Though there have been several allegations of Twitter shadow banning prominent accounts that are critical of the left and supposedly ‘liberal’, the fresh set of accusations by the prominent twitter handle True Indology (@TIinExile) goes on to add credibility about the alleged institutional bias of Twitter and how it tries to shun voices that does not subscribe to ‘left-liberal’ school of thought.
True Indology is a social media account that shares information on Indian history. It is well known for debunking several myths and false histories that has been mainstreamed. True Indology had taken a break from social media in between but started being active since July 2019.
However, two weeks ago True Indology got a death threat from an impersonator for the posts on Mughals and since then True Indology deactivated the account to stay away from any mental agony and instead concentrate on professional life.
The impersonator through the pseudo True Indology account threatened “People like you don’t deserve life. You have not seen my hospitality yet. You deserve a brutal death in public which will horrify all anti class enemies”.
On the same day when the fake account posted this tweet, the impersonator also wrote a message threatening to kill True Indology and ‘rape and kill’ True Indology’s mother.
“It really cast apprehensions in my mind about my own security. After all, we all know what happened to Kamlesh Tiwari. All said and done, we are fighting our own battle and are ultimately responsible to our own selves. I also had a lot of things going on at my professional front. I did not want any mental disturbance. So I thought it wise to deactivate the handle for a while and concentrate on my professional life.” True Indology wrote.
True Indology claims that the said guy behind the fake account is an Islamist. This account is said to be impersonating True Indology for the past one year with the same display picture and similar twitter handle (@TrueIndology) mentioning that it is a ‘backup’ account to gain followers. Many prominent personalities like Mohandas Pai, Smita Deshmukh, Prafulla Ketkar, R Vaidyanathan and Gaurav Sawant had been following this fake account.
Though several requests were made by True Indology and its followers to Twitter to take down the fake account, it had not taken any action. Following this, True Indology had filed a cyber complaint with the police and announced it through other social media platforms like Facebook on October 7. Now, the impersonator’s account has been suspended.
Two days ago, True Indology (@TIinExile) had reactivated the account after knowing that the account would be lost forever if it was not reactivated within 30 days. However, True Indology was taken by surprise when the handle showed the incorrect count of the ‘followers’ and ‘following’ list upon reactivation.
“It shows 10k at one instance. It shows 10 at the very next. If anybody types my ID (@tiinexile-with two ‘i’s), it simply does not show itself on Twitter.” True Indology noted.
“Granted, there is a Twitter policy that it takes time for the correct follower and following count to show up on reactivated accounts. But twitter makes it clear on its policies forum that it should not take more than 48 hours. At the time of writing this post, it has well been more than 60 hours since I reactivated my handle.”, True Indology said in the post.
There was also another unique situation observed. When someone on Twitter followed True Indology, it would once again show that the person did not follow the handle. Have a look at the video below.
True Indology noted that Twitter did something extremely shocking and inexplicable. True Indology alleged that Twitter allowed the fake accounts and impersonators to run freely on the original ID.
“Let us say your ID on twitter is @hari. Imagine finding someone else on twitter using @hari? You would think whether it is even possible? Even deactivated and suspended accounts do not have their ID available for others to usurp. But twitter has freely distributed my handle to impersonators. It has promoted ID theft. This does NOT HAPPEN at all. This is again not just a twitter bug.”, True Indology stated in its post.
At the time of writing the post, the account of the impersonator had been active and also claimed that when users searched for True Indology, Twitter showed the fake account instead of the original account. Apparently, the fake account had got more than 3800 followers in a single day. True Indology said “Twitter has given away my original ID @trueindology to him? How and why? This is downright fraudulent behavior by twitter. It has enabled identity theft.”
“This is a true story and these events have simply left me appalled. This is the price I pray for speaking truth.” True Indology said.
“Remember. This is NOT about me. This has happened to me because I dared speak up the truth. This could very well happen to you tomorrow. Just imagine yourself in my shoes. Does not the prospect of enabling identity theft by huge MNCs sound scary? Suspension is one thing. But a scam on this level is unprecedented and has not happened so publicly and blatantly as far as I know.”, True Indology concluded.
