A story published by ANI claimed that the popularity of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Social media was due to Twitter Bots. However, there is a logical deduction on how ANI failed to mention some of the crucial aspects of their findings.
ANI had exposed 10 Twitter accounts from countries like Russia, Kazakhstan and Indonesia that had retweeted a tweet by Rahul Gandhi. The ANI story was published at 1:05 PM and was tweeted by Twitter account ani_digital at 1:12 PM. After which Rahul Gandhi was mocked for the whole day.
These 10 Twitter accounts were charlot34583589, pkbjdasjyesc557, lawannapuchajd9, yrlkamcsmc1507, madelenegonza14, cherilynzagors6, alinevyverberg2, berniecebenson6, lynettacrabtre7 and bernierogers121, which are now suspended.
BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya had shared two tweets at 1:28 pm on October 21st using the #RahulWaveInKazakh hashtag, other one posted from a Twitter account called Dr Parag. Alt News did this analysis and things got interesting.
ANI’s article was published at 1:05 pm and was first tweeted at 1:12 pm. Let’s look at some of Amit Malviya’s tweets now.
Amit Malviya has put out a screenshot of pkbjdasjyesc557‘s account which is one of the 10 accounts listed in ANI’s article. The service provider is showed as Vodafone IN, that is, the screenshot was taken in India and used Indian Standard Time (IST). The time showed here is 10:38, which means, it was either taken at 10:38 am on that day or at 10:30 AM/PM on the days prior to October 21st. Either way, the screenshot was taken hours before ANI published its article.
Now checking another tweet by Amit Malviya,
This screenshot was taken at 11:08, many hours before the ANI article. The third one by him is also similar,
A BJP social media volunteer Yogesh Malik who had shared a Google Doc with a list of tweets and screenshots that members of BJP IT Cell could copy/paste.
All the screenshots in the Doc seem to have been taken from the same phone as indicated by the constantly decreasing battery power percentage of the phone.
The timestamp in the document circulated by BJP IT Cell is many hours before ANI article. Did BJP IT Cell have prior knowledge of the contents of ANI’s article?
One more thing, that ANI failed to mention that these “Bots” shared Rahul’s tweet only once, if they were hired, they would have shared several tweets by him. Also, at least one of the accounts that retweeted Rahul Gandhi’s tweets also retweeted the tweets of BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh.
In ANI’s article, it is stated that “The tweet quickly reached 20,000 retweets” while referring to Rahul Gandhi’s tweet. However, 5 out of the 10 accounts that retweeted Rahul Gandhi’s tweet were created the day after his tweet and thus couldn’t have contributed to Rahul Gandhi’s tweet ‘quickly reaching 20,000 tweets’.
Rahul Gandhi had shared the tweet on 15th, while out of 10, five were created a day before his tweet.
ANI had taken a sample size of just 0.02%. Would ANI be able to back up their claim with data? Most importantly, how did BJP IT cell know that ANI was going to feature those selected Twitter accounts in their article and shared screenshots taken before ANI’s story was published?