Now, Google-backed ShareChat asks The Wire to pull down articles on Tek Fog after Meta

File image: ShareChat logos are seen in this illustration taken, July 26, 2021. (Image: Reuters)

Social media company ShareChat on October 19 released a statement asking independent news platform The Wire to retract its previous Tek Fog investigation articles published in January this year. The company said it was wrongly accused in the article.

This comes a day after the news platform’s public fall-out with Meta and later withdrawal of the articles for internal investigation. The Meta article alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) IT cell chief Amit Malviya was given special privileges under the social media giant’s XCheck programme giving him control over content, in this case, certain Instagram posts, which he was able to remove and manage.

Similarly, in January, The Wire came out with a series of reports on an app called Tek Fog, which gave the ruling BJP control over social media narrative letting them create and delete social media accounts, manage conversations, use WhatsApp for sending unauthorised messages and use its database of citizens for targeted harassment. A detailed newsletter by independent journalist Samarth Bansal highlighted the gaping loopholes in the reporting of the story.

One of the two companies named in the article to be facilitating these activities through Tek Fog was ShareChat.

It is however known that the BJP does seek control over social media posts. Micro-blogging site Twitter had sued the Indian government in July 2022 to overturn some of the orders by the Indian government on content removal. Twitter took legal action to get a judicial review of the content.

Taking a cue from yesterday’s withdrawal of Meta stories, ShareChat’s statement on Wednesday said, “At this juncture, we would like to remind The Wire that the very same researchers had published an article earlier this year. The claims made against us were published without seeking our comment, quoted an expert who we understand has sought to distance himself from The Wire in the latest story and alleged collusion without a shred of evidence.”

“We had and continue to deny the fabricated allegations against us in the report in no uncertain terms at that time as well as today. However, we note that this report continues to be available online for public consumption, completely disregarding expert third-party views and questions about the veracity of the fantastic claims made,” the company said.

Both the series of articles have a common in-house tech researcher and reporter as a co-author, Devesh Kumar, whose evidences were questioned the most during the last few days of online scrutiny over the Meta stories.

In its statement, ShareChat pointed out its “…severe reservations about the motivations and practices followed by Mr Kumar and others are now shared by many across the world and The Wire team as well.”

“Also, it would be prudent of The Wire team to publicly acknowledge that there may be discrepancies in this previous report as well. The Wire claims to have a greater responsibility to be transparent. We sincerely hope that it discharges that responsibility in full,” they said.

The Wire supports Tek Fog reports

Meanwhile, The Wire’s Editor and veteran journalist Siddharth Varadarajan took a stand in support of the Tek Fog articles, while speaking to Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer for online publication Platformer.

“I don’t think we should make this about Devesh, frankly. This should be equally about me, I was hands on involved in the story. The point is that, yes there were some questions raised by some aspects of Tek Fog, but a lot of it actually was validated,” he told Platformer.

Varadarajan added, “Tek Fog is a story we are continuing to work on, and we have found more corroborative material on that, so I am very reluctant to diss Tek Fog. If our review concludes that this set of stories [on Meta] doesn’t add up, it doesn’t mean the Tek Fog stories weren’t up to the mark.”