Sunday, October 13, 2024
HomeSocial MediaParody 'liberals' in India fall for a parody Twitter account, now eat crow

Parody ‘liberals’ in India fall for a parody Twitter account, now eat crow

The usual suspects fell for the parody account of news agency ANI just to hate on PM Modi.

As Twitter and Facebook fail to comply with the new social media rules issued by the government of India, a Twitter account posing as that of news agency ANI, posted a Tweet informing that “Twitter would stop operations in India w.e.f 26th May, 00.00 hrs. It furthered that the use of VPN, third party API will be treated like criminal offence”.

Screengrab of the now deleted Tweet posted by a parody account of ANI

The fake Twitter account, lamenting the persecution of Twitter by the central government freaked out the gang of the ‘secular liberals’, who hurriedly started sharing and retweeting the post to express their despondency against the Modi government. However, these bunch of ‘intellectuals’, in their haste, forgot to do the basic verification before sharing the post.

Newslaundry CEO Abhinandan Sekhri shared the post lamenting that this was India’s step 3 to going the way of Iran under Khomeni or Afghanistan under the Talibanis. Sekhri rebuked ANI for justifying and applauding the arbitrary step taken by the government of India. “The usual media monkeys still justifying and applauding?”, questioned the flabbergasted Sekhri.

Abhinandan Sekhri’s now deleted Tweet in response to the tweet posted by ANI’s parody account

Apparently ‘Vishwaguru’ seems to be the latest toolkit keyword to be used by Modi haters.

Rocky & Mayur’s tweet

Investigative journalist‘ masquerading as abusive troll Swati Chaturvedi also shared and responded to the post, congratulating the Modi Government for “officially turning India into a banana republic”.

Screengrab of Swati Chaturvedi’s deleted Tweet (courtesy: Twitter user @goonereol)

Going by the trend, an ardent TMC supporter, Agnivo Niyogi, also jumped on to the bandwagon.

Agnivo Niyogi’s tweet

Amusingly, in their haste to belittle the Modi Government, these ‘well-read intellectuals’ forgot to verify the authenticity of the Twitter account before sharing the post.

The account from which the information regarding Twitter stopping its operation in India was posted went by the username, @ANINewslndia where they had used ‘l’ in place of capital I. News Agency ANI, on the other hand, goes by the username, @ANI. Moreover, the official account of ANI is a verified account with a blue tick on its portfolio, while this fake account, which has now been deleted, did not have a blue tick.

Screengrab of the original Twitter page of news agency ANI

After social media users pointed out how these ‘journalists’ had fallen for a fake account, Newslaundry CEO Abhinandan Sekhri retracted his Tweet. He wrote in a subsequent Tweet: “Tweet deleted, premature, its not going anywhere…. yet!!!” Sekhri seemed relieved that Twitter is here to stay in India.

People like Swati quietly deleted without acknowledging that they fell for a fake account.

The parody account has since been deleted.

Govt slams Twitter after platform tags Congress toolkit tweet as ‘manipulative media’

The war of words between Twitter and GOI began after Twitter added the ‘manipulated media’ tag to a tweet by BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra a day after Congress wrote a letter to Twitter asking to permanently suspend the accounts of BJP leaders for allegedly “spreading misinformation” regarding the Congress toolkit.

In his tweets, Patra had accused the Congress party of carrying out PR exercise with the help of “Friendly Journalists” and “Influencers”. Twitter, acted arbitrarily on the demands of Congress, without revealing on what basis it concluded that the ‘toolkit’ tweet of the BJP leader was manipulative. After flagging the tweet, Twitter claimed that the tweets had violated its “Synthetic and manipulated media policy”.

The Government of India had raised objection to the labeling of the tweets. Ministry sources had said, “In its communication to Twitter, the Ministry has stated that a complaint has already been made by one of the concerned parties before local law enforcement agency questioning the veracity of the toolkit and the same is under investigation.” Sources said that Twitter has taken an arbitrary and unilateral decision regarding the matter.

Join OpIndia's official WhatsApp channel

  Support Us  

Whether NDTV or 'The Wire', they never have to worry about funds. In name of saving democracy, they get money from various sources. We need your support to fight them. Please contribute whatever you can afford

OpIndia Staff
OpIndia Staffhttps://www.opindia.com
Staff reporter at OpIndia

Related Articles

Trending now

Recently Popular

- Advertisement -