StoryInfinity for Daijiworld
Mangaluru, Jul 16: The Facebook page of ‘Postcard News’, a portal which has been criticized several times for spreading fake, provocative and content which is communal in nature has been deleted by Facebook.
A tweet from handle ‘Unofficial: Subramanian Swamy’ which says “Facebook removed Fake News factory (Postcard) Facebook page after multiple people reported their fake and communal cooked up posts” with a screen shot of disclaimer from Facebook “Post Card’s account was deleted” is making rounds.
When one visits twitter page of Mahesh Vikram Hegde, the founder of Postcard news, he too has re-tweeted Unofficial: Subramanian Swamy’s tweet with a message “Best Example we nationalist are divided not united”. However, this tweet was later deleted by Mahesh Hegde.
Meanwhile, after the account was ‘deleted’ if one clicked the Facebook icon on Postcard’s web portal, it was diverted to a Facebook page ‘Yeh Public Hai Sab Janti Hai’ which carries PM Modi’s picture in the display as well as the cover. However, the handle of this Facebook Page was ‘@PostCardNews’ and has over 25,000 followers.
The top post on this Facebook page has a message “Hey Community, We need to unite, nobody can do this alone. People have to come forward and fight against this hypocrisy! Please note that we are not the official Post Card News, however we have used this name as our username since we didn't wanted anyone from outside of the community to use this username for their personal or political gains. We stand with Hegde ji and team Postcard!”
When Mahesh Hegde was contacted for comments, he confirmed that the Facebook page has been deleted. However, when questioned about ‘Yeh Public Hai Sab Janti Hai’ which is functioning using the @PostCardNews handle on Facebook, he refused to comment. However, after the call was made, the @PostCardNews handle of ‘Yeh Public Hai Sab Janti Hai’ page was immediately changed to @YehPublicHaiSabJantiHai. The Facebook hyperlink from the PostCard portal does not lead to this page anymore.
One can find another page on Facebook named ‘Postcard English’. This page carries the postcard news portal’s logo in the display and cover and follows the content pattern of Postcard media. All posts on this page are pro-BJP and pro-Modi in nature while many other posts troll Congress and its leaders. The page has over 2000 followers and has been active since April 2018, making one wonder if this page too is run by the Postcard News team.
Hegde was arrested in March 2018 for spreading fake news on social media about a Jain monk being arrested by Muslims. He was released on interim bail on April 13, 2018.