Thread by @JantaKaReporter

Thread: Story of how Google has chosen to brutally punish a small news publisher like @JantaKaReporter for our decision to carry out fearless journalism and hold the ruling party to account. We've been forced to go public after suffering for more than one year @sundarpichai 1/n

After our expose on #RafaleScam in 2019, our monthly traffic began to soar exponentially as our Google ranking improved significantly. By early 2020, we were clocking more than 10 million (one crore) page views with our user base reaching more than 6 million. 2/n

Phenomenal increase in web traffic translated into increase in revenue. This allowed us to pay off our debt and work on plans to boost our newsgathering efforts. But our world came crashing down in November 2020 when Google told us it had penalised us with 'manual action' 3/n

Google said some of our promotional posts carried web links that it considered 'unnatural.' It said, "Pages affected by manual actions can see reduced display features, lower ranking, or even removal from Google Search results." This had catastrophic impact on our page views. 4/n

Not only did it mean that our stories disappeared from Google trending (Google discover on mobile app), we lost our ranking from search results as well. Alarmed by Google's action, we identified at least 20 promotional articles that had 'unnatural links' and took them down. 5/n

We followed Google's instructions (from this video👇) and submitted what's called 'reconsideration request.' We informed them about actions we had taken to correct the oversight. 6/n

Not only did we take down all affected links but also added features preventing users from posting third party's links in the comments section. We also made our website secure by adding SSL certificate. We submitted our first 'reconsideration request in December 2020 7/n

We reached out to contacts in Google and referred to this video. All of them said it took just few weeks for Google to respond to 'reconsideration request.' Even in above video, gentleman from Google said it's 'not normal' for one to NOT HEAR BACK from Google for 2 months. 8/n

We reached out to Google executives @dannysullivan and @JohnMu on 27 January 2020 with our request to expedite. Danny was kind enough to respond saying that @JohnMu is the man to speak to. We directed my request to John, but never received a response @sundarpichai 9/n

Both @RifatJawaid and @lubnaurifat tried to reach out to @JohnMu on countless occasions, but he simply ignored. Meanwhile, he did respond to similar requests by other individuals, who later said their issues had been resolved after intervention by Google execs 11/n

We resubmitted our reconsideration requests at least dozen times since then. More than 400 days have passed since we first submitted our reconsideration request, but @Google has looked the other way even though they are expected to respond within 15 days. @sundarpichai 12/n

Some of our Google contacts describe treatment meted out to our website ‘bizarre’ and ‘extraordinary.’ It's worth mentioning that in February 2020, we faced intense pressure from Reliance's PR team, wanting certain stories on Ambanis' children to be taken down. 13/n

Our stories on Mukesh Ambani and his children since their weddings were big hit on Google and they often trended. We refused to take them down. Sometime in July-August same year, Google made $ 4.5 billion investment in Reliance. 3 months later, we were punished 14/n

Not too long ago, Mukesh Ambani-owned moneycontrol made copyright claim on one of our original videos. The only person present in that video was Rifat. Yet, moneycontrol made copyright claim. We appealed and won. But penalty imposed by Facebook was never revoked. 15/n

We would perhaps be the first news publisher to be punished by Google simply because we showcased honest and fearless journalism. We have no idea whom to contact in Google now. Going public is our last resort @sundarpichai 16/n

We fail to understand what mistake we've committed for Google to be so brutal. All we did with our limited resources was to showcase bold and fearless journalism by holding politicians to account. This was reflected in our popularity in such a short span. 17/n

Dear @sundarpichai, is honest journalism a crime for Google? We are asking organisations such as @USAGMgov, @OpenRightsGroup, @CMAgovUK, @TheJusticeDept, @RSF_inter for help since all our efforts to get a response from Google have been futile in last 400 plus days. @newley 18/n

From today, we will be sharing a daily update on inaction by Google, which has punished us for honest and fearless journalism. I sincerely hope that @sundarpichai takes note of this bullying by his colleagues and restores our page ranking etc by revoking manual action. Thank you!