Instagram will take your post down without questions if it’s reported by BJP’s Amit Malviya: Report
The Wire’s exclusive investigative report
New Delhi: In an exclusive investigative report posted by one of India’s leading independent media outlets The Wire, the website has claimed popular social media platform Instagram will take down a post without any questions if the post is reported by Amit Malviya, the IT Cell Chief of BJP.
In the report, worked on by The Wire’s Deputy Editor Jahnavi Sen, the website claimed Instagram had recently took down a video posted by ‘Superhumans of Cringetopia’ an anonymous satirical account citing that the post violated the platform’s ‘nudity and sexual content guideline.
The post, however, was only showing a man, a resident of Uttar Pradesh Prabhakar Maurya worshipping a statue of state chief minister Adityanath. The post was also not in violation of the guidelines of Instagram as both the man and the idol in the video were fully clothed, and there was no visible sexual connotation whatsoever, the report added.
Days after reporting on this confusing takedown, The Wire has learned from a well-placed source at Meta that it was not, in fact, due to an algorithmic glitch. The post was taken down – and that too just minutes after it was posted – only because it was reported by Instagram user @amitmalviya. That's the handle belonging to Amit Malviya, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party's infamous IT Cell, the report further elaborated.
The report further cited an internal report of Instagram which it claimed had accessed, to establish that the reported post was taken down immediately without the company’s moderator having a look at it and only based on the identity of the reporter Amit Malviya.
It further quoted a source at the Meta, the company that runs Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram and is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, and added any post that Malviya reports is treated the same way – an immediate removal from the platform, no questions asked.
In the month of September, the report claimed Malviya had reported 705 posts all of which were taken down immediately, the report quoted the source as saying.
As The Wire has reported, @cringearchivist has seen seven of its posts removed by Instagram in the last few months. This, the administrators of the satirical account said, has forced them to go 'private' (only followers can see their posts), thereby limiting their growth and reach. Now, new followers have to fill out a form before they are allowed to see the content posted on the page.
“Other removed posts from the @cringearchivist page, The Wire has now learned, were also reported by none other than Malviya. While two were flagged for sexual content – the post on the Adityanath temple and another that amplified the voice of a female influencer who was posting about creepy DMs she got – the rest were taken down citing 'extreme graphic violence, despite the videos not showing violence. Instagram's rate and speed of takedowns had worried the handle's administrators, who thought their page in its entirety may be deleted if this continued.” The report added.
Malviya, the Instagram report on the @cringearchivist post states, is part of Meta's 'XCheck' or 'Cross Check' program. This program – a closely guarded company secret until it was first exposed by the Wall Street Journal in September 2021 – allows a list of 'elite' accounts on Meta platforms (belonging mostly to celebrities and politicians) to flout the rules the company claims applies to everyone under the garb of protecting these high-profile users. The programme was designed to prevent the bad press that sometimes came from actions against celebrity users.
“Some users are “whitelisted”—rendered immune from enforcement actions—while others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come,” Wall Street Journal reported then. The Instagram report on the @cringearchivist posts that were removed makes it clear the XCheck privileges are even more sweeping – these users can also have posts taken down as they please, without the company bothering to check whether there is justifiable cause.
The XCheck program was criticised even within Meta, with an internal review finding, according to the Wall Street Journal, that “Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences.”
Globally, according to the Wall Street Journal, 5.8 million users were a part of the XCheck program in 2020. Users are not typically told when they are included in this privileged list, the newspaper noted. While some of the names revealed by the newspaper were celebrities with hundreds of millions of followers, like the Brazilian footballer Neymar, Malviya has less than 5,000 followers on Instagram and 15,000 followers on Facebook.
The internal report makes clear that after Malviya reported @cringearchivist's post, no human intervention was deemed necessary by Meta – the post was gone from the platform immediately, and no review process was seen as “required”, The Wire’s report added.
The company has given Malviya two levels of privileges – he can post as he likes, without the rules governing the platform applying to him, and he can impose his will as he pleases to have posts critical of the BJP, the Union government, or right-wing Hindu politics, deleted, it further added.
For someone who regularly uses social media for disinformation – for instance, last month posting photos from 2019 while claiming that they portrayed a recent Narendra Modi rally, or alleging that a recent New York Times article on the Delhi government's education programme was a 'paid promotion' – a privilege like this underlines that general users' best interests aren't Meta's priority here. Because while the rest of us may not be able to get away with performing such a tenuous relationship with the truth on Meta platforms, or refusing to let any dissent or criticism exist, Malviya sure can. The report added a conclusion.
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SC stays CBI probe into West Bengal govt officials' role in teacher recruitment scam
New Delhi, Apr 29: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed a Calcutta High Court order directing the CBI to probe the role of West Bengal government officials in a teacher recruitment scam. It, however, refused to stay for now the cancellation of the appointment of over 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff.
The top court was hearing a plea by the West Bengal government against a high court order invalidating the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff made by the School Service Commission (SSC) in state-run and state-aided schools.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, however, refused to stay the high court order cancelling the appointments and said it will hear the matter on May 6.
Observing that taking away the jobs of about 25,000 persons is a serious matter, the top court asked if it is possible to segregate the valid and invalid appointments on the basis of the material available and who the beneficiaries of the fraud are.
"We will stay the direction which says the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) will undertake further investigation against officials in the state government," the bench said.
Calcutta High Court had said the CBI would undertake further investigations with regard to the persons in the state government involved in approving the creation of supernumerary posts to accommodate illegal appointments.
If necessary, the CBI will undertake custodial interrogation of such persons involved, it had said.
Challenging the order, the state government, in its appeal filed before the top court, said the high court cancelled the appointments "arbitrarily".
"The high court failed to appreciate the ramification of cancelling the entire selection process, leading to straightaway termination of teaching and non-teaching staff from service with immediate effect, without giving sufficient time to the petitioner state to deal with such an exigency, rendering the education system at a standstill," the plea said.
Calcutta High Court last week declared the selection process as "null and void" and directed the CBI to probe the appointment process. It also asked the central agency to submit a report within three months.
"All appointments granted in the selection processes involved being violative of articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India, are declared null and void and cancelled," the high court said in its April 22 order.
The high court said those appointed outside the officially available 24,640 vacancies, appointed after the expiry of the official date of recruitment, and those who submitted blank Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets but obtained appointment to return all remunerations and benefits received by them with 12 per cent interest per annum within four weeks.
Observing that it had given "anxious consideration to the passionate plea" that persons who obtained the appointments legally would be prejudiced if the entire selection process was cancelled, the bench said it hardly had any choice left.
The high court held that all appointments involved were violative of articles 14 (equality before law) and 16 (prohibiting discrimination in employment in any government office) of the Constitution.
"It is shocking that, at the level of the cabinet of the state government, a decision is taken to protect employment obtained fraudulently in a selection process conducted by SSC for state-funded schools, knowing fully well that, such appointments were obtained beyond the panel and after expiry of the panel, at the bare minimum," the high court had said.
It said unless "there is a deep connection between the persons perpetuating the fraud and the beneficiaries" with persons involved in the decision-making process, such action to create supernumerary posts to protect illegal appointments is "inconceivable".
The division bench had also rejected a prayer by some appellants, including the SSC, for a stay on the order and asked the commission to initiate a fresh appointment process within a fortnight from the date of the results of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
The bench, constituted by the high court chief justice on a direction of the Supreme Court, had heard 350 petitions and appeals relating to the selection of candidates for appointment by the SSC in the categories of teachers of classes 9, 10, 11 and 12 and group-C and D staffers through the SLST-2016.
In its 282-page judgment, the high court had said retaining appointees selected through "such a dubious process" would be contrary to public interest.
