A day after leftist propaganda portal The Wire took down its reports claiming that BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya has super powers to take down posts in Meta owned Instagram, Indian social media platform ShareChat has now urged them to take down their earlier stories on the so-called app Tek Fog. The Wire has made similar claims in both the stories on Tek Fog and Meta, that the BJP and its IT cell have secret superpowers to control social media platforms. However, the portal was forced to take down its series of reports on Meta after giant loopholes were exposed in their story by experts.
In a statement issued today, ShareChat said that in light of Wire withholding the reports on the alleged collusion between Meta and BJP’s IT cell, they want to remind the portal that the same authors had written then Tek Fog stories too, where ShareChat was named as one of the conspirators to help BJP. The social media platform said that as the same person was behind both the stories and also because one of the experts, named by Wire as one of the experts who verified both their stories, has distanced himself from the Meta story, The Wire should take similar action on the Tek Fog story too.
The platform also said that they were dragged into the Tek Fog story by the Wire without seeking their comment.
ShareChat wrote, “we would like to remind The Wire that the very same researchers had published an article earlier this year. The claims made against us were published without seeking our comment, quoted an expert who we understand has sought to distance himself from The Wire in the latest story and alleged collusion without a shred of evidence.”
They also pointed out that just like the Meta story has been questioned by several reputable third parties and journalists, the Tek Fog story was also questioned by experts after it came out in January this year, and many have raised the issue during the current controversy. ShareChat further said, “we had and continue to deny the fabricated allegations against us in the report in no uncertain terms at that time as well as today.” But the report continues to be available on The Wire website, completely disregarding expert third-party views and questions about the veracity of the fantastic claims made, they added.
ShareChat confirmed that they “ever engaged with any person or company/organisation that is associated with or working on the mysterious “Tek Fog” application that has been conjured up by The Wire.” In light of this, the Social Media platform urged The Wire, “to take down this previous report by Mr Devesh Kumar and others from public consumption, especially given that our severe reservations about the motivations and practices followed by Mr Kumar and others are now shared by many across the world and The Wire team as well.
They also asked The Wire to publicly acknowledge that there may be discrepancies in this previous report as well as they admitted for the Meta report. “The Wire claims to have a greater responsibility to be transparent. We sincerely hope that it discharges that responsibility in full,” ShareChat added.
The fictional Tek Fog app and alleged link with SharChat
On January 6th, The Wire published had a report claiming that BJP was using an app named Tek Fog to manipulate trends and automatically spew hate on social media. Relying on some ‘source’, Wire claimed that the so-called Tek Fog app allowed BJP to ‘hijack’ the Twitter trends, allowed managing multiple WhatsApp accounts and direct online harassment of anti-BJP journalists. The portal had claimed that hacking top global apps like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp etc is a child’s play using the app, and all security features of those platforms vanish with this magical piece of software.
In its report, Wire had claimed that similar posts were shared by BJP using the tool on Twitter and ShareChat. They had also claimed that a bank statement and a pay slip provided them to by their source named Mohalla Tech, the parent company of ShareChat, as ‘assigned client’, but no further details were provided. Wire further claimed that Tek Fog was linking to the URL metabase.sharechat.com, “suggesting ShareChat’s direct involvement in the Tek Fog operation”.
They had also claimed they found links to Google, Zoho, Republic World, OpIndia, ABP News, Dainik Jagran etc, but didn’t say what kind of links they were. But they claimed that these links raised “questions regarding the complicity of certain digital media outlets in helping the BJP perpetuate a partisan informational ecosystem in the country.”
The entire Tek Fog story was debunked thoroughly by OpIndia and many others. It was found that the Wire took organised social campaigns conducted by BJP as ‘automated operations’, and there was not a single piece of evidence of the existence of the mysterious app called Tek Fog. They had provided several screenshots of the so-called app that the proved nothing.
Wire withholds reports claiming Amit Malviya has special powers to block content on Instagram
On Tuesday, The Wire decided to “suspend the stories” on its claims against BJP and Meta after evidence debunking their preposterous claims piled up. They also promised “thorough internal review of all material and documents and sources”, an implicit admission that they have erred in the reportage.
They were forced to take down the stories after domain experts and independent researchers refuted its claims, and multiple experts quoted in the reports have refuted their involvement. The Wire had claimed that Kanishk Karan, a policy manager overlooking public safety on platforms, and Microsoft employee Ujjwal Kumar had verified the digital evidence provided by The Wire and certified them to be authentic.
But both Karan and Kumar came out to say that they didn’t do the verification of the evidence, including purported email from a Meta official.
