Their earlier TekFog reports (see HN discussion[0],[1]) have also been put "under review", and will probably be retracted as well. @banbreach has called it out as a forgery[2] already.
> This story has been removed from public view pending the outcome of an internal review by The Wire, as one of its authors was part of the technical team involved in our now retracted Meta coverage. More details about the Meta stories may be seen here.
They didn't get played. From the editor's tweets while this unfolded (confirming multiple times that they had multiple sources), the obvious forging of emails from Meta and their so-called verifiers, they were deliberately attempting to play everyone else to advance their narrative.
Their attempt to say that they "got played" is just them trying to save face.
Edit: Also, this isn't their first time. They had attempted this earlier with a flimsy, completely made-up story on a non-existent app called "Tek Fog"
This is the editor (Siddharth Varadarajan's) own tweet where he claims to have "met and verified" his sources and says it's ridiculous to think that they've been played:
"Apart from Meta's 'fabrication' charge, some folks are saying @thewire_in may have been 'played' by unknown elements out to 'discredit' us or further some outlandish conspiracy. This is ridiculous. Our stories came from multiple Meta sources—whom we know, have met & verified. 1/"
> Newslaundry asked Meta if they had identified the person who created the spoof Workplace account. "Unfortunately, we would not be able to share this detail as it will go against user privacy", a Meta spokesperson replied.
> They have identified the account but they refused to tell me if they had ID'ed the person (because "privacy"), or if it was created by a Meta employee.
Also, the commentary I've seen around the "video proof" seems to mostly infer that it was ignorance or malice to use such an easily spoof-able partially redacted video as proof, but are there no other reasons they would choose to redact info like that? Such as, protection of sources? If you have to redact, then you can't give people full cryptographic proof, and all you can do is describe your process and rest on your reputation (which has obviously degraded for thewire.in now). I'm not aware of enough details to know if protection of sources is even a plausible justification in terms of technical details, but the online debate is so accusatory and empty of information.
what prompted this? I havent come across any The Wire articles in a while and they didn't link nor mention any recent reportings beyond saying that they've been hidden from public view
