The Wire email hacked: With the advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s term, which is often referred to as the ‘Hindu Nationalist Party’ or the ‘Right wing government’, India witnessed the rise of self-acclaimed ‘left wing’ media portals. However, with time, the fog cleared and the real faces were unveiled.
The left leaning portals claimed to be the saviour of democracy and the spirit of India. But, soon their covers were blown and their anti-India propaganda came into light. This gave a big blow to their credibility. Now, the portals that used to call out the ‘fascist Modi regime’, as they call it, are busy publishing fake reports to get attention and are getting thrashed by BigTech for the same.
The Wire email hacked: The Wire spreads fake news again
On October 10, propaganda portal The Wire published a report claiming that the Bhartiya Janata Party leader Amit Malviya enjoys a special privilege. It was written with respect to the IT cell chief with the title, “If BJP’s Amit Malviya Reports Your Post, Instagram Will Take it Down- No Questions Asked.”
In the report, Jahnavi Sen, the deputy editor and executive news producer claimed that Malviya enjoyed such power in Meta (parent company to Facebook and Instagram) that if he reports any post on the Instagram platform, it will get removed by the system, without even inquiring in the matter. The report further claims that no claims by the publisher of the post will be heard as “Malviya has the privileges on the X checklist.”
From where did The Wire get the story idea?
In a report dated 6 October, the portal reported that Instagram had removed a photograph of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s temple for violating its guidelines. An Instagram user with handle @cringearchivist had uploaded the photograph that mocked CM Yogi.
With these consecutive reports, the left wing portal aimed at maligning the BJP government. They claimed that the BJP government is hand in glove with the BigTech and thus are together censoring such posts.
The Wire gets thrashed by Meta
Since, the question was on the policy of Meta, that is connected with its image, a backfire was expected. The Wire has also questioned the XCheck being a Meta programme.
In the very first response, Andy Stone from Communications at Meta responded on micro blogging site Twitter and dismissed the report. He claimed that the pictures that were taken down were actually removed by the automated systems. Stone further claimed the screenshots shared by The Wire to be fabricated.
Following this, the portal published another report where it was alleged that the sender was upset due to the leak of an internal document.
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. (1/6)
— Guy Rosen (@guyro) October 11, 2022
The war of rebuttals had already begun and then arrived Meta’s chief Information Security Officer to trash The Wire’s report. In a tweet thread, he claimed that the reports were totally incorrect and contains misinformation, a thing The Wire is famous for. Rosen concluded with, “Let’s hope @thewire_in is the victim not the perpetrator of this hoax.”
The Wire was brought down and it finally gave up the arms on October 17. They had put out a statement suggesting that they will not put out more articles on the issue for the time being.
Dear The Wire, do a sneak peek inside yourself
With these reports, The Wire claims to get the status of a hyped investigative portal from a propaganda portal, which it is currently. It is not the first time that The Wire has done this. Earlier, it had claimed that the Modi government was spying on the journalists and the opposition malwares, using Pegasus Malware. Later, the theory manufactured by The Wire around Pegasus was trashed by the Supreme Court of India.
Before this, The Wire had claimed that the ruling party had developed an application through which it can now control social media. It was named ‘Tek Pog’ by the alleged investigative journalists of The Wire. However, it took the Modi government some simple revelations to trash those claims.
The question here is regarding The Wire claiming its email ids to be hacked. Why would anyone pay any heed to such a portal, which had got no credibility in the market and in the journalism fraternity? The Wire should look at its colourful history of publishing hit-jobs, shoddy and malicious reports and waging disinformation campaigns against India’s ruling party and ask themselves, ‘Are they worth the efforts of hacking?’
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