Questions have been raised about Instagram’s engagement in comparison to TikTok’s surge, and Mark Zuckerberg has lost more than half of his wealth in a year. But these are the least of the troubles for Meta, a firm which has previously been fined for data leaks and pulled up over Facebook’s alleged collaboration with BJP. Now the firm is embroiled in a controversy with news organisation The Wire, which published an article alleging that any Instagram post reported by BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya is immediately deleted and denied review.
The back and forth so far
Meta’s communication director Andy Stone hit back against the allegations in The Wire’s report calling the document it produced to prove Malviya’s privileges a fabrication. But Wire then released screenshots of Meta’s internal email, which suggested that Andy Stone was upset over the same document being leaked.
Wire’s claims about technical verification of emails
A Twitter battle has since seen Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer Guy Rosen post a thread saying that the email is fabricated and Stone doesn’t use the email ID used in it. The Wire against responded with more screenshots to show that Stone’s email address was in use, and that the headers on the mail were technically verified. It also cited sources to establish that the URL that wasn’t in use according to Rosen, did exist as an internal subdomain.
Now after Wire’s claims in articles and Meta’s rebuttals on Twitter, The Wire has released a statement on the microblogging site, claiming that XCheck privileges are being provided to BJP members in India, and that it’s trying to protect its sources while providing evidence. The Wire also added that the controversy that has erupted over its report has sidelined the actual issue of Cringetopia’s post being wrongly flagged for nudity.
