MC's Weekly Update: Down to The Wire v. Meta in India

Moderated Content

SHOW NOTES

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• An article with bombshell allegations against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, appears to be based on forgeries, but the news outlet continues to stand by the reporting and now claims a technical expert at the publication was hacked. - Aditi Agrawal/ newslaundry, OpIndia
  • More: Last week, an article was published by The Wire, a nonprofit Indian digital news organization, claiming an internal Instagram report revealed an official in charge of social media for India’s ruling party, the BJP, had special privileges to report pieces of content to Instagram and have them taken down automatically.
    • Meta spokesperson Andy Stone denied the report saying that that was not how the XCheck program worked, and that the “the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.”
  • But Wait, There’s More: The next day, The Wire published a new article claiming to have an email in which Meta’s Stone asked employees how the document leaked.
    • Meta CISO Guy Rosen denied the allegations and explained how he determined the evidence and email were forgeries.
  • Then: This weekend, The Wire released another story standing by their reporting with evidence that the internal email and report URL were real. The story included a video explanation of their technical analysis.
    • Meta’s Rosen responded debunking new claims, and other experts (including Alex) pointed out flaws with purported technical evidence that the internal emails were real.
  • We’re Still Not Done: Meta released an updated blog post debunking the purported internal system shown in The Wire’s video as an external account created after the story was reported.
    • The Wire responded in a statement saying that the reason why Meta keeps denying their reporting is to try and get them to publish more information that will reveal their sources but they “are not prepared to play this game any further.” The statement was later edited to delete the description of a “personal” relationship with a source.
  • Got All That? Here’s Some Context: India is pushing ahead with legislation that would create a government-appointed panel to review user complaints about social media content moderation decisions. - Megha Mandavia/ The Wall Street Journal
    • Meta officials are also reported to leniently apply policies, such as those barring hate speech, for the Indian ruling party. Newley Purnell, Jeff Horwitz/ The Wall Street Journal
• Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has reached an agreement to buy the conservative social media platform Parler. The move marks a growing trend of billionaires buying social media companies when their posts are moderated. - Ryan Browne/ CNBC, Marlene Lenthang/ NBC News, Bobby Allyn/ NPR, Kelly Hooper/ Politico
• The Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Fat Bear Week bracket voting tournament was marred by an attempt to artificially inflate votes for 435 Holly over Bear 747 in the semifinal round. Luckily, the organizers caught the fishy business and preserved the sanctity of the tournament which had a record of more than one million total votes. - Miles Klee/ Rolling Stone

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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