NEW DWLHI – India’s communications minister on Tuesday accused Facebook ofbias against right-wing politics, even after fresh reports about claimsthat a high-ranking staffer at the social media giant supported thecountry’s Hindu-nationalist ruling party.
The row erupted after The Wall Street Journal published two reportsalleging that Ankhi Das, Facebook’s top public policy executive in India,had expressed support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya JanataParty and disparaged the opposition in internal posts.
The Journal reported that Facebook also failed to take action against postscontaining hate speech against Muslims by a Hindu nationalist lawmaker outof concern for its business interests in India — the firm’s largest marketin terms of users.
Time magazine also published an article last week with similar allegations.
But India’s communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed in a letterdated Tuesday to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg that ahead of the 2019national elections, “there was a concerted effort by Facebook… to notjust delete pages or substantially reduce their reach but also offer norecourse or right of appeal to affected people who are supportive ofright-of-centre idealogy”.
Prasad also alleged in the letter that the recent press reports were theresult of “selective leaks… to portray an alternate reality”.
“This interference in India’s political process through gossip, whispersand innuendo is condemnable.”
Facebook has been under intense pressure to act against hate speech on theplatform.
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Ajit Mohan, its India chief, defended the company’s actions and denied anybias. But the company also admitted it had to do better on tackling hatespeech.
The Time magazine article said Facebook had commissioned an independentreport on its impact on human rights in India before the first of the twoWSJ reports was published.
Politicians from the opposition Congress party have accused the company offavouring the BJP. The party said in a statement Tuesday that there was a”blasphemous nexus between the BJP and Facebook”.
“The aim of the BJP is ‘divide and rule’ and the social media giantFacebook is helping them achieve this,” it said in the statement.
Facebook’s Das had told staff that hate speech rules should not be appliedto BJP individuals and party allies even though the post had been flaggedby staff, the Journal reported.
The company’s executives have been ordered to appear before an Indianparliamentary information technology committee on September 2 over thecontroversy. -APP/AFP
