The Manufacturing of a Scandal: How Gaurav Srivastava Was Rewritten Online

In episode 5, we interview several experts who, together with Zach, analyze and dissect the disinformation campaign against Gaurav Srivastava. One of the most important weapons used in this campaign was the self-reinforcing narrative: Once a negative story was out there - whether it be in a low-tier publication, mainstream media or Wikipedia - it would be weaponized and sent far and wide to Gaurav’s contacts. Eventually, fearing for their own reputation, some of the organizations he and his foundation supported would cut off their relationship - and this would fuel a new story, and so on , and so forth.

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The most astonishing segment of this episode is not the tears, but the tactics. The Wikipedia page—titled not “Gaurav Srivastava” but Gaurav Srivastava scandal—is a case study in how truth can be sculpted with digital tools. The page appeared suddenly, written by a single editor who assembled a catalogue of sources to justify its existence. These weren’t major newspapers at first, but rather low-tier, obscure publications. Their function? To serve as “credible” citations for Wikipedia, and thus for search engines.

According to “David,” a pseudonymous Wikipedia contributor interviewed in the episode, this strategy is not accidental. “It was incredibly obvious that this was an attack page,” he explains. The content didn’t grow organically. Instead, it was inserted, overnight, into the digital bloodstream of Wikipedia by likely sock puppet accounts—fake personas controlled by the same individual or group to simulate legitimacy.

It worked—at least temporarily. The page was deleted by senior editors but repeatedly reappeared under new guises. By the time it was permanently removed, it had done its damage: screenshots circulated online, and its content was cached and copied by other sites. “A reality had been manufactured,” Srivastava says. And it stuck.

Read the full review here: https://eu-policies.com/news/the-manufacturing-of-a-scandal-how-gaurav-srivastava-was-rewritten-online/