Ola Electric Looking to Correct Image Riding on Dubious Twitter Accounts, Bots? New Report Indicates So

Ola Electric, which has been facing criticism since the launch of its electric scooter, is now mired in new controversy.

A recent report claimed the company appears to be fighting back on social media with a network of presumably synchronised Twitter handles, which are also trying to portray a positive narrative for the brand online.

An investigation conducted by Mint found more than 50 such Twitter handles. It was also claimed that many of these accounts work together to trend other topics or promote other brands, which indicates they are either digital media agency accounts or freelance networks that work for multiple agencies.

As reported, there were 50 such handles which targeted a user, Balwant Singh, a government employee in Guwahati.

It all started after Singh’s son was involved in a serious accident, which he blamed on the scooter’s regenerative braking.

Singh also shared a video of the scooter and pictures of his son at the hospital in a series of tweets which then sparked the online dialogue battle.

However, on April 22, Ola launched its defence, sharing telemetry data on social media platforms that suggested the scooter was being driven recklessly. Singh, on the other hand, has taken issue with the company’s failure to respect his data privacy rights.

Singh then sent a notice to Ola in which he wrote: “You are hereby notified to take down the telemetry data of my scooter from your social media accounts across the internet at the earliest failure to which I will be bound to take legal action against your company.”

“Ola and I had signed an agreement of sharing data only for your private access. The posting of telemetry data online in the public medium is a breach of privacy agreement between me the User and Ola Electric the seller,” he added.

After Singh shared the story in a Twitter thread, many other Ola scooter users had their own unpleasant experiences. But as soon as the tweets became popular, he started to get different types of responses from some Twitter handle on the microblogging platform.

One of such Twitter handles, highlighted by Mint, is @princi_qween (Princi malik).

The user wrote: “Just letting you know since you don’t know, this is what airborne crashing looks like not 1 scratch on a panel”

The other user @ImAnkitss (Ankit) wrote: “Regen exists so that the battery efficiency is better. How has it caused an accident? Seems like something that has been done to garner attention & money. If he is hurt that bad you should take care of him rather than demanding things on Twitter.”

Later in another tweet, the user of this handle is found to have retweeted Ola Electric’s official statement on the Guwahati case and wrote, “He (Balwant Singh) is retweeting other cases. Tell a lie and then do all these cheap works.”

Later, Singh’s son then told Mint that these accounts, which trolled his father on Twitter, were not genuine prospects or handles and found that they were typically amplifying tweets from a standard advertising company.

While explaining he noted that there were 50 to 60 handles like these and expressed how shocking it was to find out that a corporate was using some bot handles to discredit the actual story.

Meanwhile, some other users who criticised Ola Electric also found that they were getting trolled.

As per the report, about 100 Twitter accounts, including those 50 to 60 handles, like, retweet, and applaud tweets which portray the positive side of Ola Electrical’s self-driving experiment, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal’s vision for Make in India, the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturing unit it has built, and its all-women workforce.

However, Ola Electric has not yet made any official statement regarding the claims by the news organisation.

But the company CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, who has been vocal on social media, on May 4 responded to a tweet by The DeshBhakt handle which cited the Mint article and wrote, “Many cos. use SM to get their message out; but no one comes close to @bhash when it comes to pushing dubious social media accounts (that exist only to claim how great @OlaElectric is). Maybe Bhavish Agarwal has actually come to believe this as the reality?”

While responding to the tweet, the CEO said that he and the company have been subjected to one of the “biggest troll attacks in corporate India”.

“My tweets now get more replies than even Modiji’s tweets despite fraction of his followers! And all copy paste negative replies. This tweet’s replies also will just prove my point!” he added.

However, there is no immediate proof of whether the investigative story is right or speculative. But the company earlier blamed the accident on speeding, citing the scooter’s trip information and claimed that the vehicle was faultless.

Read all the Latest Auto News here