What did Amnesty claim when the story was first released?
Amnesty has access to over 50k phone numbers of people of interest by clients of spyware company NSO.
3/n
What is Amnesty claiming now?
"Data is irrefutably linked to potential targets of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware."
4/n
Did Amnesty claim that the list was of people who were hacked? No.
Amnesty claimed that this was a list of people who were of interest to the clients of NSO. Forensic analysis of a selection of phones on the list has either shown Pegasus infection or attempts to hack.
5/n
How did the list come about?
According to Forbidden Stories founder Laurent Richard (@laurentrichard0), the numbers were entered by NSO's customers into NSO's system. (Listen from 0:56).
6/n
How did Forbidden stories describe the list since Day 1?
"A leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers selected for surveillance by the customers of NSO group."
7/n
So what's the list of 50k numbers about again? Has there been any backtracking?
There has been no backtracking. Since Day 1 of this story, the list has never been claimed of those who were hacked, but of those who were of interest to NSO's clients.
8/n
Driven by media propaganda, BJP is now claiming that everything is fake.
The only truth here is that people's phones were indeed hacked, and this included Indian journalists and activists whose phone numbers were on the leaked list, and BJP is lying.
9/9
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This is yet another feather in the empire of falsehood that is OpIndia. The claim that @AltNews misled the NGO Vikramshila and that they were unaware of @AltNews's association is completely false.
1/n
Since December 2022, altED incubated by @AltNews has been working on a media and information literacy curriculum for kids aged 12-14. As part of this initiative, we started working at a center managed by Vikramshila about two months ago.
2/n
On May 15, an event was organised as part of which the kids exhibited their learning including how they approach misinformation, deal with confirmation and cognitive bias, how they process news media and much more.
The fact that the hate-filled, lying cult is still seething 72 hours later shows how much the work we do at @AltNews inconveniences them. That's an excellent reason for more people to work on exposing misinformation and hate speech.
1/n
One tiny organisation can do only so much. It is when more people join hands, and work either together or independently, would the impact increase manyfold.
2/n
Start fact-checking in the languages you know, creating videos, creating reels, creating different forms of content. Choose a form of content that you are most comfortable producing while debunking widespread misinformation.
3/n
BJP Karnataka's press release on the issue was equally provocative. Multiple BJP leaders including Union Minister @ShobhaBJP and BJP leader @ArvindLBJP had pushed the false claim.
2/n
The role played by the media and BJP led to rioting in Uttara Kannada.
Post the fact-check by my colleague @AbhishekSay about how mainstream media orgs including @IndiaToday wrongly claimed that the St George's Cross in the Indian Navy's flag was re-introduced during UPA, @ShivAroor put out a clarification, first on Twitter, and later on TV. 1/n
In this televised clarification, @ShivAroor suggested that the fact that he didn't brazen this out is evidence of his fairness and non-partisanship as a journalist. 2/n
The #AltNewsFactCheck was published on Sep 15, 2 weeks after the claim was first televised by @IndiaToday on Aug 30. The reason for the delay was because @AbhishekSay patiently watched broadcasts of multiple news channels to determine who all put out the false claim. 3/n
The claim that @zoo_bear put out an edited video is completely false, and it is a lie propagated by @NupurSharmaBJP. Zubair put an unedited clip of the relevant part of the video where Nupur Sharma uses derogatory/insulting language on live TV. 1/n
Times Now has now changed the status of the video on their YouTube channel to private. However, we downloaded the entire 33-minute video before it could be made private and the relevant clip can be seen in the next tweet. 2/n
In this clip, @navikakumar first suggests that a couplet was sarcasm against Hinduism, and based on an unknown book of the law, claims that panellists cannot refer to the disputed structure as 'fountain', and asks @NupurSharmaBJP to comment on it. 3/n
THREAD: For months now, certain members and sympathisers of Congress have been running propaganda against @AltNews claiming that we're pro-AAP. Till now, we have avoided responding to these allegations because they're so utterly ridiculous. 1/
However, since there's no letting up of this collective targeting, it is necessary to respond. 2/
Firstly, we are not here in service of any political party or ideology, the work we have done over the past five years speaks for itself. 3/