Meesho, an e-commerce company, has issued a legal notice to certain social media influencers and those contacting said influencers who have allegedly orchestrated a smear campaign against the company.
The startup said that on June 2, 2022, Twitter user Ravisutanjani Kumar exposed a concerted campaign against Meesho wherein several influencers put out a series of tweets tagging the company’s investors, with an aim to allegedly malign the company’s reputation by spreading falsehood and lies. “Following the exposé, some influencers acknowledged that said tweets were paid promotions while others deleted their posts.” Meesho added.
Kumar tweeted, “Influencer marketing is the worst thing that has happened on Social Media. Folks are getting paid thousands to defame a startup, tagging the company’s investors, fake likes and retweets on tweets from paid accounts.”
Not the first time
Meesho further said that this is not the first time that it has been targeted by those with vested interests looking to defame the company. Twitter users Udita Pal and Aashima Arora voluntarily came forward to share instances from earlier this year where they were approached to put out negative tweets about the company in lieu of monetary benefits.
However, Pal and Arora refused to participate. Pal in her tweet said, “was offered a huge amount of money to post this exact thing which I refused and later the person took down the WhatsApp messages.”
Meesho said it will continue to monitor the situation and consider strict legal recourse against those spreading misinformation and lies about the company.
Analysts say that coordinated attacks on social media have occurred in the recent past. During the Covid-19 outbreak , campaigns were used to spread misinformation about the disease and bot attacks like these are also carried out in the election seasons to misinform or hide facts from the public. This method is now being used against companies as well.