The Wire retracts its Meta stories

The big clue is that the name is different. "The Wire" vs "Wired".

They didn't get played. From the editor's tweets while this unfolded (confirming multiple times that they had multiple sources), the obvious forging of emails from Meta and their so-called verifiers, they were deliberately attempting to play everyone else to advance their narrative.

Their attempt to say that they "got played" is just them trying to save face.

Edit: Also, this isn't their first time. They had attempted this earlier with a flimsy, completely made-up story on a non-existent app called "Tek Fog"

https://www.theinterval.co/the-wires-tek-fog-investigation-f...

They didn't get played. It was deliberate, and malicious.

This is the editor (Siddharth Varadarajan's) own tweet where he claims to have "met and verified" his sources and says it's ridiculous to think that they've been played:

"Apart from Meta's 'fabrication' charge, some folks are saying @thewire_in may have been 'played' by unknown elements out to 'discredit' us or further some outlandish conspiracy. This is ridiculous. Our stories came from multiple Meta sources—whom we know, have met & verified. 1/"

https://twitter.com/svaradarajan/status/1580069016387092482

Yes, there are still many unanswered questions, such as who created the spoof Workplace account and for what purpose.

https://twitter.com/ahalam/status/1583041350114500608

> Newslaundry asked Meta if they had identified the person who created the spoof Workplace account. "Unfortunately, we would not be able to share this detail as it will go against user privacy", a Meta spokesperson replied.

https://twitter.com/Aditi_muses/status/1583044799556296705

> They have identified the account but they refused to tell me if they had ID'ed the person (because "privacy"), or if it was created by a Meta employee.

Also, the commentary I've seen around the "video proof" seems to mostly infer that it was ignorance or malice to use such an easily spoof-able partially redacted video as proof, but are there no other reasons they would choose to redact info like that? Such as, protection of sources? If you have to redact, then you can't give people full cryptographic proof, and all you can do is describe your process and rest on your reputation (which has obviously degraded for thewire.in now). I'm not aware of enough details to know if protection of sources is even a plausible justification in terms of technical details, but the online debate is so accusatory and empty of information.

Wire posted a bunch of articles alleging that Meta has been giving special censorship powers to people involved with the Indian regime.

The only problem with that story was that all of the evidence they shared from their “whistleblower” was obviously fake.

Just in case there's confusion, this isn't Wired (the tech blog).

It's "the wire" and is a portal dealing mostly with Indian politics.

See this thread:

>There are multiple red flags in The Wire's reports.

https://twitter.com/Aditi_muses/status/1583038570784182273

Also this earlier thread by Alex Stamos (former Facebook CSO):

>A couple of quick observations on l'affair Indian XCheck and The Wire's last update.

https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1581357030576574465

It's a blatant fake news site.

>Everything you need to know about Meta’s moderation controversy in India

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/17/23407790/facebook-india-...

See also Twitter threads from my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33307010

Posting before fact checking.

I would recommend Garbage Day’s coverage of this:

https://www.garbageday.email/p/a-big-confusing-game-of-inter...

Also, for contextualizing the social media reactions (including on HN) I would recommend this recent New Yorker article:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/when-the-hindu...