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Tensions Rise in India Over Claim That Instagram Let Ruling Party Tamper With Posts (washingtonpost.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
News outlet The Wire is investigating its own reporting amid an explosive dispute with Meta. From a report: Last week, The Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, seemed to land one explosive punch after another on Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook. The California company had given an influential official from India's ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn't like, The Wire reported, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. A day later, The Wire reported that Meta executives were scrambling to find the mole who leaked the story, citing a new internal email the publication had obtained.

Finally, after Meta executives denied both reports on social media -- and, in an unusual move, insisted that The Wire's documents appeared fabricated -- The Wire released a lengthy rebuttal on Saturday that the outlet said would lay to rest any doubts about its reporting. It did not. Instead, The Wire is now investigating itself. The publication said Tuesday it launched an internal review of its stories about Meta, adding a new twist to a sensational dispute between a reputed Indian news organization and a powerful Silicon Valley company -- a clash that has captivated the technology and media industries in both India and the United States.
UPDATE (10/23): The Wire has retracted their story.
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Tensions Rise in India Over Claim That Instagram Let Ruling Party Tamper With Posts More

Tensions Rise in India Over Claim That Instagram Let Ruling Party Tamper With Posts

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  • Stop bothering him with such nonsense.

  • Facebook(Meta) had the government dictate or block a bunch of content in the U.S., why would India be any different? Modification? Sure why not. Anything is possible when you are working directly with governments and your company will cease to exist if you disobey (or bad things will happen personally to executives).

    • That's not what's going on here (Score:4, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:34PM (#62978095)
      this isn't the US gov't telling FB to take down sex abuse images. This is a specific politician demanding (and getting) them to take down posts critical of the party.

      Contrary to what your Uncle-in-Law's FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW: emails said, Joe Biden is not censoring Facebook with the help of the Illuminati while mainlining Adrenechrome & Homeopathic Essential Oils. We've got pretty strong rules about free speech. Facebook isn't taking down your favorite (let's face it, right wing) politicians because the gov't told them too. They took them down because they wouldn't stop inciting violence and/or saying racist things, and FB did a calculation that it costs more to have them up than they make from you looking at adverts.

    • Sounds like something Alex Jones would come up with.

    • Modi-fication?

    • Why did this get modded "Troll" ?

      Zuckerberg literally went onto Joe Roegan and said the Biden DoJ made him do this same thing ?

      https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]

      • The article you linked to makes no such claim.

        • Please consider reading a little more carefully next time.

          From the article:

          "Rogan asked Zuckerberg about the late 2020 New York Post story about Joe Biden's son and how the company handled the article's reach online. Zuckerberg said the FBI had already approached Facebook with a warning to be on the lookout for such controversial content, especially since Russian propaganda played a role on the platform around the 2016 election."

          • I did read the article carefully the first time.

            You need to go back to remedial English classes, because being "on the lookout" is not the same as "dictate or block a bunch of content in the U.S.".

  • As for the twist, of course Meta would hit back hard. Sowing a distraction within The Wire is well within their purview, and all they need is some plausible deniability. Try too hard, and it looks to others like you care. In other words, don't ever expect the truth to come out cleanly in this instance. It should be morbidly entertaining, at least.
  • This is one of the nastier games that politicians play with maverick journalists: They manipulate them into publishing stories about their opponents (which might even be true, despite the fraudulence of the key evidence), and once it's out there, the outcome is a win-win for whoever plotted it. If the fabrication never comes to light, they damaged an opponent. If it does come to light, they damaged journalists who are probably their enemies most of the time, and some amount of damage to the opponent still

    • Fabricating emails is vile shit though. That kind of thing is an all-out attack on the very concept of journalism. Hopefully that organization will now be on a mission to expose who did it rather than getting quiet and fearful.

      Civilization demands stepping on liars that extreme.

      Or at the very least electing them to public office. Heyoh!

      PLEASE NOTE: Before somebody knee-jerk responds with some defense of "their" team? I'm not specifying a political party or specific politician for a reason. They're all liars in my country. Top to bottom.

    • > If it does come to light, they damaged journalists who are probably their enemies most of the time

      In almost all of these scenarios the journalists damage themselves by not second- and third- sourcing the stories, depending on gravity of the claims. They so often want to be first-to-publish and skip journalistic integrity (IMO forfeiting the title 'journalist').

      On the other hand, the journalists got clicks/ads and the adversary got his message out while the retraction will be buried on Page 17 and the

      • Even in the best journalism, there is a point of impracticality where someone without police powers just can't follow a lead any farther. Especially when a story is supposedly coming from an internal government source, and even asking questions of anyone else could prematurely expose both the story and the source. At that point they have to do a dance and pick up a bunch of circumstantial facts, see how they fit. When those circumstantial facts are being manufactured to create a false impression among th
  • but it's hardly a surprise. Facebook has made it crystal clear that they're buddy buddy with authoritarian governments and that they lean hard to the right. Still nice to see them get caught. Also if this was Russia these guys would be flying out 3rd story windows, so nice to see India hasn't gotten that bad (yet).

    • FB doesn't lean right.

      FB leans towards money and power. And when it's free, they virtue signal left but don't really mean it if it costs them money or influence. In those cases they default back to lean to money and power.

      • Money and Power has a tendency to lean right... Except when it doesn't, since it does wobble a lot. But most of the rich Authoritarian places are leaning so right that they're falling down, and the poor Authoritarian places don't have enough money and power to care about no matter how they lean.

  • From their initial reaction, it's quite clear that they really believed their report. But the obstinacy with which they dug in their heels cost them their credibility.

    Having said that, the key "security reporter" - whose email/twitter was allegedly (and conveniently) hacked - has a history of writing unsubstantiated articles which have never been corroborated by anyone else.

  • Not talking about the topic of The Wire, which is a problem that Indians will hopefully solve over time, but I want to make highlight this: I don't see any tensions anywhere among public, which makes the article in washington post basically "fake news".

    This reminds me of articles in western media (The Economist, NYT etc.) that I used to read 10-15 years ago where they would claim that a train crashed and now people are rising against the dictatorship. Of course there is no revolution happening in China wher

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