On Monday night, Delhi Police raided the homes and office of The Wire personnel named in the FIR filed on behest of BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya over fabricated documents used in stories to target him and accuse him of having superpowers to get any post on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram removed instantaneously. The left cabal has come together to cry an attack on press since as per them, The Wire had ‘made a mistake’ and retracted a ‘wrong story’ and ‘apologised’. In reality, The Wire published multiple stories based on multiple fabricated documents and later, while retracting stories, never apologised to the subjects in the stories they had named, like Amit Malviya, Meta, Andy Stone, Ujjwal Kumar, and others. How is it an apology if you do not apologise to the subject of your fraud?
Tek Fog absurdity
But before this fraud was exposed, The Wire had come up with the ‘secret app’ Tek Fog absurdity, which despite denials by parties involved, The Wire got away with. The Wire had named two Indian companies, Persistent Systems and Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd as being involved in the ‘secret app’ and despite denials, The Wire never withdrew these stories. These stories on Tek Fog were written by Devesh Kumar and Ayushman Kaul.
The Wire has now claimed they are victims in this and that Devesh Kumar, who was associated with The Wire as a consultant, provided these documents and has filed a police complaint against him. Along with this, The Wire has also taken down Tek Fog-related stories by Devesh and Ayushman, while claiming innocence. The Wire has distanced themselves and claimed how they relied on documents provided by Devesh and pushed him under the bus in Meta stories. But then, what about Tek Fog stories? And does Kaul get to get away with it because of his father’s political connections? Ayushman Kaul is the son of National Conference spokesperson Dr Sameer Kaul.
Devesh and Ayushman, in their Tek Fog saga, had claimed that BJP was using an app to manipulate trends and automatically spew hate online. According to The Wire, Tek Fog has some kind of superpower, which has capabilities that even the NSA of the USA does not have. According to Wire, hacking top apps like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp etc is child’s play using the app, and all security features of those platforms vanish with this magical piece of software. And just these two men in the world had till now ‘verified’ it all.
The trigger for Tek Fog was a few tweets by an absolutely obscure Twitter account by the name ‘Aarthi Sharma’. The Twitter account was created in April 2020. You can read in detail about the Twitter account here. ‘Aarthi Sharma’ was also the first account ever to tweet about ‘Tek Fog’.
On his now-deleted personal blog, Devesh had claimed that Kaul approached him to work on the Tek Fog exposé as Devesh had prior experience of ‘running an IT cell’
To put things into perspective, in December 2019, Devesh Kumar put up a post on Reddit that he was running a parallel IT cell with automated tweets and hijacking trending topics on Twitter to trend anti-CAA trends.
The ‘Aarthi Sharma’ Twitter account has been inactive since July 31, 2020 but in January 2022 when The Wire report on Tek Fog was out, Devesh and Ayushman had claimed they had been investigating the app for 20 months. All their 20 months of ‘investigation’ was based on screenshots only. At no point in time, did either Devesh or Ayushman actually access ‘Tek Fog’. And going by how the Meta story has gone, the fictitious Tek Fog app, which does not exist on Play Store, Apple store or anywhere else, the screenshots used by The Wire were quite likely fake.
Ask Me Anything – by Tek Fog Team of The Wire
Soon after the Tek Fog stories were out, The Wire team did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit and YouTube. I listened to their entire conversation so you don’t have to.
Ayushman Kaul and Devesh Kumar go live on YouTube where The Wire Founding Editor Varadarajan introduces them as those who led the investigation into the Tek Fog app “used by supporters of BJP to spread disinformation and hate and all kind of nasty things online at a scale that appears unprecedented”.
Varadarajan claims he is not a ‘tech person’ but he said he would answer questions related to editorial policy and broad political implications of ‘Tek Fog’. Devesh and Ayushman were to answer all ‘tech-related’ questions. Devesh then starts with the ‘hard proofs’ he had with regard to the investigation and ‘outline’ features of the ‘investigation’. Ayushman Kaul then explains how this was a ‘significant investigation’. Again, this entire ‘investigation’ is based ONLY on screenshots provided by the ‘source’, who I am willing to bet does not exist except in their imagination.
Tek Fog features
Kaul claims ‘Tek Fog’ had the ability to auto retweet, and auto-reply to ‘targeted categories’ of people who were categorised based on their occupation, age, and gender. Kaul claims that the ‘operatives’ would ‘remotely hijack’ personal WhatsApp accounts on individuals and ‘impersonate’ them to send messages to ‘all contacts’ or ‘frequently contacted’. The words used to describe ‘Tek Fog’ users make them appear like they are some sort of underground terror network. Except, Tek Fog does not exist.
Kaul claims they had many rounds of interaction with experts including the editorial team at The Wire and other ‘investigative agencies’. Kaul claims they have independently verified all the claims they made in Tek Fog. Which would mean, The Wire’s editorial team, including Siddharth Varadarajan who was present in the video, were aware of everything that was being put out by the duo as ‘evidence’. Interesting how at no point did Varadarajan ask for sources other than screenshots. How did it even pass the smell test?
Devesh then claims their ‘anonymous source’ had revealed their identity to them and they had verified their bank statements and their ‘pay slips’. Apparently, their biggest investigation was about ‘manipulating Twitter trends’ via Tek Fog. For those who’ve been around Twitter, IT cells of various political parties as well as news channels regularly trend hashtags and it is not rocket science.
In fact, at the time of this report, the Congress IT cell is trending hashtag, “#Go_Back_Modi“.
Please note that along with the screenshot, I have linked back to the trending topic page of the said hashtag. This is how normal people back up their claims. Somehow, it slipped Varadarajan’s mind to question his ‘tech experts’.
Coming back, most Twitter users by now have learned to ignore such trends by all political parties because they are lame and annoying, to put it mildly. To carry out an ‘investigation’ on this can cater only to those who fell for The Wire stories on Tek Fog and Meta.
Bot menace
Devesh then claims their source, whom they (Kaul and himself) had verified as genuine, sent them screenshots and screen recordings of the ‘Tek Fog’ app on various days. This would include details of ‘tasks’ they had to do and which topics they had to trend to ‘investigate’. They, then, ‘verified’ activities and checked if the accounts trending these topics were real or bots. To put things in perspective, everyone knows bots are a concern on Twitter, which is why the new ‘Chief Twit’ of Twitter, Elon Musk, wanted to back out of the deal over allegations that the platform is filled with bots. Amusing that the ‘tech experts’ of The Wire found bots as the most damning part in this ‘Tek Fog’ investigation.
Devesh then categorises those accounts that tweet ’72 tweets’ in a day as ‘suspicious’ and ‘144 tweets’ in a day as ‘highly suspicious’. He claims that the tweets which come every 10 minutes are suspicious. Let me introduce the duo to Tweetdeck, which allows users to schedule tweets. You can schedule tweets for days on Tweetdeck and which is a part of Twitter itself. This kind of perfectly spaced tweets should hardly raise anyone’s concern. Except, if you are ‘tech experts’ hired by The Wire.
Amusingly, what Devesh and Kaul are now attributing to ‘Tek Fog’, was something Devesh had singlehandedly claimed to have done in December 2019 while running ‘parallel IT cell’ from his home. (Please refer to the screenshot above from his Reddit post.)
Coming back to their ‘AMA’, Kaul then adds, 20 different machine-learning data sets were used for ‘hate speech’ tracking. But all this was not included in The Wire report because ‘an average’ reader would not be interested or ‘understand’. They claimed to release more such technical details later, but 10 months later, no such documentation has been released. On the contrary, these ‘Tek Fog’ stories now stand withdrawn.
Down with fascism!
Predicting that people will dismiss this ‘hashtag trending and hijacking’ nonsense as lame, Devesh asked Varadarajan his thoughts on ‘Tek Fog’ investigation. Varadarajan then said that [the investigation is important as] someone who’s technologically proficient or has ‘deep pockets’, is able to use technology to amplify that they represent hundreds or thousands of people. Varadarajan then claims that ‘autocrats’ deeply resent and oppose when individuals come together and present a ‘collective threat’ to authority. Hence, one of the first things they do is put a ban on ‘mass gatherings’, and will attack ‘free speech’.
He then claims that ‘autocratic governments’ use technology to ‘set narrative’ and ‘drown authentic criticism’. He claims that it shows ‘utter depravity and desperation of those who have created this app who are trying any and every means to silence their critics’. Varadarajan then claims those who have created Tek Fog wanted to silence and drain out dissenters. “This is why Tek Fog is a dangerous technology,” Varadarajan claimed and added it was an assault on ‘democracy’. Again, like his ‘tech experts’, Varadarajan has not really seen Tek Fog app – they have all relied on screenshots provided by the ‘source’ who claimed to be a ‘BJP insider’.
Varadarajan said that The Wire decided to ‘highlight this [Tek Fog] editorially’ and to put it in the public domain as it was a threat to democracy. At this point, Varadarajan does mention they don’t know how this technology works and who all are behind it but asked for those who are involved with this to come forward and explain. Kaul, at this point, ‘reiterates’ that any political party which indulges in this kind of ‘technology’ is wrong and is a ‘threat’ to everyone. He then claims that if during their ‘investigation’, they would have found if it were any other party other than BJP ‘behind this technology’, they would have still gone ahead with it because ‘that is what the reality would have been’. Kaul then puts up a disclaimer that one shouldn’t get into ‘that kind of debate’.
Kaul then talks about how ’20 months ago’ there was nothing on ‘Tek Fog’ on Google except one tweet. “Now, after 20 months, we have a Wikipedia page, we have the ability to have a public debate about it,” he said that all they wanted to do was ‘discuss’ this app. He adds that these reports by The Wire were not closed chapter but was the ‘first chapter’ of this ‘entire discussion’.
WhatsApp hacking that never was
Devesh then talks about ‘phishing’ of inactive WhatsApp accounts which could have ‘possibly happened’. Devesh had claimed WhatsApp could have verified their claims by checking logs. Meta is the parent company of WhatsApp as well along with Facebook and Instagram. Devesh claims their source had not mentioned this ‘WhatsApp hacking’ as a feature in initial screenshots but had revealed it later that the app could ‘hijack WhatsApp’ (more on this later).
Devesh then claims that their ‘source’ alleged that on behalf of someone else they could send WhatsApp messages to others. Devesh then claims he uninstalled WhatsApp on his phone and Kaul kept WhatsApp on his. They then asked their source to send a message to Kaul from Devesh’s number after WhatsApp was uninstalled. Devesh claims their ‘source’ could not send a message to Kaul’s phone because likely the phone was ‘active’ or ‘not yet hacked’ but Devesh’s phone number appeared since ‘they’ (BJP IT cell) had ‘hijacked’ his WhatsApp earlier. Devesh reiterates that the BJP IT Cell through ‘Tek Fog’ had ‘hijacked’ his WhatsApp account, not his phone entirely.
“We shared my phone number, but they didn’t need it because they already had my account details in their Tek Fog app. So we made them send messages to my frequently contacted five people, one of whom was Ayushman, and while they are doing it, they screen-recorded the process and sent us. The whole process happened in five minutes,” Devesh claimed. Devesh then added that his WhatsApp account as well as his phone had 4 digit security pin along with OTP authentication, thereby suggesting a very sophisticated way of hacking. Devesh throws in tech words like hardware hacking, and spyware but claims The Wire could not verify the exact methodology through which the app was ‘hijacked’. Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company has not even bothered to comment on this.
Anyone with basic knowledge of computers will know that unless the target phone is already infected with some malware or trojan, this is not possible. Real-world hacking does not work as shown in movies, and for an end-to-end encrypted app like WhatsApp, it is even more difficult. If the inactive WhatsApp account of the Wire author was actually hacked, it means the device was already hacked using some malicious link the ‘source’ had sent them. But Devesh has specified his phone was not hacked, only WhatsApp was.
Pegasus vs Tek Fog
Kaul again comes back to say that all technology-related things aside, this ‘Tek Fog’ is a ‘human story’ as people being affected are not third-party individuals removed from us, but ‘we are the target’ he added. He then says, “We must ask ourselves what could be impact this could have on the society where you have the ability to manipulate and create what is reality and what is the political reality for many people in the country. Kaul then asks to activate other organisations like NGOs, ‘members of civil society’ to ‘fight’ this.” And we all know how some left-leaning members of ‘civil society’ are always waiting to write letters to the Prime Minister, President, Chief Justice of India, and even the United Nations.
When Varadarajan, who had also claimed his phone was hacked by ‘spy app’ Pegasus by the central government led by PM Modi, was asked to comment on that, he claimed that Pegasus and Tek Fog are not related ‘except for the same set of bad cast’ as the same set of people had deployed both apps. He asserted that Pegasus and ‘Tek Fog’ (which does not exist) were both run by BJP. Varadarajan claims Pegasus represents an attempt at passive surveillance by the government to ‘gather information and intelligence’. Tek Fog, on the other hand, ‘represents a more active gaming’ and added that they have no doubt that the footprints of those who deployed this app lead to ‘the ruling party’, that is the BJP, and the ‘wider Hindutva parivar’ but the motivation is to actively disrupt conversations, actively intimidate and harass critics rather than simply listening and to gather information, the aim is to silence, shut up through abuse, that is one part of it.
“The other part is to magnify or amplify your message on such a scale that it appears like the whole country is with you when it is just a handful of people sitting in the office in Nagpur (RSS headquarters) who are churning this all out. But if one person can put out 900 tweets in 15-20 minutes, then this tells you the kind of ability of handlers or operators of Tek Fog has to amplify the official voice,” Varadarajan speaks about the features of Tek Fog. Again, to remind readers, no one at The Wire had actually seen ‘Tek Fog’.
If you consider the messaging that is amplified, that is polarising content, hate content, whether it is targeting Muslims or Christians or targeting women or generally pushing the government’s agenda, then you can see how Tek Fog represents active disruption or an active assault on the integrity of public sphere, added The Wire’s Founding Editor. Structurally it is different from Pegasus except for one feature which is WhatsApp hijacking, which is ‘hacking’ a phone. However, both represent an assault on the integrity of democracy, Varadarajan added.
On a side note, ‘assault on democracy’ is also one of the favourite words of ‘members of civil society’.
Answering a question on blowback for ‘Tek Fog’ investigation, Kaul said that they don’t feel great about it but this is the price one has to pay in this day and age in our country. “Those who do this kind of work are willing to face these kinds of circumstances, and if you are not willing to face these kinds of circumstances and are more worried about losing your position than you are about bringing something forward and doing your job as a journalist, then leave this space,” Kaul claimed. It appears in their heads and imagination, the likes of Kaul are fighting a ‘war’ against ‘fascism’ which is why they spout these things straight out of the playbook.
Give us attention, please
Answering a question on how The Wire plans to get more attention on Tek Fog, Kaul said they focussed their attention on getting this series out. “We have a strategy how we will engage with various partners to push the investigation forward,” Kaul claimed adding they did not team up with any other media house before concluding the investigation.
Varadarajan added with a lot of pride how some international media is already picking up on their story. French media has picked up our reportage. Very good stories on Le Monde (Left-leaning French Paper that regularly publishes anti-India content and also is relied on by leftists within India to ‘fix Modi’) and Libération (another leftist publication in France) are there. “Washington Post, Buzzfeed, and a number of media outlets at are global levels are closely following this. And also we need to look at the tech media community globally. They have all read our investigation and commenting favourably on it and finding ways to take it forward,” Varadarajan added.
He claims he has heard people who are ‘victims’ of Tek Fog of the possibility of legal action. He adds political parties will be raising these issues, all of this is good, it is positive, and shows what we uncovered is of deep concern to citizens at large. Siddharth then expresses disappointment that the rest of the Indian media did not follow up on their big revelation, unlike the foreign media that has lapped up on the story.
To add to this, based on this Tek Fog story, Freedom House, a dubious Human Rights ‘watchdog’ that supported violent protests against a law that gave citizenship rights to persecuted minorities like Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians from Islamic states neighbouring India, dropped the country from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ in 2021 based on this ‘Tek Fog’ story. In 2022, too, the organisation maintained India as ‘partly free’, leaning on prejudiced reports and unfounded allegations, including The Wire’s story on Tek Fog (now taken down by The Wire), to claim that members of the BJP used it to shape public narratives and manipulate social media opinions.
Likewise, other organisations that have been pathologically averse to India, especially after Modi became the prime minister, cited the Tek Fog story as one of the examples to lower India’s ranking on their farcical indexes.
When asked about BJP’s reaction to Tek Fog, Varadarajan said BJP has pretended it does not exist. “They have refrained from making comment, Devang Dave who was named in the report issued a denial but other than that, BJP chose not to engage. It does not surprise me. Opposition MPs have begun to raise various aspects of our report, particularly the part where women journalists are targeted using Tek Fog. I suspect this issue will not go away. Sooner or later the BJP will have to even if to issue a denial, they will have to acknowledge that Tek Fog story is out there,” he had said. As things stand now, Tek Fog stories stand withdrawn pending an internal investigation by The Wire.
Ayushman added that they are working with a bunch of legal advocacy organisations and will find the best way to pursue this, through the best organisation that is available to them through the judiciary, through parliament. “We have a long way to go,” he added.
When questioned why all the screenshots of the app on their story were on iOS (Apple device), Ayushman chose to not answer and let Devesh take it up. Devesh claimed that ‘Tek Fog’ operator was running this app through iOS. Since their ‘source’ only sent them screenshots of app, without letting them access it, they could hardly do anything about it. Devesh claimed they don’t think Apple or Google have anything to do with it as the app is not a ‘native app’ but a browser-based app.
One would suspect if such a source even exists or if it was one of their sock puppet accounts created to talk about this superhuman app because anyone questioning it will be termed ‘fascist enablers’ and any action taken by those they have named in the article, will then be termed as ‘attack on dissenting voice’. As we have seen in the recent Meta absurdity, the action by Delhi Police over forged documents with an aim to defame one person is being portrayed as an abuse of state machinery for a ‘mistake’ which they have ‘apologised’ for. For the record, The Wire has not apologised to Malviya, who has filed a complaint against The Wire. The Wire has also not apologised to Meta or its representatives or even their ‘experts’ whom they had named, like Ujjwal Kumar of Microsoft Asia, for forging their emails. The shamelessness is astounding.
Claims so absurd, even Big Tech ignored
Answering a question on whether The Wire has reached out to tech companies like Twitter and Facebook for their comments on the damning allegations that their platforms are abused by an invisible app like ‘Tek Fog’, Kaul claims some ‘tech partners’ were made aware of the data and analysis they had done including the WhatsApp hack and added that these companies are investigating them. Kaul claimed to have communicated to representatives of these companies (which would mean Meta, as the parent company of WhatsApp), and it appeared that they (these tech companies, meaning Twitter and Meta), were taking them (allegations) very seriously. He claimed that they have not yet commented publicly but will comment eventually. He claimed that it would not be right for him to say what the public statement of these tech companies would be and added that he does not know it either but ‘I do feel’ with the conversation I had with them that they are investigating it.
He claimed the tech behind this app is extremely sophisticated and not easy as they would have liked but are taking it seriously to take it forward. He then added that these companies are aware of Tek Fog. Meta has not yet released any statement with regard to Tek Fog and neither has Twitter. At this point, one is not even sure if Kaul had any conversations with these companies. And again, to reiterate, Tek Fog stories are also retracted from public viewing by The Wire.
Devesh claimed that on June 18, 2021, he and Kaul in their individual capacities provided a list of 5,000 accounts to the Twitter Global Public Policy team. These accounts they claimed were associated with ‘Tek Fog’, and soon he claimed these accounts were deactivated. Devesh claimed Twitter did not get back to them about these ‘accounts’. Even till now, Twitter has not issued any statement on Tek Fog.
Good information vs bad information
Answering a question on ‘biased’ news channels, Varadarajan suggested that people should stop watching biased news channels. “This does not mean other people won’t be watching them, but one should not make their propaganda any easier,” he adds. Varadarajan then says that people should engage with friends and family members who spread ‘disinformation’ that emanate from these channels and engage with them on why this is ‘nonsense’. He then adds that people could then support media that is doing ‘good work like us’. Varadarajan then suggests people should ‘support good media’ and ‘keep away from bad media’ and asked people to let friends and family know when ‘bad media does bad story’.
Few things here. Who decides what is disinformation? Either side of the media lives in an echo chamber as we have seen even in the Meta saga where despite The Wire admitting to using fraudulent documents for a sensational story, the ecosystem is rallying behind them and portraying the police action against them as some sort of abuse of power against ‘dissenting voice’ for a ‘bad story’, if I were to use Siddharth Varadarajan’s words. And then, Varadarajan is asking people to not watch some news channels. Anything that they do not publish is ‘disinformation’ apparently and crusaders of free speech suddenly don’t want those voices amplified. To cite PM Modi, hypocrisy ki bhi seema hoti hai.
Meanwhile, Kaul added that ‘everyone has a role to play’. He added that when they got this ‘information’, it was ‘their role’ to ‘verify’ and ‘find out what they could’ and ‘communicate it further’. He, too, asks people to ‘counter bad information’ with ‘good information’. All their verification was limited to seeing screenshots. These guys did not even actually access this super secret app they are talking so confidently about.
News or information could be right or wrong, how can they be ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Who gives out these certificates to the information? Who are these gatekeepers of ‘information’ who segregate good and bad stuff? Clearly, the ones mouthing these platitudes are now accused of forging documents and evidence. And are playing the victim. This is astonishing.
Kaul then urges those who are outraged with this ‘Tek Fog’ to write to editors of newspapers and channels asking them why are they not covering it. Kaul, giving lessons on morality, said newspapers should be publishing these stories on Tek Fog as it interests their readers.
The denials which were ignored
The duo now talks about an alleged corporate nexus. Two companies that were part of this ‘Tek Fog’ are named by them. Devesh claims that the ‘source’ was hired as social media manager by Persistent Systems. Devesh asserts how it has offices in Nagpur (which is also home to RSS headquarters) and elsewhere (headquartered in Pune and 59 locations across the world in total). He claimed the source was assigned client ‘Mohalla Tech Private Limited’ which is the parent company of the app ShareChat.
Devesh claims they confirmed with someone working with Persistent Systems to know if they had Mohalla Tech (ShareChat) as one of the clients. He claims their source in Persistent sent them screenshots of files related to ‘Tek Fog’. Since ‘Tek Fog’ was not talked about before that anonymous Twitter account claiming to be a disgruntled BJP IT Cell member, finding ‘files’ related to the same in Persistent Systems was proof enough, as per them. He claimed many of the activities in the screenshot shared by someone from Persistent Systems matched what their other source had given them. Now, why does all this sound so familiar?
Devesh then asserts that two independent sources who never talked to each other and did not know each other ‘confirmed in isolation’ what was happening in Persistent Systems. Devesh again claims these proofs came to them via their official email ids. To put things in perspective, Devesh had also claimed their sources within Meta had shared an email from Meta communications personnel, Andy Stone, which has turned out to be fabricated. Devesh had also shared emails of two ‘independent experts’ who had verified communication they had with Meta insider, both of whom have said they never sent those emails. To further prove the authenticity of an email, Devesh had ‘verified’ the mail’s DKIM and in the video, the voiceover was provided by Ayushman Kaul. Persistent Systems, back in January 2022 when the report had come out, had categorically said that their internal investigation revealed no involvement in ‘Tek Fog’.
Devesh then claims they contacted another BJYM (Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, youth wing of BJP) source via their ‘first source’ (anonymous account on Twitter) who gave a ‘python script’ which located Tek Fog server and also showed services associated with ‘Tek Fog’ server. Kaul then explains how they were in contact with an ‘active’ BJYM officeholder and hence was being careful about revealing information. He claims the official sent profiler code, also via official email id, to ‘prove’ it was indeed coming from the BJYM official. As we have seen in the Meta saga, The Wire has a penchant for sharing screenshots that contain ’emails’ from ‘official mail ids’ as evidence which turn up to be fraudulent.
Kaul then claims with the ShareChat database, a lot of ‘local media’ were also connected to their internal LAN (local area network), which is ‘extremely influential’ in terms of readership. Devesh claims that ABP News, Dainik Jagran, amongst other media houses (their report also mentioned OpIndia, but they skipped us in their video) were connected to Tek Fog servers, they had no other ‘proof’. To reiterate, Tek Fog does not exist, and neither do any of the things these two have claimed till now.
Devesh then claims they ‘investigated’ ShareChat and found it had a huge ‘hate speech’ and ‘spam’ problem. Devesh claimed that their source would first post abusive things on ShareChat and then go on Twitter to post the same. This is amusing since none of the people they claimed to be abused via Tek Fog were active on ShareChat. Who were they abusing there? ShareChat, too, had denied knowledge of the app or involvement in the same.
The essence of Tek Fog
Devesh’s monologue towards the end of the video, starting from around 1 hour 10 minutes onward appears like they had a list of hashtags and accounts in front of them, and to ‘prove’ communal hashtags were trended on behest of the BJP, they went and saw those handles had tweeted those things. Now, here is the thing. The account ‘Aarthi Sharma’, which has been the ‘source’ for The Wire story came up in April 2020. It was active only till July 2020. This account also tweets about ‘Tek Fog’ for the very first time. The Tablighi Jamaat attendees, many of whom were found in violation of visa norms, were staying at the Nizmauddin Markaz in New Delhi. They were found on 30-31 March 2020. If the ‘source’ had built up the dossier on hashtags trended around those times, it would not be too difficult to go and ‘verify’ that those topics were trended.
Example: In December 2022 I ‘leak’ a screenshot of a document that lists out Congress’ trending topics for the month of November. I sneakily would add the date for say, October 15, 2022 when the document was created. Now, to ‘verify’, if you track those hashtags, you will likely find most of them as trending. Because I actually created this document in December after keeping track of hashtags in November to fool you and take you for a ride to exploit your confirmation bias. Creating a backdated document based on events that have already happened and then leak the same as some sort of brave whistleblower. And you, despite knowing how things work, would likely play along because in your head, you are fighting a war against ‘disinformation’ and the ‘good information’ must be put out.
It is VERY likely this is exactly what has happened. I may be a mentally disturbed individual, but instead of seeking therapy, I seek employment in your organisation and you happily hire me because you are consumed by your bias.
And that, is how, The Wire shortcircuited.
