As the evidence debunking The Wire’s preposterous claims against Meta piled up, the leftist propaganda website on Tuesday decided to “suspend the stories” until it carried out a “thorough internal review of all material and documents and sources”, an implicit admission that they have erred in the reportage.
The Wire released a statement saying, “In light of the concerns and doubts raised about our coverage of Meta, we are setting up an internal review of all documents, information, source material and sources used for these stories.”
Statement from The Wire on the Meta Investigation.
— The Wire (@thewire_in) October 18, 2022
In light of the concerns and doubts raised about our coverage of Meta, we are setting up an internal review of all documents, information, source material and sources used for these stories.https://t.co/kpXXDqERew pic.twitter.com/X1zvdRvsIO
The leftist propaganda website has pulled down all the reports related to the Meta controversy as domain experts and independent researchers have refuted its claims and amidst reports that the organisation may have relied on forged documents to level the allegations it had made against Meta.
Soon after The Wire announced that it has erred and will be temporarily suspending its Meta stories, it started pulling down reports from its website.
While The Wire said it would conduct an internal review—a ruse often used by organisations to deflect criticism, avert critical scrutiny, and project oneself as a victim, it nevertheless is also an implicit admission of guilt, which the removal of the stories about Meta reaffirms.
Independent researcher says he never verified for The Wire, a primary reporter in Malviya story deactivates his Twitter account
The suspension of stories by The Wire came on the heels of official denial by one of the independent researchers it had listed as an expert who verified its story on DMIK verification. As threads of The Wire’s sloppy hit-job against Meta unravelled, an independent researcher stated that he has not done DMIK verification for The Wire.
Taking to Twitter, Kanishk Karan, a policy manager overlooking public safety on platforms, said that contrary to the claims made by The Wire, he has not verified their report on FB ‘XCheck’ in India.
“BIG: It has come to my attention that I’ve been listed as one of the “independent security researchers” who supposedly “verified” the Wire’s report on FB ‘Xcheck’ in India. I would like to confirm that I did NOT DO the DKIM verification for them.”
Independent expert Ujjawal Kumar refutes The Wire’s claims, denies having verified the Meta story for them
Earlier today, it was reported that another independent expert, Ujjwal Kumar, who is currently employed at Microsoft Asia and based out of Singapore, had denied having verified DKIM for The Wire.
Facebook uses Microsoft email services and if Ujjwal Kumar had indeed verified the emails for The Wire, it likely breached the client-confidentiality clause by abusing his privilege.
However, soon after the story was published and The Wire’s Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan boasted how a Microsoft employee, Ujjwal Kumar, too, had ‘verified’ their proofs, they claimed that Kumar no longer wants his name being made publicly available. Now, like a new twist in the tale, tech expert Pranesh Prakash has said that he reached out to both the ‘independent experts’ The Wire claimed to have consulted and both of them have denied having verified DKIM for The Wire.
OpIndia had reached out to Microsoft Asia for their comment on the same but has not heard back from them yet. We have sent a follow-up email, but Microsoft is yet to respond to our query on whether one of their employees had indeed verified DKIM for The Wire.
Manisha Pande, the Executive Editor at Newslaundry, said on Twitter that they had received a response from Microsoft. In its response, Microsoft said it had informed an Indian publication of an erroneously attributed commentary to a colleague and asked them for correction.
The Wire scribe, who claimed Amit Malviya enjoyed special privileges from Meta, briefly deactivates his Twitter account
With The Wire temporarily suspending its Meta stories, it is worth noting that the chief reporter who made wild allegations of the omnipotence of Amit Malviya on Instagram had briefly deactivated his Twitter account. Devesh Kumar, a reporter with The Wire who went by @onosmosis on Twitter, had deactivated his account.
However, he was back on Twitter after a while.
Nevertheless, the latest denial from another independent researcher is a death knell on a story that The Wire aggressively pushed even when the evidence suggested the opposite. With the unravelling of The Wire’s spurious claims about Meta and with the disappearance act of its reporter Devesh Kumar from Twitter, questions are being raised about the credibility of the leftist rag’s Tek Fog fiction, given that the same Devesh Kumar had co-written those reports too.
OpIndia had earlier this year debunked The Wire’s story on the Tek Fog app, an application that the leftist propaganda website claimed had superpower capabilities.
Meta vs The Wire
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.
But no sooner did The Wire levelled wild allegations against Meta than several domain experts and independent researchers poked gaping holes in the claims made by The Wire and highlighted how what the leftist publication alleged did not add up. The Meta also refuted the allegations made by The Wire, following which the leftist propaganda website doubled down on its efforts to defend the untenable. However, the official denial from the two independent experts has seemed to be the last straw on the camel’s back, establishing the credentials of The Wire as the propaganda peddling lie factory.
