Slugfest erupts over bias charges against Facebook

A political slugfest broke out between the Congress and the BJP over allegations that social media giant Facebook had shown favouritism to the latter by not acting on hate speech posts by BJP leaders.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed on Sunday that Facebook and WhatsApp are controlled by the BJP and RSS in India while Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP from Kerala, said a parliamentary committee will examine these allegations.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the minister for IT and telecom, slammed the Congress and said the party was caught ‘red-handed’ in its attempts to ‘weaponise data’ before the 2019 elections.

The massive political row was sparked by a report in The Wall Street Journal last week which alleged that senior Facebook executives had opposed applying hate speech rules to posts by BJP leader T Raja Singh and three other BJP leaders. These individuals and their posts were flagged internally for promoting violence.According to The Wall Street Journal report, Facebook deleted some of T Raja Singh’s posts after the Journal asked about them. The report said another BJP legislator Anant Kumar Hegde’s ‘Corona jihad’ posts were also removed when the Journal sought comments from Facebook on the matter. Some of the posts by former BJP lawmaker Kapil Mishra were also taken down by the platform on Thursday after the Journal sought comments on them according to the report.

The report quoted current and former Facebook employees as saying that Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy director for India, South and Central Asia opposed strict intervention and that this was part of a broader pattern of favouritism by Facebook towards BJP and ‘Hindu hardliners’. Das had allegedly opposed intervention on the grounds that such a move would hurt Facebook’s interests in India.

The report also stated in April last year, before voting began in India’s general elections, Facebook announced it had taken down inauthentic pages tied to Pakistan’s military and the Congress party but did not disclose it also removed pages with false news tied to the BJP because Das intervened.

BJP responds

In a response to ET’s queries, Amit Malviya, national head, information and technology for BJP, said it is ludicrous to suggest that Facebook is amenable to the BJP and the wider conservative ecosystem. “If anything, the reverse is true. In the run up to the 2019 general elections, Facebook unilaterally took down over 700 pages most of them sympathetic to a nationalist narrative. This trend of targeting large pages and groups run by volunteers and special interest groups, with communities running in millions has not stopped since. No reasons are assigned and appeals are not entertained either,” he said.

“What constitutes hate speech in India will be decided by our constitutional framework and extant rules. It must be applied fairly to all irrespective of their political affiliation,” he said.

Facebook maintained that it prohibits hate speech and enforced the policies globally. “We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position or party affiliation. While we know there is more to do, we’re making progress,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

“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?” IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tweeted.

Professor Sudhir Krishnaswamy, the vice-chancellor of National Law School of India University and the only Indian member of social media giant Facebook’s new Oversight Board, declined to comment. “I’m a part of the Independent Oversight Board. I don’t represent or speak for Facebook,” Krishnaswamy said. “The Oversight Board will speak through its opinions. We aim to begin this work in 6-8 weeks.”

“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,” tweeted Rahul Gandhi.

Shashi Tharoor, who is the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, tweeted that the committee would certainly wish to hear from Facebook about these reports and what they propose to do about hate-speech in India.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said he met with Ankhi Das and Shivnath Thukral, the public policy director for WhatsApp in India during the 2019 campaign to lodge complaints on more than one occasion but no action was taken.