story on October 11, where they alleged that the documents they used were not fabricated. To support their wild allegations, The Wire shared a screenshot of an alleged mail by Andy Stone where he was upset that an internal document had been leaked to them. So much so, The Wire went ahead to call Stone a “pathological liar” based on a report on him from 2021. Though the report extensively criticized Stone, InputMag never called Stone a liar directly.

Next came Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer had to come out and clear the air that The Wire’s entire reporting is fabricated and based on forged documents. Guy Rosen, Meta’s CISO, shared a thread on Twitter where he detailed how The Wire’s reports don’t hold any water.

Rosen tweeted, “I wanted to set the record straight about two stories run this week by @thewire_in with untrue claims about Meta’s content moderation operations and processes. tl;dr these stories are fabrications.”

In the thread, Rosen shared that both the reports by The Wire are totally incorrect and contain misinformation about their cross-check program. Rosen also went on to share several anomalies in the reports, including email addresses not used by Andy Stone, URLs not in use, and addresses that aren’t used at their company. Guy Rosen ended his thread by hoping that The Wire is a victim of some hoax and is not actually promoting one itself. However, looking at The Wire’s track record of hitjobs, we seriously doubt that they are the victims here.

The AI checks on the image in question

From now on, as the to and fro between Meta and The Wire was no longer about the removal of the post or the image that was removed, it is essential to point out that several netizens and OpIndia checked if AI flags the photo in question.

Rohit Agarwal, who goes by the handle Techtradeguru on the social media platform Twitter, shared a thread where he checked the image with AI and found out most AI check platforms flagged the photograph as ‘person might be exposed’. The reason behind it could be the colour of the idol of CM Yogi and the person standing next to it.

OpIndia also checked the image on multiple websites and confirmed what Agarwal was saying. Here are some screenshots of the results.

We used Google’s Cloud Vision API. The first image was sourced from The Wire while the others were sourced from Google Image Result on ‘Yogi Temple’. In the image sourced from Wire, it showed the possibility of the person in the image is exposed.

The Google AI marked the image as possibly exposed.

In the second image, the intensity of the possibility of an exposed person went high.

The Google AI marked the image as possibly exposed with higher intensity.

In the third picture, the AI showed ‘unlikely to be exposed’.

The Google AI marked the image as unlikely to be exposed.

It is clear that AI recognises the person to be exposed based on colours and angles of the photograph. It raises the question if the image was flagged by the system and The Wire allegedly fabricated the whole thing or if Malviya allegedly reported it.

The ‘language’ issue with the email that even ‘Liberal’ cabal rejected

Then came the language used in the alleged email The Wire got its hands on via a source in Meta. Many netizens including members of the left-liberal cabal raised red flags. The most interesting retweet that we noticed during the whole fiasco was from former Amnesty India head and propagandist activist Aakar Patel, who is known for his anti-BJP stand. While replying to Jahnavi Sen, Aakar Patel looked down upon the language of the email that The Wire claimed was sent by Andy and said how the language and punctuation in the mail was unusual and ‘sounded desi’.

Source: Twitter

The typical colonial hangover suggested that emails were forged by an Indian because only they would use such language, thereby insinuating that the Americans have better grip over English.

In all that it is worth, there are a lot of speculations over the style of language claimed to have been used by Andy in the email. The native English speakers are brazened out over the language and have “confidently” said that Andy could not have written the email. Daniel Nazer, Senior IP & Product Counsel at Mozilla, while replying to Systems & Network Security Engineering Alec Muffett, who pointed out “bad English”, said, “It’s really sad to see them fall, and double down, for such an obvious fake. We need strong independent media willing to stand up to populist governments and big companies, but this ain’t it.”

Even a former colleague of Andy Stone stepped in to echo the language issues. Brent Kimmel of Squarespace who has worked with Andy as Tech expert, raised red flags over The Wire’s report. He pointed out that the ‘receipt’ confirmation made by the server only proves that the network request was made. He said, “It means nothing in terms of whether or not a person (let alone a specific person) received it, viewed it or interacted with it in any way. You simply can’t do “gotcha” journalism over email.”

Furthermore, he pointed out that the language was not what Andy would have used. “Also, read the email and read like… Anything Andy ever wrote. Diction is completely off, obviously an ESL composer.”

He added that he hadn’t talked to Andy in over a decade but worked with him in a high-pressure environment. he said, “I would have remembered if he spoke to his colleagues that way. He doesn’t.”

Official Statement by Meta

In an official statement on October 12, Meta explained how The Wire’s reporting was “wrong”. In the press release, Meta said, “Two articles published by The Wire allege that a user whose account is cross-checked can influence content decisions on Instagram without any review. Our cross-check system was built to prevent potential over-enforcement mistakes and to double-check cases where a decision could require more understanding or there could be a higher risk for a mistake. To be clear, our cross-check program does not grant enrolled accounts the power to automatically have content removed from our platform.

While it is legitimate for us to be held accountable for our content decisions, the allegations made by The Wire are false. They contain mischaracterizations of how our enforcement processes work, and rely on what we believe to be fabricated evidence in their reporting. Here is what they got wrong:

The first article claims that a cross-check account has the power to have content removed from our platform with no questions asked. This is false. Cross-check has nothing to do with the ability to report posts to seek the removal of content. The posts in question were surfaced for review by automated systems, not user reports.  The system is designed to ensure that enforcement decisions related to content posted by cross-check accounts are made accurately and with additional levels of human review. We don’t exempt anyone from our Community Standards and remove content that violates them if we see it. Information on cross-check has been shared publicly on our Transparency Center.

This article was also based on allegedly leaked screenshots from our internal tools. We believe this document is fabricated. The URL on that “report” is not in use. The naming convention is one we don’t use. There is no such report.

We did not identify a user report regarding the @cringearchivist content in September as reported.

The second story cites emails from a Meta employee – the screenshot included in the story has two emails – both are fake. There are no such emails.

The same story references an internal journalist “watch list.” No such list exists.

We accept scrutiny of our content decisions, but we fundamentally reject these false allegations based on what we believe to be fabricated evidence. We hope that The Wire is the victim of this hoax, not the perpetrator.”

The Wire tied itself in knots over allegations of fabricated screenshots

In its next report on the matter, The Wire further tied itself in knots. In its rebuttal to Meta’s assertions over previous reports, The Wire made several claims to justify its expose. However, most of their claims faced speculations and raised even more questions over the authenticity of the whole fiasco.

The first claim that The Wire made in their report was the emails they sent on the @fb.com extension were opened by the respective receivers. They used a technology called ‘superhuman’ that allows the sender to check if and how many times the receiver opened the email. This technology has been around for quite some time, and several email clients and extensions add the feature to your email clients.

Though OpIndia cannot verify independently as of now if what they are saying is true or not, ethically, The Wire, a platform that talks in length about privacy, has done something extremely unethical. Superhuman faced extreme criticism in 2019 over the feature. They were tracking the location of the receivers and logging them. After much criticism, they made several changes, and the CEO had to say that they were making the changes publicly.

It is noteworthy that experts in the field have raised concerns over the matter. Martin Obiols, a cybersecurity expert, said, “Do not praise people using clients that provide read-statuses for email. This is a huge privacy violation regardless of its purpose of doing it. I seriously do not understand how these tools are allowed under data privacy laws.”

Superhuman or any app is NOT fool-proof evidence

Another important point is, as Superhuman has STOPPED tracking the location, there is another way to say that someone has read it. Say The Wire sent it to someone else in BCC or forwarded the email to someone else, and the other receiver opened the email. The tracking will be based on the same pixel image. In that case, it will show that the email was opened by the recipient.

Let’s take an example. Say I want to track if my boss Nupur J Sharma read the email I sent. I used Superhuman or another application to do so. She read I got the information, and it’s done. This was the first scenario. In the second scenario, I want to implicate my boss read the email but ignored to acknowledge it. In that case, I would BCC it to my personal email ID, or I will forward the email to someone else. When the email gets opened by me or someone else, I can show that my boss opened the email as there is no way to trace the location from where the email was opened. Now I am the devil at my office! This is why such tracking applications cannot be solid evidence in an expose like this.

The DKIM mumbo-jumbo!

Now, The Wire made its way to technical in the next step. The Wire claimed that they used a python-based open-source tool called dkimpy to verify if the email came from an authentic source or not. There is way too much technical jargon in the report that needs simplification. Basically, this tool allows the user to ensure of the email came from an authentic source or not. It checks the header (code-based technical information) of the email and matches it with the sender’s digital signature.

Ideally, this system not only traces the source but also provides information if anything was changed in the email during the transit. In case you are unaware, there are ways to modify the email while it travels from the source to the destination. Codes can be injected, information can be altered, and so on. This is why encryption of the data is essential.

Anyway, this is where The Wire made a blunder that was noticed by a Twitter user Technical Trading Guru that goes by the handle @techtradeguru on Twitter. We will not go into the DKIM claim authenticity but point out the alleged photoshop saga that raised questions over The Wire’s report. Here is a GIF of two screenshots from The Wire that are allegedly photoshopped. More details about it can be read in our previous report.

The date was allegedly changed in photoshop without keeping the spacing in mind. Source: Techtradeguru.

Interestingly, they changed the date but did not change the day. The 2021 and 2022 calendars are not identical in terms of Days. That means 12 October and 14 October in 2021 and 2022 fell on different days of the week. Multiple Twitter users pointed out this particular mistake made by The Wire. In both screenshots, the days remained Friday and Wednesday respectively. Trying to justify this discrepancy, Wire claimed that it was due to the fact that the dates were incorrectly set on TailOS, a Linux-based portable OS. But netizens pointed out that even if the date is wrongly set in the system, it will not result in a mismatch between the day and date, if it shows the wrong date, it will show the day corresponding to that wrong date only.

It was pointed out by tech expert Pranesh Prakash in a detailed Twitter thread on The Wire’s latest report. He wrote, “Now, @thewire in is saying the incorrect dates are due to TailsOS being used and being set to the wrong date. Except, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that even were that true, TailsOS would show: Thursday, October 14, 2021 and Tuesday, October 12, 2021 NOT Fri & Wed.”

Another expert from Stanford Internet Observatory Alex Stamos detailed out the how DKIM verification video by The Wire proves nothing. He said, “The @fb.com/@meta.com argument is the weakest defense by Facebook. Clearly, the company’s O365/ProofPoint instance is setup to receive emails for either domain and various employees are sending from different domains. This argument is pretty much useless either way.”

He added, “The Wire’s DKIM verification video proves nothing. It would be trivial to fake the verification by dkimverify, as all you would need is a script in your path that prints “signature ok”.  There are more complicated ways to fake this as well.”

Fruthermore, “What the video does show is that if the email is not legitimate then the person who made the video is in on the hoax. The Wire piece implies (but does not specify) that their own tech employee made the video.”

Speaking about the date issue he said, “If this was a local time problem, then that should only affect a thick client, and it wouldn’t give you the exact time and date minus one year. It is unclear what kind of mail client these screenshots purport to come from, but there is no good explanation for the year mismatch.”

He said, “The most interesting part is the http://instagram.workplace.com login. I have never heard of this domain being used and it does not show up in recently leaked documents.”

“The domain resolves, but so does any subdomain of http://workplace.com (to the same cname). I expect this wildcard is meant to reduce DNS propagation latency when new customers setup their subdomains,” he added.

Alex did not side with either The Wire or Meta. He provided scenarios from both sides and urged Meta to come out with a detailed response.

Microsoft’s employee helping The Wire in allegedly fabricated story

The Wire claimed that a Microsoft employee, one Ujjwal Kumar, based in Singapore has verified their fabricated email exchange with Facebook’s parent company ‘Meta’. Founding Editor of The Wire Siddharth Varadarajan has claimed that one Ujjwal Kumar, currently employed at Microsoft in Singapore, has ‘passed the DKIM test’.

Varadarajan shared a screenshot of an email sent by Ujjwal Kumar of Microsoft used the manual method and corroborated that the dkimpy, a library that implements DKIM (DomainKey Identified Mail) email signing and verification.

However, few hours later, Varadarajan deleted the tweet claiming that he had the consent of Ujjwal Kumar to share details, he has deleted the tweet.

Facebook uses Microsoft’s email services. The Wire tried to use the service provider to ‘verify’ details about one of their clients, quite likely without their consent and it seems, Microsoft’s Ujjwal Kumar agreed. However, Varadarajan’s ‘expert’ who ‘verified’ Facebook/Meta email as ‘authentic’ suddenly went from okay with being named to being ‘anonymous expert’ here.

The Wire’s accounts hacked, claimed Varadarajan

In another turn of events, the Wire’s Varadarajan claimed email accounts and social media accounts of people associated with The Wire and the company itself were hacked on October 16. Siddharth Varadarajan tweeted, “ALERT One of The Wire’s principal researchers on Meta lost access to his Gmail+Twitter accounts and some others at noon today. Whoever hacked him is sending suspicious phishing-type messages, like the one below. Please don’t respond to messages from [email protected] or DMs.”

In the next tweet, he wrote, “Needless to say, the Andy Stone email is safe and sound and will not fall into the hands of those keen to identify The Wire’s whistleblower in Meta in this manner.”

TMC’s Derek O’Brien to raise the issue during the winter session in the parliament

Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien has now stepped in to give legitimacy to this. Taking to Twitter, O’Brien said that he would raise this issue in Parliament.

This, obviously, is not the first time O’Brien has chosen to raise inconsequential issues in Parliament in what appears to be his way of making up for lack of credibility otherwise. Back in 2018, O’Brien had threatened to name Twitter users in Parliament whom he found ‘offensive’ and those who ‘irritate him’.

Meta said The Wire fabricated evidence

On October 16, Meta announced that they were investigating the “evidence” about the existence of Instagram Workspace provided by The Wire and alleged that it was a fabricated video. In a tweet thread, Guy Rosen, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Meta, said, “The latest video from The Wire does not show an internal Instagram system. Our investigation has identified a spoof created on October 13 using our enterprise Meta Workplace product.”

Meta further said that the spoof was set up using a free trial Workspace account and used the Instagram brand as its profile picture. After identifying the account, they locked it, and further investigation is underway. He said, “The spoof was set up as a free trial Workplace account under the name “Instagram” and using the IG brand as its profile pic. We’ve locked the account for violating policies and are continuing to investigate.” Meta also updated the statement about The Wire’s “expose” with the new findings.

Meta’s rebuttal came after The Wire claimed to have accessed a screen recording from its source at Meta, where the source claimed to have logged into the Instagram workspace account that Meta previously claimed does not exist.

The Wire claimed, “As is clear in the video, the URL that Meta has officially claimed “is not in use” is very much in use. New reports had been added on the day of the video’s recording. The video also showed the source navigating through the secure ‘instagram.workplace.com’ workspace and opening the notes section.”

“The Wire asked the source to run a timer while they were screen-recording to show that it was happening in real-time. Our team also ascertained that the video hadn’t been tampered with, using the video’s metadata (they have been removed from the file we have made public). Additionally, the cursor maintained consistency throughout the video’s duration, with no abrupt breaks,” it added.

However, the experts debunked the claims. Law and Policy expert Pranesh Prakash pointed out that The Wire’s claims were inconsistent with the video they posted. In a Twitter thread, he said that at one point in the video, the cursor did move abruptly. Pranesh posted the video and said, “Curiouser and curiouser: The cursor in the video released by The Wire abruptly jumps at 0:35, just at the moment when the person is logging into http://instagram.workplace.com.”

He also added a video uploaded by The Wire and trimmed a 5-second video out of it to show the ‘abrupt break’ of the cursor in the video. He said, “The Wire states: “Additionally, the cursor maintained consistency throughout the video’s duration, with no abrupt breaks.” I’ve clipped the moment the cursor disappears and reappears elsewhere, during the login sequence. I think this qualifies as an “abrupt break,” don’t you?”

The Wire’s initial source said they did not blame Malviya

The satirical account named Cringearchivist on Instagram and Twitter, whose post was removed and the whole bullfight started, said he never blamed Malviya for the deletion. While replying to a Twitter user, Opinion Factory, Cringearchivist said, “We didn’t claim that Malviya did it, read the first report, we also blamed AI.”

Screenshot of Cringe Archivist saying he never said Malviya got his post removed

While replying to another Twitter user Lakshmi Chaudhry, Cringearchivist, said in the email sent to JS (JS is The Wire’s reporter Jahnavi Sen who broke the first story), they specifically mentioned AI and blamed it for the removal.

Mail to Jahnavi Sen

Now, another interesting aspect of the claims made by Cringearchivist is that they claimed to have no idea about the alleged involvement of Amit Malviya in the removal of the post, and it was informed by Sen herself via email.

Jahnavi Sen claims Malviya got it removed

In two screenshots shared by Cringearchivist, one was the email sent by Sen to them. In the email, Sen claimed that the removal of the post was not because of a “faulty AI,” but it happened because Amit Malviya reported it.

Furthermore, Cringearchivist claimed The Wire reporter never asked them when they made the account private on Instagram and if Malviya was following them. While replying to tech expert Pranesh (he has been quoted in other OpIndia reports as well), Cringearchivist revealed the information about when they went private and if Malviya followed them.

The Wire’s reporter has ‘personal relationship’ with Meta insider

Days after making wild allegations against Meta and BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya, whom they attributed to having superpowers to control workings within Facebook’s parent company, propaganda outlet The Wire has now backed out and cried victim. In a statement released on October 17, The Wire claimed they are not ‘ready to play this game further’. The Wire also revealed how one of their reporters working on this story had a personal relationship with the Meta ‘insider’.

Interestingly, in the statement published on their website they have skipped the portion where it reveals that The Wire’s reporter has a personal relationship with Meta’s ‘source’ who ‘leaked’ documents. The archived version of the same statement which contained this revelation can be obtained here. They added a disclaimer that they edited the website version of their statement to clear relationships with their sources in Meta. Except, instead of clearing, they ended up removing the damning fact that one of their reporters had a personal relationship with the said Meta ‘insider’.

To put things in perspective, Meta has dismissed all allegations by The Wire and said that the ‘evidences’ provided were fabricated.

The Wire, in its statement, claimed that Meta’s responses, where it said that all the evidence The Wire gave to claim how BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya possesses some superpowers by virtue of being in an ‘elite list’ of users in ‘XCheck’, was fabricated were to goad them to give out more information about their source. This, when many tech experts, most of whom are actually Modi haters and dislike BJP to the core, have called out the shoddy reportage of The Wire. Even the images of so-called emails shared by The Wire were rejected by Meta as fabricated.

Meta categorically mentioned how the ‘workspace’ The Wire put up as evidence, was actually a spoof video made on a dummy/free trial version by someone and they are investigating it further. The Wire also claimed that Microsoft Asia’s employee Ujjwal Kumar, also helped them verify some mail as a legitimate email from Meta. Meta uses Microsoft email services and if an employee with Microsoft indeed indulged in this, it could likely tantamount to breach of client confidentiality, raising serious concerns about Microsoft’s privacy policy. OpIndia has written to Microsoft Asia regarding the concerns but we have not heard back from them yet.

OpIndia will keep an eye on the Meta Vs The Wire saga and report if there is any update in the future.

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Anurag
Anuraghttps://lekhakanurag.com
B.Sc. Multimedia, a journalist by profession.

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