Communications personnel from Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, has called out the propaganda piece published by The Wire and said how the underlying documentation on basis of which the article was published appeared fabricated.
Where to even begin with this story?! X-check has nothing to do with the ability to report posts. The posts in question were surfaced for review by automated systems, not humans. And the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 11, 2022
Meta’s Andy Stone was responding to a tweet by Jeff Horowitz, an employee of Wall Street Journal. Horowitz was reacting to an article published by The Wire on October 10, 2022 titled ‘If BJP’s Amit Malviya Reports Your Post, Instagram Will Take It Down – No Questions Asked’ which made some wild allegations against Meta and portrayed BJP’s Amit Malviya as an all-powerful individual who can get any social media post on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram down. The Wire even claimed to have accessed a report of an obscure social media account whose post mocking Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was taken down and accused Malviya of getting it done.
On one had The Wire tried to project the BJP IT Cell head as an all-powerful individual who can get any post removed on social media and on other hand it tries to portray as if such a powerful person would spend his free time going through obscure social media troll account in a targeted manner to get their posts removed.
This social media account is apparently a private account on Instagram with less than 5,000 followers. It was ‘forced to go private’ as per The Wire to curb its reach. The Wire wants us to believe the BJP IT Cell head would personally go after an absolute unknown entity when, as per them, he can get any post removed within seconds. The person who wrote this article on technology is a graduate in Philosophy.
The Wire had also conjured up what they claim was a screenshot of ‘auto-moderation’ process being bypassed by ‘XCheck’ user like Malviya.
This ‘document’ is now called out as fabricated by the Meta personnel.
The Wire claimed that Malviya has ‘XCheck’ privileges and hence anything he ‘reports’ gets taken down with no questions asked. The above screenshot also shows how the post by the random Instagram user was skipped for auto moderation because the person who reported it (Malviya) had ‘XCheck’ privileges and how this post does not require reviews. The Wire then cites one report of WSJ where it talked about Facebook’s ‘XCheck’ program, some sort of ‘elite program’ to protect privileges and privacy of some celebrities and politicians.
The names of those in this alleged ‘XCheck’ list are not made public but it runs into 5.8 million users as per the WSJ report. Citing unnamed Meta source, The Wire claims in September, Malviya got 705 posts removed from Instagram, but does not give details on the posts. Neither does it give details of Instagram accounts whose posts were allegedly removed on Malviya’s behest. Many times some social media users play victim that their ‘freedom of speech’ is under attack and their ‘reach is restricted’ usually in a bid to gain attention because otherwise no one really cared about them. They seek to gain more followers on social media account out of sympathy by getting their names published in mainstream publications.
But now it seems The Wire has done a Tek Fog redux and cooked up the impossible story where BJP again has superpowers and then wants us to believe despite such superpowers, the BJP goes after inconsequential people. Like how they expected us to believe BJP was spying on alleged journalists like The Wire-level ‘sources’ Swati Chaturvedi using sophisticated technology, they want us to believe something as inconsequential as ‘cringearchivist’ is being ‘targeted’ by the IT cell of world’s largest political party, when clearly there are more trolls who are much more nuisance value than this non-entity.
And now, Meta official has come out and said how the XCheck program has nothing to do with review of these posts and they had come up by automated systems and not humans. And that the document The Wire published was fabricated. Imagine ‘speaking truth to the power’ based on fabricated documents.
Fabricated documents, concocted stories as tools of propaganda
Such fabrication of documents should not really come as a surprise. What The Wire is doing is very much in line with how leftist and Islamist propaganda works. They create an over exaggerated picture with imaginary claims so that even if their big lies are countered, their small lies get a free pass. Like how the Islamists in India are crying ‘genocide’ and ‘atrocities’ while their own coreligionists are taking out processions in India giving call of beheading to those who ‘blaspheme’.
Similarly, it is the Left that has been censoring the Big Tech. They got former US President Donald Trump deplatformed from social media platforms because they believed he was wrong. Interestingly, they are also the ones who rally for ‘free speech’, but for them, ‘free speech’ is valid only if you speak things they approve of. But here they are, conjuring up unbelievable stories to make the BJP IT Cell appear larger than life entity and accusing it of then going after social media accounts with zero significance while their own echo chamber tells graduates in Philosophy how brilliant tech experts they are for this ‘damning story’.
Oh, and now they will claim The Wire piece is being ‘attacked’ by BJP IT Cell because it ‘exposes’ them instead of introspecting and figuring out how did this bullsh*t pass through their editorial process.
