Byju’s Whitehat Jr, a rapidly growing EdTech startup from India, has been at the center of Pradeep Poonia’s attention for the past several weeks. The company has since filed a Rs. 20 Crore defamation suit against him at the highest court in the country.
We got in touch with Poonia back when we saw his posts get deleted off the popular Indian subreddit /r/India and he linked us to his posts explaining in detail about the takedowns.
Wolf Gupta
Whitehat Jr’s promotional campaigns constantly involved ridiculous figures. “Wolf Gupta” is one such imaginary creation who they claimed to have a high paying job at Google at a very young age. The salary & age have constantly been changing for reasons best known to Whitehat Jr.
Poonia has been accused of claiming Whitehat Jr “murdered” Wolf Gupta in the court case filed against him. This makes little sense since Whitehat Jr has since acknowledged that Wolf Gupta was imaginary.
The Slack Channel
Poonia went ahead and shared proof of Whitehat Jr’s communications on Slack which clearly show a coordinated attempt from them trying to mass report posts criticizing them. Whitehat Jr indirectly confirmed they are genuine by accusing Poonia of “hacking” into their slack channel.
Were they hacked or did someone from the team leak the chats or share credentials? We don’t know. There are reports claiming that Whitehat Jr left the channel open to public, a claim Techzei hasn’t been able to confirm.
It is not everyday you see a CEO get his hands down and dirty but Karan Bajaj, CEO of Whitehat Jr, has been directly overseeing the activities on the Slack server as per the leaked screenshots. Bajaj also claims Whitehat Jr is open to constructive criticism but the aggressive take down requests show otherwise.
The Reddit Connection
Takedown requests from Indian companies/courts rarely target reddit due its lack of popularity within the subcontinent. The popular Indian subreddit /r/India has been very vocal against Whitehat Jr. ever since Pradeep Poonia initial posts. He turned to reddit after being banned or taken down on every other popular platform repeatedly. Posts made on reddit were initially taken down before being restored several hours later.
Meanwhile, several redditors took it upon themselves to amplify the cause & suggested the use of telegram and other decentralized platforms to circumvent take down requests. The other ideas included getting popular YouTubers to cover the news.
The efforts have paid off to an extent, with the main stream media covering the news along with several other YouTubers. However, it has to be noted that several YouTubers including Dhruv Rathee have restrained themselves from naming Whitehat Jr directly in fear of take downs.
Techzei’s Take
While Pradeep Poonia seems to have used questionable methods to get his point out, the fact that Whitehat Jr is using content moderations tools as a means to quell criticism cannot be taken lightly. Poonia is not the only individual whose posts have been taken down. Techzei is in possession of a list of posts made by several individuals that have been taken down. This list not only includes memes on 9gag but also a short video uploaded by a 12 year old!
If your kid is interested in coding the best starting place would be code.org – A nonprofit organization. Whitehat Jr displays “Powered by code.org” logo on their website which should explain itself.
Update: Pradeep Poonia’s latest YouTube account hasn’t been suspended yet. Checkout the video made by a 12 year old which was previously taken down by Whitehat Jr over here.
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