Congress writes to Zuckerberg, seeks inquiry into Facebook ‘hate-speech’ row
The Congress has written to Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to initiate a high-level inquiry into Facebook India’s leadership and their alleged bias towards the ruling BJP, as reported by Wall Street Journal recently.
The letter penned by party general secretary KC Venugopal suggested that the report of the inquiry be submitted to the board of Facebook Inc. within one or two months and be made public.
The article in the WSJ, quoting current and past Facebook employees, had claimed that the Indian senior public policy executive of the company Ankhi Das had refused to apply the “hate-speech” rules against at least four individuals linked to the saffron party, even though they were flagged by the internal team. Das according to the report, had said that any action against the individuals would damage the company’s prospects in the country.
“There are clear charges in the article against the leadership of Facebook India of favouring one political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), consistently and being complicit in propagating hate speech by political leaders belonging to the BJP,” Venugopal wrote.
The letter said the article’s finding that Das had “provided the BJP with favourable treatment on election-related issues” was a “damning and serious allegation of Facebook India’s interference in India’s electoral democracy.”
“It (the article) also points out that Facebook India deleted the hate speech posts after investigative inquiries by the Wall Street Journal, which if true, is a clear admission of guilt,” the letter read.
Related news: FIR against Facebook executive Ankhi Das amid hate-speech row
Sharing the letter on his Twitter handle, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said Facebook needs to be questioned by all Indians. “We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy through bias, fake news and hate speech. As exposed by WSJ, Facebooks involvement in peddling fake and hate news needs to be questioned by all Indians,” he tweeted.
The accompanying comment read, “BJP & RSS control Facebook & Whatsapp in India.They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate. Finally, the American media has come out with the truth about Facebook.”
The party has urged Zuckerberg to publish all instances of hate speech posts that were published since 2014 on the social media site and assign a new team to lead Facebook India to avoid influencing of the investigation process.
On Monday, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor had shot a letter to Facebook, seeking its explanation of the WSJ report.
On Tuesday, a police case was filed against Ankhi Das in Chhattisgarh, for allegedly hurting religious sentiments and inciting people.
Meanwhile, Gandhi’s tweet triggered retaliation from the BJP, which cited the Cambridge Analytica data scandal where it was alleged that the UK-based firm offered Congress some Facebook data to influence voters in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019.
Calling the Congress “losers”, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tweeted, “You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica & Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us?”
Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP & RSS.
You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica & Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us? https://t.co/NloUF2WZVY
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) August 16, 2020
The Congress, however, denied the allegations.
