Recently online a photo of CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey, holding an anti-caste poster has been shared on social media and WhatsApp a lot.


Courtesy: Twitter/@annavetticad

Jack Dorsey was in India the past week and met a group of women journalists for an off-the-record conversation. However, a photo of him from the session, in which he was seen holding a poster titled “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy” became viral and set of a twitter storm, with hash tags #TwitterControversy, #AntiBrahmin trending on twitter.

NARRATIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

https://twitter.com/FutureBJP/status/1065065826108301312

#TwitterControversy was especially active, with people tweeting against Jack Dorsey and Twitter leftist leanings in regards to India.

https://twitter.com/padhalikha/status/1065079576349552646

OUR FACT CHECK

Fact Crescendo team did a fact check on this issue. We did Google Reverse Image search and researched online to track the story and comments being made on various websites and social media.

We know from experience that as this story would develop further; this photo would be used by certain persons and group of people to propagate their own confirmation bias.

To forewarn & inform our readers to make them aware of various sides to this story, we found the following:

  • Jack Dorsey was in India the past week and met a group of women journalists for an off-the-record conversation. A photo of him from the session, in which he was seen holding a poster titled “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy” was shared on Twitter by Anna MM Vetticad with twitter handle ‘@annavetticad’ on 18th November 2018. She describes herself, in her twitter bio, as an “Author of “The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic”, Journalist, Teacher, World's most committed feminist :)”. Anna also has a blog ‘navetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.com’.

  • Our readers can view the archived version of the tweet here.
  • The official Twitter India account with handle @TwitterIndia, re-tweeted the ‘@annavetticad’ tweet on 19th November 2018, with the following text:

"Recently we hosted a closed door discussion with a group of women journalists and change makers from India to better understand their experience using Twitter. One of the participants, a Dalit activist, shared her personal experiences and gifted a poster to Jack."

This tweet has garnered '521 Retweets & 1,529 Likes' till date.

“It is not a statement from Twitter or our CEO, but a tangible reflection of our company's efforts to see, hear, and understand all sides of important public conversations that happen on our service around the world.

This tweet has garnered '242 Retweets & 755 Likes’ till date.

Our readers can view the archived version of both the tweets here & here.

  • Barkha Dutt, who is a famous & nominated reporter, columnist for Washington Post & contributing editor for The Week Live, was present there on that day and can be seen standing in the controversial picture. On 20th November 2018, she started tweeting from her twitter handle ‘@BDUTT’, the following tweets in response to this picture. Her tweets started with this tweet at 9:28 AM on 20 Nov 2018:

And ended with this at 10:01 AM on 20 Nov 2018:

We have shared few of the text of these tweets to give our readers some insight on what Barkha Dutt wrote:

"Watching how poorly @TwitterIndia has handled its meeting with a group of women journalists & more so, because it has been so dishonest about it, I am taking the unusual step of sharing some details about what happened from my perspective, at the meeting w/ @jack @vijaya"

"What angers me is lies by @Twitter : @vijaya apologised & cried for being tone deaf on caste bias; in public her apology exact opposite. She says photo private. Photo taken & mailed to us by Twitter. Twitter fails to brief @jack; then transfers blame to women invited. SHOCKING"

"Upper Caste bias & sexism not separate for millions of Dalit women. That is Brahminical Patriarchy for them. Yet I would not have posed with @jack holding poster. He chose to hold it himself. Photo was mailed by Twitter Staff. @vijaya said one thing in private, another in public"

“Finally @jack @vijaya - you got a taste of what many, strong, opinionated women go through everyday. Unlike some of us who stand up to bullying and hold our own, you guys played all sides & were truthful to none, So I broke my silence. But nice you got a taste of your own meds :)”

  • Sanghapali Aruna is an anti-caste activist and one of the founders of Dalit History Month. She was the one who gave Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey a poster which said ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’. Source: The Wire

Various tweets were posted by people to express their point of view, as these tweets and re-tweets started trending. So, we urge our readers to be careful in the coming future of biased or fake comments & posts which might be shared online.

Our readers can also visit the links below for better understanding of the issue:

Amp Scroll

 The Quint Business Today
India Today Times News Now TimesNowNews
India Times Republic World Indian Express

Economic Times

 The Wire

IN CONCLUSION

Fact Crescendo team raises a Fake Alert, advising & forewarning our readers to beware of any fake and biased posts or comments being shared on social media in response to this picture and incident.

Fact Crescendo advises its readers to visit various news media & fact checking websites online when in doubt about any WhatsApp or social media forward or post.

5th December 2018

Dear Readers,

Recently, we received a feedback from a reader, that Opindia.com had written a ‘negative’ review of our website. We viewed the article written by Mr. K Bhattacharjee on Opindia.com and reached a conclusion that:

  1. K Bhattacharjee wrote his piece without fully understanding the purpose of our article.
  2. We needed to bring some changes in our article rating process, so that our readers can have more clarity about the article which we have published. Soon, we would publish a page on our website explaining all the ratings used by us.

For our reader’s information, K Bhattacharjee on November 21, 2018, wrote an article in Opindia.com which included the following text & picture:

“Let us illustrate the standards of a site that is certified by IFCN: Fact Crescendo. Despite the legal head of Twitter India apologizing profusely for the anti-Brahmin placard that was held by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey while posing for a photograph, Fact Crescendo calls it Fake News. In the entire article, it wasn’t even mentioned what was the Fake News in the story. Is this standard of fact-checking BBC finds credible for its research?”

We wishes to bring to K Bhattacharjee notice that the statement written by him, that Fact Crescendo calls it ‘Fake News’, is false and the whole purpose of the article has been misunderstood by him.

We had tagged this particular post as ‘Fake Alert’ which basically means that we are alerting our readers that this kind of post/picture can be misused by people to push a biased narrative online or on social media in future.

In no way did we categorize the picture of ‘anti-Brahmin placard that was held by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’ as ‘Fake News’. In fact if you look at the article display on Archive or Search result page, we have characterized it as ‘REAL’. Refer images below:

K Bhattacharjee ‘s comment “In the entire article, it wasn’t even mentioned what was the Fake News in the story.” is unjustified as we did not tag this article as ‘Fake News’ and nor did we anywhere in the article say that it was ‘Fake News’. In fact we made it very plain in our ‘IN CONCLUSION’ section that “Fact Crescendo team raises a Fake Alert, advising & forewarning our readers to beware of any fake and biased posts or comments being shared on social media in response to this picture and incident.”

Our rating “Fake Alert” has been misunderstood. Subsequently, we are in the process of revaluating our rating process, so that in future these kind of misunderstanding does not happen. For raising our awareness to this issue, we extend our gratitude to Mr. K Bhattacharjee.

For better understanding, our readers can themselves read our article here.

Finally, Mr. K Bhattacharjee, to push forward a biased narrative against an entity using someone else shoulder, is genuinely not expected from a journalist of your high standards nor from a reputed news site like Opindia.com. Genuinely, we hold the point of view that the efforts of various online fact checking sites inclusive of Opindia.com are important for our democracy.

We believe in taking constructive criticism and improving incrementally, for the benefit of our readers. Post your article, we have brought about a change in the headline of the article referred, to clarify the essence of the article.

Thanks for your ‘valuable’ feedback. We continuously strive to meet the expectations of our readers.

Article Correction

Changed On: 5th December 2018

Changes Done:

  1. Changed the headline “FAKE ALERT: CEO Of Twitter Jack Dorsey Holding An Anti-Caste Poster”

Changed Headline:

“FACT ALERT: Picture of CEO Of Twitter Jack Dorsey Holding An Anti-Caste Poster can be misused”

  1. Added “and” in the sentence:

“To forewarn & inform our readers to make them aware of various sides to this story, we found the following:”

New Text:

“ To forewarn & inform our readers and to make them aware of various sides to this story, we found the following:”

  1. Changed the text “Fake Alert” to “Fact Alert”, in “IN CONCLUSION” section,

Previous text:

“Fact Crescendo team raises a Fake Alert, advising & forewarning our readers to beware of any fake and biased posts or comments being shared on social media in response to this picture and incident.”

Changed text:

“Fact Crescendo team raises a Fact Alert, advising & forewarning our readers to beware of any fake and biased posts or comments being shared on social media in response to this picture and incident.”

Dear Readers,

Do you feel that a certain story is fake? Do you know some additional factual details about a claim being shared on social media?

Then you can submit that claim or news here, for our team to verify and fact check for you.

Thanks,

-Fact Crescendo Team-

Fake AlertJack DorseyReal NewsTwitter